On 5/27/1875 a fire “at the Precious Blood Church in Holyoke Massachusetts trapped dozens of parishioners trying to escape from a second-floor balcony of the church. Egress was hampered due to the exterior doors opening inward. Seventy-eight people died and thirty-four were injured after a breeze through an opened window blew a curtain into a candle flame… The wooden building, temporary though it may have been, wasn’t exactly small, measuring 96 feet by 46 feet. The sanctuary also included a ‘U’ shaped balcony, hugging the east, north (front), and west sides of the building, which doubled the capacity of the building to 800 or so people. As people arrived, they entered the church through one of three front entrances, all of which led into narrow vestibules which, in turn, emptied into the sanctuary. The middle entrance was six feet wide, guarded by a pair of three-foot-wide double doors, while both the east and west entrances were single-doored and 44 inches wide. All of these doors opened inward. A new brick church was under construction immediately to the west of the temporary building. On a warm spring evening, the congregation was celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi, and that evening at seven o’clock there was to be a short Vesper service to mark the occasion. The church was lavishly decorated, including dozens of candles along with delicate lace draperies surrounding the Statue of the Blessed Virgin, which was set in an alcove high on the south wall, near the southeast corner of the building. The statue was also surrounded by lighted candles. A particularly strong breeze whispered its way through the east windows and got up under the drapery, billowing it upward right into the candles. The bottom edges fluttered through the candle flames, ignited the lace, and climbed the folds of fabric like a shot. In less than a minute the fire was already too well advanced to just manually smother, grabbing hold of the flammable finishes inside the alcove as well as the painted walls and turning the statue’s alcove into its tiny room and contents fire in a matter of seconds.”
On 5/27/1962 in Centralia, Pennsylvania a town dump fire ignited an exposed coal seam that is still burning after 61 years. The fire ignited a coal outcropping that spread to a network of mines beneath homes and businesses emitting poisonous gases and causing dangerous sinkholes eventually leading to the demolition of the community of 1,400. Some residents remain refusing to relocate after their houses were seized through eminent domain in the early 1990s “It’s very difficult to quantify the threat, but the major threat would be infiltration of the fire gases into the confined space of a residential living area.”
On 5/27/1987 the warehouse and approximately 1.5 million gallons of automobile paints and related flammable liquids at the Sherwin-Williams Automotive Paint Distribution Center in Dayton, Ohio was destroyed by a fire that started when 8 to 10 gallons of flammable liquid was accidentally spilled and ignited by an electric lift truck. “In addition to facing a severe fire, senior fire officers realized that the warehouse was constructed above one of the aquifers for the city’s water supply. Therefore, the senior fire officers became immediately concerned about the impact that leaking commodities and contaminated runoff water from fire suppression efforts could damage the city’s water supply. Fireground tactics reflected the fire department’s interest in protecting the underground water supply.” “The Sherwin-Williams fire was a catalyst for the creation of NFPA 1420 Recommended Practice for Pre-Incident Planning for Warehouses, which later morphed into NFPA 1620 Standard for Pre-Incident Planning which is being combined with NFPA 1600 and 1616 into NFPA 1660 Standard on Community Risk Assessment, Pre-Incident Planning, Mass Evacuation, Sheltering, and Re-entry Programs.”
On 5/27/1921 a Lynchburg, Virginia firefighter “died as a result of being electrocuted during fire ground operations at the C.S. Hutter fire on McKinley Avenue.”
On 5/27/1962 a Yonkers, New York firefighter died, and a patrolman was injured from smoke inhalation in the rectory of Saint Joseph’s Church at 141 Ashburton Avenue. “At 11:32 on May 26th. Smoke and flames were noticed coming from the 2nd floor of the rectory. The alarm was sounded, and the Yonkers Fire Department quickly responded. The fire created extremely hazardous smoke due to cans of stains and other chemicals from the renovation projects that the rectory was undergoing, causing a firefighter to collapse from a heart attack while overseeing firefighting operations on the second floor. He was rushed to Yonkers General Hospital where he was pronounced dead. A patrolman was also overcome by smoke and collapsed. He was admitted to Yonkers General Hospital, but later released.”
On 5/27/2002 an Ontario, Canada firefighter died from asphyxiation after being trapped after falling thru a floor
On 5/27/2014 a sanatorium (nursing home) in Jangseong, southern South Korea, South Jeolla Province, killed twenty-one of the thirty to forty patients after a fire filled the building with heavy smoke; most of the patients were in their 70s and 80s lying in bed, having little or no mobility.
On 5/27/1995 a fire onboard a fish processing vessel near Seward, Alaska killed the ship’s master. Combustible wood paneling in the accommodations area and spray-on polyurethane foam insulation and rigid styrene foam insulation contributed to the fire spread.
On 5/27/1925 the Carolina coal mine explosion killed fifty-three near Farmville, North Carolina.
On 5/27/1911 Dreamland, Coney Island New York, the largest of the amusement parks, was destroyed by a three-alarm fire that extends to four blocks adjoining, covered with booths, restaurants, hotels, moving picture theatres, and resorts of various types; in all about 200 buildings were damaged by the fire that started around 2:00 a.m. “On the night before opening day, an attraction called Hell Gate, in which visitors took a boat ride on rushing waters through dim caverns was undergoing last-minute repairs by a roofing company. A leak had to be caulked with tar. During these repairs, the light bulbs that illuminated the operations exploded, likely due to an electrical malfunction. In the darkness, a worker kicked over a bucket of hot pitch, and soon Hell Gate was in flames. The fire quickly spread throughout the park. The buildings were made of frames of lath (thin strips of wood) covered with staff (a moldable mixture of plaster of Paris and hemp fiber). Both materials were highly flammable, and as they were common in the Coney Island amusement parks, fires were a persistent problem there. Because of this, a new high-pressure water pumping station had been constructed at Twelfth Street and Neptune Avenue a few years earlier, but on that night it failed. Water was available, but there was not enough to contain the fire that enveloped Dreamland.”
5/27/1828 a fire destroyed all the buildings on the east side of Bayard Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street in New York City, New York that started in a livery stable on Bayard Street, about 6:15 p.m. “and communicated with great rapidity to the adjoining buildings.”
