Firefighter Close Calls

Home of the Secret List

FIREFIGHTER HISTORY 10/17

 Karl Thompson    October 17, 2020    No Comments

10/17/1966 the Wonder Drugs on East 23rd St New York, NY a mercantile building fire killed twelve firefighters at 9:36 p.m. E-18 and L-7 responded to fire in the store’s basement. A five-inch insulated concrete floor collapsed sending ten men into the inferno, two were killed when a fire ball exploded from the basement. “A raging fire in the basement of a four-story brick loft building, caused the first floor to collapse, pitching most of the firefighters who were operating there into the roaring inferno. The ensuing collapse of the upper floors made immediate rescue attempts impossible. Many firefighters had close brushes with death that night and many heroic rescues were made. Several firefighters were seriously injured, twelve died in the collapse. The fire went to five alarms.” “An art dealer stored highly flammable lacquer and other paint supplies in the cellar at 7 East 22nd Street, near Broadway. The smoke was so thick and the heat so intense that the first firefighters to arrive had difficulty entering the building. Fire officers sent crews around the corner to 23rd Street to see if they could enter through the drugstore. What fire crews did not know was that the East 22nd Street building shared a cellar with the Wonder Drug store. In a recent renovation, the dividing cellar wall had been pushed north toward 23rd Street, giving the art dealer more storage space and shrinking the cellar under the drugstore. The art dealer’s supplies were now stored beneath the drugstore…Only a small amount of smoke was wafting out of the drugstore when firefighters went inside. Around 10:40 p.m. as firefighters walked to the back of the store, the floor collapsed with a huge noise, sending 10 firefighters to the burning cellar below. Two others were killed in a flashover of fire on the first floor.” “Among them, the dead men left 12 widows and 32 children. It took 14 hours to dig out the dead. Until September 11, 2001, it was the heaviest loss of life in the Fire Department’s history. A lengthy inquiry showed that a cellar wall had been moved, leaving the drugstore’s five-inch-thick terrazzo floor unsupported and vulnerable to collapse.

10/17/1886 a Saint Paul, MN firefighter “died from a fall down an elevator shaft at a fire at Sherman Block Carpet Company, 6th & Wabasha.”

10/17/1937 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “died of smoke inhalation while operating at a single-alarm fire.”

10/17/1945 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “was found unconscious in an apartment at 1899 Broadway, after firefighters extinguished a blaze there. He died in route to Bushwick Hospital.”

10/17/1970 a Manhattan, New York (FDNY) firefighter “was killed when he fell through a boarded over area and fell down an elevator shaft while venting the roof at a single-alarm fire.”

10/17/2003 Cook County (Chicago, IL) Administration High-rise building fire killed six and trapped workers in smoke-filled stairways in a 35-story high-rise building, the fire broke out in the Illinois Secretary of State offices on the 12th floor.

10/17/1989 San Francisco Bay, CA. earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit the area and caused about sixty-seven deaths, 3,000 injuries, and damages up to $7 billion.

10/17/2001 Anthrax was discovered in U.S. Senate office building.

 Firefighter History

Also check the most current issue of THE SECRET
LIST
(Click Here)

Sign Up for Secret List

For Email Newsletters you can trust.

Please Visit
Our Sponsor

GordonGraham.com


YOU NEED THIS BOOK!
(Trust Us)

400+ PAGES.
90+ CONTRIBUTORS!
100% of the royalties from the sales of "PASS IT ON" will be donated to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and the Chief Ray Downey Scholarship Fund.
CLICK ABOVE TO ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!


 

Pass It On: The Second Alarm

BillyG-book-170



Posters

Click to Print

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Apparatus
    • Crashes
    • Struck By
  • Close Calls
  • Contact Us
  • Drills
  • FIRE & EMS CIVIL DISORDER
  • EMS Close Calls
  • Fire Communications
  • Firefighter Cancer
  • Firefighter History
  • Firefighter Staffing
  • Gallery
  • LODD Calendar
  • Modern Fire Behavior
  • NIOSH Lessons Learned
  • NIOSH LODD Reports
  • Pass It On
  • Personal Survival
  • Safety and Survival
  • Secret List
  • SOG’s
Submit Your
CLOSE CALLS /
NEAR MISS

 

LODD STATS

YearTotals
202063
201957
201885
201793
201689
201586
201494
2013101
201283
201181
201087
200993
2008118
2007118
Tweets by @alertpage

Search Site

In Memory Of

fdnyClick this patch

Contact Info

Email BillyG
info@firefighterclosecalls.com

Email Weekly Drill
Suggestions to

Drills@firefighterclosecalls.com

helmet

ragusa

Click Here for The 9/11 Widows’ and Victims’ Families Association

ssc

Click Here: Skyscraper Safety Campaign


Copyright © 2003-2021

Copyright Disclaimer: This non-commercial, non-profit and free use website is for the exclusive purpose of firefighter safety, health and survival. All photographs in these posts are either submitted or from aggregate Google and are used in the postings for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, criticism, news reporting, research, and scholarship consistent with 17 USC §107 and never due to intentional or malicious misuse of a copyright.