4/19/1995 The Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, OK bombing killed 168 and left over 800 injured after a Ryder truck containing 5,000 pounds of fertilizer and nitromethane mixture detonated. A massive rescue operation that continued over a period of 17 days and involved eleven task forces, USAR Teams, and an Incident Management Team was mounted by the Oklahoma City Fire Department.
4/19/1993 a Religious group, The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Church, complex fire killed forty-seven near Waco, TX ending a 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult.
4/19/1895 a Philadelphia, PA firefighter died from the injuries he sustained after a wall collapsed at a 4-alarm bakery fire at 210 N. Front Street.
4/19/1899 a Milwaukee, WI firefighter “died of injuries sustained at fire the day before at 1st Ave and Burnham.”
4/19/1900 an Indianapolis, Indiana firefighter “died from injuries he received March 14 while fighting a fire at C.B. Cones clothing factory, when a wall collapsed on him.”
4/19/1922 a Chicago, IL firefighter died after suffering from asphyxiation at a fire.
4/19/1942 a Boston, MA firefighter “died from injuries he received when he fell from an aerial ladder, which was located at about the 5th-floor level, and he landed on the turntable of the ladder truck. The fire was in a 6-story building at 201 State Street and 102-104 Central Street, Downtown. Four-alarms were transmitted on Box 1286, (India & Central Streets).”
4/19/1972 a Calgary, Alberta, Canada firefighter “was trapped and succumbed to the smoke and flames in the Beachcomber Restaurant blaze at Seventh Ave. and Fifth St. S.W. The fire also injured seven other firefighters.”
4/19/2015 a Southwest Miami-Dade brush fire burned nearly 2,000 acres in the forest area along Southwest 157th Avenue, stretching from Bird Road to Eighth Street.
4/19/2014 two children died in a Rockaway, (Queens) NY fire that apparently started after a child experimenting with a lighter in a basement bedroom ignited something on the bed shortly before 11:50 p.m.
4/19/2002 four were killed and 133 injured when 14 passenger cars on the Amtrak “Auto Train” derailed near Crescent Florida; the “train consisted of two engines, 16 passenger cars and 202 automobiles stacked in 23 specially designed cars” and was on tracks owned, operated, and maintained by CSX.
4/19/1998 Tempe, AZ warehouse was destroyed by fire when an improperly designed sprinkler system failed to control the fire in rack storage of Group A plastic commodities stored to 15 feet; the total loss was approximately $6 million.
4/19/1993 a fire in a psychiatric institute in South Korea killed forty.
4/19/1989 off the coast of FL an explosion in a gun turret onboard the Battleship Iowa killed forty-seven sailors.
4/19/1983 a fire at the Central Community Home in Worcester, Massachusetts, licensed by the city for lodging and boarding rooms for former mental health patients (deinstitutionalized) killed seven of the twenty occupants in a three-story wood frame building with open stairs, combustible interior finish, and no sprinkler protection. The fire was discovered under a bed on the second-floor about 2:00 a.m. The “patient” dragged the mattress to the bathroom where it flared into a full-flaming condition. “The fire rapidly spread throughout the second floor creating untenable conditions on the second and third floors including both stairways.” “Although the occupants were apparently alerted early to the fire, they did not have time to escape from the building before exit access corridors and the exits themselves became untenable due to fire.”
4/19/1975 the Princess Irene ship fire killed twenty on the Rhine River in Germany.
4/19/1923 the Essex Castle Apartment House fire in Lynn, MA killed five. The fire started on the second floor near the elevator shaft and cut off all stairways.
4/19/1881 Anna, IL an insane asylum was destroyed by fire and left one dead. The fire started in the bathroom on the fourth floor in the north wing of the Illinois Southern Hospital for the Insane, around 11:30 p.m.
4/19/1880 the town Keytesville, MO was destroyed by fire that originated in State Senator Mackey’s Hotel, and was spread by a fierce gale.
4/19/1879 over half of the town Eureka, NV was destroyed by fire, that left 2,000 people without shelter.
4/19/1873 Baltimore, MD telegraph office was heavily damaged by fire after a battery acid explosion.
4/19/1902 the last and most powerful in a series of earthquakes, a magnitude 7.5, shocks Western Guatemala that killed more than 2,000 and 50,000 were left homeless.