On 5/10/1918 a Detroit, Michigan firefighter died of complications of a pelvic fracture sustained when he fell through a roof at a fire scene.
On 5/10/1935 a Chicago, Illinois firefighter of “Truck 39 was fatally injured when he responded to a fire at 1503 West Harrison Street. He was knocking on the doors of nearby buildings to alert occupants about the fire when he was shot shortly after midnight by a man who believed his house was being robbed. The shooter fired several shots through the door from inside the house, one of which struck the firefighter. He was transported to West Side Hospital, where he died from his injuries. The shooter, an immigrant, surrendered to the police, along with his elderly father and uncle, both of whom were also in the home at the time. The shooter was initially charged with murder, and the father and uncle were charged with disorderly conduct, but all charges were dropped upon further investigation after it was learned that the home had been robbed on four previous occasions.”
On 5/10/1977 a Baltimore, Maryland firefighter died in a high-rise fire. “On arrival, in answer to an automatic alarm from a high-rise office building, firefighters found nothing showing from the street. The firefighter took an elevator to the upper floors to check the source of the alarm. Unknown to him, the elevator took him directly to the 11th floor where a fire was blazing. As the doors opened on the fire floor, he was blasted by a ball of flame and burned to death in the elevator. The fire went to three alarms.”
On 5/10/2020 nearly sixty “people were displaced after a six-alarm fire tore through a Paterson, New Jersey neighborhood. The blaze was reported around 8:40 p.m. on Beech Street and spread to six houses. No injuries were reported among the residents, but a firefighter and a police officer suffered minor injuries, according to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office. Arriving firefighters found buildings engulfed in flames. Firefighters from several neighboring communities, including Clifton, Haledon, Hawthorne, Fair Lawn, Little Falls, Passaic, Totowa, and Woodland Park responded to help battle the inferno. The fire was brought under control around 11:00 p.m., but crews remained on the scene for hours dousing hotspots.”
On 5/10/1993 the Kader toy factory fire killed 188 in the Nakhon Pathom Providence of Thailand at a facility that manufactured stuffed toys, soft-plastic dolls, and hard-plastic dolls. The fire may have started near an electrical control panel in an area used for the storage of packaging and finished products. “The most significant factor contributing to the large loss of life was inadequate exit provisions. However, other factors contributing to the loss include delay in fire department notification, inadequate training, lack of evacuation planning, the lack of vertical and horizontal fire separations, and the absence of automatic suppression and detection systems.”
On 5/10/1947 a fire gutted the top floor of the United Coal & Dock Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at 7th & Wisconsin Avenue.
On 5/10/1901 a Houghton, Michigan the passenger steamer Bon Voyage burned in Lake Superior and was beached near the Portage ship canal in the village of Red Ridge, five passengers, all women, drowned.
On 5/10/1892 a Roslyn, Washington mine explosion at the Northern Pacific Coal Company left over forty dead.
On 5/10/1890 an Indiana, Pennsylvania Gas House fire occurred while workers were “engaged in making a charge of oil used in making the gas, when without warning an explosion of the oil occurred, setting fire to the woodwork and platforms surrounding the machinery and threatened the destruction of the entire plant.”
On 5/10/1887 eighty buildings were destroyed by a fire that started in a furniture factory at 1:00 a.m. in Lebanon, New Hampshire
On 5/10/1995 in South Africa, 104 miners were killed in an elevator accident.