12/18/1906 a Marysville, CA firefighter “died of the injuries he sustained at fire and explosion that occurred at the White, Cooley & Cutt Tin Shop, on High and E Streets. Members of the fire department were unaware that a shipment of dynamite had temporarily been stored in the tin shop. The firefighters worked on both High Street and E Street sided of the burning building. While directing the hose-team on the E Street side the dynamite exploded, piercing his body with fragments of metal and other foreign substances. He died approximately a week later after the December 18th fire, which were considered to be fatal from the start.”
12/18/1918 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “was killed when he was knocked off a ladder from the third floor by a falling window while operating at a fire.”
12/18/1926 a Brooklyn, NY (FDNY) firefighter “died of smoke inhalation while operating at a four-alarm fire, Box # 44-417, 257-259 Water Street.”
12/18/1929 a Buffalo, NY firefighter “was operating a handline at a 2nd-Alarm fire at Main and Michigan around 1:00 a.m. in the International Railway Company building when he became trapped by fast moving flames in the rear of the building. He died in route to Sisters Hospital from Severe burns. The fire was started when a buildup of ice brought down power lines sparking a blaze that destroyed the building and over 30 cars, buses and trolley cars.”
12/18/1939 a Piqua, Ohio firefighter “died while commanding suppression efforts at a large industrial fire.”
12/18/1940 a Weymouth, MA firefighter died at “a house fire at 85 Grant Street around 3:30 a.m. The building was a two-family wood frame structure. The fire gained considerable headway in the rear section of the home. While fighting the fire, two firefighters were overcome by smoke. One toppled 25 feet from the 2nd floor window and crashed through a cellar bulkhead door, causing mortal wounds. He died several days later after breaking vertebra in his back and sustaining a broken collarbone and internal injuries along with a severe gash on his forehead. The other firefighter was carried from the home and suffered severe smoke inhalation.”
12/18/1940 a Waterbury, CT firefighter “died while operating at a fire.”
12/18/1959 a Toronto, Ontario, Canada firefighter “died from being overcome by heavy smoke on December 13th, as he led a search party into the 3rd-floor of the Café on Bloor Street west, where they had a serious basement fire.”
12/18/1966 a Baltimore, MD firefighter died “while working a fire involving the lounge room of a hall at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. The fire was extending upwards and nearly 200 female students were fleeing the burning building. The fire went to six alarms in five minutes due to the life hazard present and the intensity of the blaze.”
12/18/1969 a Springfield, IL firefighter “was fatally injured when the south wall of the warehouse collapsed during firefighting operations around 5:25 a.m. Firefighters received an alarm for a fire at the G&E Furniture Company near the intersection of Ninth and Monroe Streets. More than sixty firefighters and nine apparatus responded to the fire. Shortly after 6:00 a.m., two firefighters were cutting through a steel door on the south side of the warehouse when the wall collapsed, burying one firefighter under bricks and other building materials. Firefighters continued to battle the fire for several more hours, but the entire building was destroyed.”
12/18/1974 a Buckley Air Force Base, Aurora, CO “firefighter was among five people who died in the explosion of a jet fuel storage tank that was being cleaned. The explosion caused a 50-foot crater.”
12/18/1979 a Los Angeles County, CA firefighter “died from the injuries he sustained while operating at fire.”
12/18/1998 three Brooklyn, NY (FDNY) firefighters were killed while trying to locate a fire in a 10-story, Class 1, masonry high-rise building for the elderly that had been burning for 20 to 30 minutes. The fire on the 10th floor auto-vented through the window, allowing wind of 15-mph, gusting to 25-mph to escalate the fire, the door partially opened, allowed smoke and hot gases to enter the hallway. “On arrival, firefighters were notified of an apartment fire, with people trapped on the tenth floor of an occupied ten-story brick senior citizens building. The members of Ladder 170 raced to the top floor via the stairs. Where they proceeded to enter along narrow hallway leading to the apartment. Suddenly, the fire blew out the windows of the apartment and a 25-mph gust of wind fanned the intense flames. This caused a massive fireball to roll out of the open apartment door and engulf the men in the hallway as they searched for trapped occupants. The members of the company were burned, and three who bore the brunt of the fireball, went into full arrest almost immediately. Other firefighters, hearing their “Mayday” over the department radio, were able to knock down the fire and rescue their trapped brothers. There were rushed to various area hospitals, where they all died shortly thereafter. Five other firefighters and four civilians were also injured in the three-alarm fire. The next day a controversy arose over why the sprinklers system had been turned off in the building.”
12/18/1999 a Kansas City, Missouri firefighter died while working inside of a warehouse that was involved in fire. “Visibility in the warehouse was good and firefighters were putting water on the fire. About 45 minutes into the incident, interior conditions changed rapidly as thick black smoke enveloped the building. Command ordered the building to be evacuated, the emergency evacuation signal was given over radios and by fire apparatus air horns at the scene.” During the evacuation, the firefighter became disoriented and lost; however, he was in radio communication with Command. Six search teams swept the building but were not able to locate the missing firefighter.
12/18/2017 a Nyack, New York firefighter “became ill and suffered a heart attack at the scene of an odor investigation and was transported to Nyack Hospital where he later died. Firefighters had responded to a report of a chemical spill at the Chase Bank on North Broadway, that turned out to be a battery in the bank’s alarm system that was overheating and was creating an odor.”
12/18/2017 an 11-year-old boy, 7-year-old boy, a 3-year-old girl and their 40-year-old mother died in a house fire that broke out inside a two-and-a-half-story home just before 2:30 a.m. on East 14th Street in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY. Ten other people were hurt in the fire. The 45-year-old father, his teenage son and 16-year-old cousin were critically injured; seven others, including five firefighters and two boys, had minor injuries. The fire was caused by an unattended lit menorah.
12/18/2014 a tree fell onto Red Wind Casino’s propane tank near Olympia, Washington cracking the tank and starting a two-alarm fire around 9:30 p.m. during a serious storm. No injuries were reported.
12/18/2014 a warehouse at the Conakry, Guinea airport containing crucial medicines and lab materials used to fight Ebola by the UN Mission for Emergency Ebola Response (UNMEER) was destroyed by fire. “Conakry, Ebola’s ground zero in the country where more than 1,500 people died from the disease.”
12/18/1982 a power plant burned in Venezuela that killed 128 and injured hundreds more. Half the capital city of Caracas lost electrical power when a fire broke out in a tank filled with No.6 fuel oil at the Tacoa power plant on the outskirts of the city. The water supply did not work, and the fire continued to burn that resulted in a “huge explosion” that killed “spectators from the village below the plant that had gathered to watch the fire. To make matters worse, the superheated flaming oil poured down the hillside toward a village;” requiring 40,000 area residents had to be evacuated from their homes.
12/18/1964 a nursing home fire killed twenty in Fountaintown, IN around 3:00 a.m. after a nurse reportedly saw the fire in the kitchen and hallway. The fire moved very fast throughout the first floor. The “fire chief at the time stated that the facility had been carefully inspected, but it is uncertain from media exactly what codes were established for the inspections.”
12/18/1899 Hallettsville, Texas at 1:00 a.m. a fire was discovered in the storehouse of Simpson Brothers, a dry goods store, on the northeast side of the courthouse square in a two-story brick building.