Inferno! Hal Butler

A very interesting volume of accounts of great holocausts over the last one hundred years, with accounts from survivors, eyewitnesses, reporters and emergency service workers. Chapters: The Great Chicago Fire of 1871; the destruction of a tiny lumbering village in Peshtigo with a death toll of over 1,000; the Iroquois Theatre Fire, 1903; the burning of the paddle-wheel excursion boat, the General Slocum in 1904, with over 1,000 lives lost; the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed not only homes and businesses, but utility services. When fires broke out, there was no water with which to fight them; The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, New York, 1911 when 146 employees died, many of whom had tried to leap from the windows to escape the flames; In Halifax, 1917, a fire on board the SS Mont Blanc - a French cargo ship - set off its load of high explosives, killing over 2,000 and injuring 9,000 more; In 1930, a candle ignited some oily rags left on the roof of the West Block of the Ohio State Penitentiary. Many inmates burned to death in their locked cells; The Hindenberg airship disaster of 1937; The Cocoanut Grove was Boston's top night spot - on November 28, 1942, a fire began which became the deadliest nightclub fire in history and the second-deadliest single-building fire in U.S. history, claiming 492 lives; July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, saw a fire begin under the Big Top during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey that would kill 160+ people; The Winecoff Hotel, Atlanta, was advertised as "absolutely fireproof" - but in December 1947, a conflagration broke out that would kill 119 people; In Galveston Bay, April 1947, a fire started on board the docked French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp, detonating her cargo of about 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, starting a chain reaction of fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department; December 1, 1958 - a fire broke out at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, killing 92 students and three nuns - a tragedy which caused over 16,000 schools across the U.S. to be brought up to safety standards before one year had passed. Illustrated with black and white photographs.