One Meridian Plaza High-Rise Fire of 1991: A Case Study

their possessions in to the street. Both the west and south side were cover in

     The fire spread from the O’Learys’ barn to the yards nearby. Soon it was spreading throughout the neighborhood. William Lee, a neighbor a block away, saw the fire and ran to Bruno Goll’s drugstore to turn in the fire alarm. Bruno Goll refused to turn in the alarm because he said the fire truck had already gone past. So instead of arguing, Lee went home to his family. At the courthouse the lookout on duty saw smoke, but thought nothing of it, thinking it was just Saturday's fire and there was no reason to be alarmed. Then he looked up and noticed it was a different fire and had his assistant strike the Box 342 for the fire department. Soon fire trucks were at the scene and attempted to put out the fire. The fire department’s Chief Marshal, Robert A. Williams got the engines to circle the fire to contain it. They got as close to the fire as they could until their arm hair was being burned and their

Depending on the source, and the perspective of the author, there are two main theories or justifications for the fire. One is that the fire was caused and intentionally fueled by arsonists inside the compound. The other theory is that the fire was caused as a result of the FBI throwing tear gas into the partially destroyed building where residents were firing and receiving active gunfire. The areas where tear gas, a flammable component, was introduced were very heat sensitive because of the constant gun fire that was occurring. The cause of the fire is important because if the residents started and fueled the fire then they were responsible for the fire, but if the fire was caused by the FBI then the eighty deaths are in the hands of the

Smoke and flames were spewing out of gaping holes bored by American Airlines’ Boeing 767 that crashed between the 93 and 99 floors on the North face of the 110- story building. Each of the North Tower floors were roughly an acre. The top 20 floors engulfed in flames, he was staring at a 20- acre fire raging 90 stories above. He thought in his head that, This is the most unbelievable sight I’ve ever seen. Meldrum parked the fire truck on the West Street in front of the

On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in the 10-floor Asch Building, a block east of Manhattan's Washington Square. This is where 500 mostly young immigrant girls were producing shirts for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Within minutes, it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders weren't tall enough. Exits were locked, and the narrow fire escapes were inadequate. Panicked, many jumped from the windows to their deaths. People on the street watched in horror. The flames were under control in less than a half hour, but 146 people perished, 123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in the city's history.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire not only affected the city of New York, but also the rest of the country. It forever changed the way our country would look at safety regulations in factories and buildings. The fire proved to America what can and will happen if we over-look safety regulations and over-crowd buildings. Unfortunately, 146 lives are taken before we fully understand this concept.

The fire first started on the eighth floor and climbed up the building. Ninth floor workers were trapped because they were not alerted about the fire and had little time to escape. They tried to use the elevator as many times as they possibly could, but the elevators stopped operating. Clotilde Terranova had no idea that she could have survived the fire. They say she ran from window to window, and before anyone could stop her, she jumped out. She saw the fire blazing up from the ninth floor and was so frightened and acted in the

At 2215 hrs, on November 28, 1942, Fire Alarm Headquarters from Box 1514, situated at Stuart and Carver streets, received an alarm. When the responding apparatus arrived they found a small car fire at the corner of Stuart Street and Broadway. After the fire was extinguished the firefighters were about to return to quarters when their attention was called to smoke emanating from the Cocoanut Grove Nightclub a few doors away. Upon their arrival at the entrance of the Broadway lounge on Broadway they encountered numerous people leaving the premises admidst the cries of “fire”. The chief in charge immediately ordered that a third alarm be sounded from Alarm Box 1521 which the alarm was received by fire alarm headquarters at 2223 hrs. A

The factory normally employed 500-600 employees mostly immigrants, in which most worked nine hours a day. The fire began around 4:40 in the afternoon in a scrap bin under a cutters tables on the eighth floor. It is suspected that a match or a cigarette in the scrap bin caused the fire. The first alarm was set off buy a passerby at 4:45 who saw smoke coming from the building (Wikipedia Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, n.d.). A bookkeeper on the eighth floor was able to call and warn the tenth floor of the fire and those people along with the owners were able to escape via the roof. The means of egress were very sparse and most were locked. The man with the key to unlock the doors escaped the fire without unlocking most doors. At the time of the fire the only safety measures available for the workers were 27 buckets of water and a fire escape that would collapse when people tried to use them (The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, n.d.). Most of the doors were locked and those that were not locked only opened inwards and were effectively held shut by the onrush of workers escaping the fire (The

More than 17,000 structures were destroyed”(History). Most of the city was affected in some way by the fire. Nearly one third of the city was directly affected in that they lost their

For years if not decades, firefighters have responded to a reported structure fire that turned out to be a fully involved single room. This fire scenario requires a core set of fire tactics and skills to control and extinguished the fire, but is it this simple? Perhaps twenty years it may have been, but new dangers are lurking in every scenario and may have detrimental outcomes for unsuspecting and unaware firefighters and victims. The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) agency along with the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) have been conducting research to understand fire behavior and fire dynamics. This research is providing firefighters with new information about how and why

The weather at the time was mostly cloudy at approximately 45 degrees fahrenheit with a relative humidity of 62 percent. Wind averaged to be about 10 miles per hour from the northwest. The Battalion Chief arrived in less than a minute to size up that there was heavy smoke coming from the front and rear of the attic with fire in the rear. At 1719 Hours E123 which was Herbies Engine arrives on scene. At this time BC19 assumed incident command and spoke with one of the occupants to be informed that everyone was out of the building. Herbie along with a firefighter (pipeman) advanced a 1¾ inch hose line to the second floor. Fire appeared on the stairwell because a firefighter opened multiple doors to the rear covered porch. That firefighter did not inform command or his commanding officer of what he had seen. This led to a delayed discovery that the entire stairwell was engulfed in fire. A captain on the first floor informed Herbie that there was fire in the rear covered porch and stairwell over the radio. There was no reply by Herbie to confirm he got the message, but companies carried on. Meanwhile, around 1723 Hours, E49 applies water in the rear attic window with a 2 ½ inch hose, SQ5 makes entry through the front door, and TL39 began cutting the first hole in the roof. All these steps almost immediately lead to chaos for Herbie and his firefighter. Ventilation was not being controlled and nobody knew exactly where Herbie was positioned. He and his pipeman

The Howard Street Tunnel fire that occurred on July 18, 2001 was a serious emergency that required the participation of local, state, and federal governments in order to properly respond to the incident. The accident occurred in the 1.7 mile tunnel that is located anywhere from

The building was constructed in 1946, designed to be a nightclub. The same building had changed ownership and names numerous times, and had been incarnated as not just a nightclub but also a restaurant and pub. Exact numbers of occupants at the time of the fire is unknown, estimated to be between 440 to 458 persons. When the fire started at the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, the venue was 100 people over capacity, but "even the legal number was based on a bogus standing-room formula," (Seligson, 2013). An estimated 450 people were inside when the fire occurred (FEMA, 2011).

The sheer physical nature of fire is to consume all fuel that lay in its path. That is exactly what happened in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911. The building itself was reported to be fire proof, but what about its contents? The amount of unused cotton and other fabric scraps that were piled up were ample amounts of fuel just waiting to be consumed by a spark. The business owners kept what little exits and escape routes the building had locked for fear of a thieving employee. The employees mostly took the elevators up and down the building, limiting their knowledge of possible escape routes. Given those three factors combined, it was only a matter of time before disaster would strike.