This is a photo from a natural gas house explosion (kind of) in Virginia earlier this week. There were a few injuries associated with it, none of them life threatening.

This is an example of an upper explosive limit gas explosion and there are a number of things in the photo that provide evidence for that.

The first one I want to talk about is the amount of post blast fire damage. Now I know what you’re thinking, gas explosions have fire, that’s kind of the whole thing. And yes, you are correct, sort of. Gas explosions are propagated by a flame front through the explosive mixture of gas. The thing is, catching things that aren’t already vaporized on fire is a time sensitive process. Usually the flame front of a gas explosion is moving too quickly for other combustibles to vaporize into flammable gases. This is where the upper explosive limit comes in. When the flame front travels through a gas cloud that is closer to the upper explosive limit, the consumption of the gas vapors is inefficient because of the lack of available oxygen. This leaves leftover gas vapors that can continue to burn as more oxygen flows into the area. This does provide extra heat and time to ignite other combustibles in the area meaning you generally will have a lot of leftover fire burning post blast.

The other indication that this was an upper explosive limit explosion, the relative lack of fractured material, isn’t technically tied only to upper explosive limit explosions but is an indication that the explosion was not efficient. What I mean by that is if you look at this home, while destroyed, it is still relatively recognizable as a house. There are interior walls still standing, the garage walls are in good shape, the exterior wall closest to the camera is in one solid piece just pushed over, etc. The lack of shattering from this explosion shows that we were far from our stoichiometric mixture. That inefficiency means the power of the overpressure inside the house would be lessened leading to the pushing of debris vs fracturing of material. It finds the weakest points and can break those apart but does not have the explosive force to break apart stronger joints which is why the front wall came apart in one piece. The connections between the exterior walls around it and the roof are weaker than the internal connections of the studs inside the walls covered by the paneling and drywall.

You can also tell this was natural gas as the majority of the damage is up high in comparison. Natural gas is lighter than air, your damage will be centered higher and diminish the lower you go. You can see the tops of the studs in the back portion of the house are more burnt at the tops than the bottoms.

Now the reason I said this was a house explosion (kind of) is because this gas leak did not occur in the house. It occurred in a gas line below the house (maybe) and leaked through the ground into the home. There were several houses around this one that also had explosive or nearing explosive concentrations of natural gas. Officials have still not located the exact location of the leak underground and testing is ongoing to find it.

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Dominicana de Aviacion Flight 603

On February 15, 1970, Flight 603 took off from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic bound for San Juan at 6:30 pm. At 6:32 pm, the right engine for the plane lost complete thrust. The crew immediately declared an emergency and attempted to begin to return to the airport. As they were preparing to turn around, the left engine also lost thrust. The plane descended uncontrolled until impacting the ocean two miles from the airport. All 102 people on board died in the crash. The official cause of the failure was fuel contamination due to water ingress. On board at the time of the crash was the coach and eleven of the players of the Puerto Rico Women’s volleyball team as well as the former world lightweight boxing champion Carlos Cruz.

• February 16

China Airlines Flight 676

On February 16, 1998, An Airbus carrying 196 passengers and crew crashed while flying into Taipei, Taiwan. As the plane was going in to land in foggy and rainy conditions using instrument flight rules, they realized they were approximately 1000 feet above where they needed to be and about 1 and a half miles too far from the runway to make a safe landing. The pilot proceeded to apply power to perform a go around to attempt another landing. The problem was, when this was done, the autopilot shut off. The pilot believed the autopilot was still on and proceeded to do nothing at all as the plane continued to climb. When it reached approximately 2700 feet and a speed of only 52 miles per hour, the plane stalled and began to fall out of the sky. The crew could not regain control of the plane before it hit the ground and crashed into several homes. The last words from the cockpit voice recorder were “Pull it up, too low!”. All 196 passengers and 6 people on the ground were killed in the crash.

• February 17

2006 Southern Leyte Mudslide

On February 17, 2006, after approximately 45 inches of rain fell in a ten day period, an entire cliff face slid down a hillside and buried the town of Guinsaugon, Philippines. The landslide consisted of about 20 million cubic meters of material sliding down the mountainside. It immediately buried large portions of the town including an entire elementary school that was in session of which only one woman and one student were rescued. Rescue efforts were hampered by chest deep mud, massive boulders, and an earthquake. In total, approximately 53 people were saved from the landslide by rescue workers. The final death toll was officially 1,126 people.

• February 18

Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire

On February 18, 1977, a fire occurred in a communal hall in Xinjiang, China near the Kazakhstan border killing 694 people, 597 of which were under the age of 16. In September of 1976, Mao Zedong had died and in the aftermath, one thousand mourning wreaths had been made out of oil paper and branches. After the mourning period ended, the wreaths were meant to be burnt however officials were concerned that if they were mishandled or not burnt properly, it would be viewed as disloyalty so superior officers told the regiment stationed in the area to leave them until they received further orders. Of course, those further orders never came and the wreaths were left in the communal hall that had fallen into relative disuse. The communal hall on the other hand had originally been designed to hold rallies and had 7 doors and 17 windows. In the years since it was built, 3 of the doors had been sealed and 3 more had been locked with steel wire. The 17 windows had been bricked over in the bottom leaving a 2 foot tall by 4 foot wide gap at the top. The actual building itself took up an area of about 6500 square feet of which about 1200 square feet of that was filled with a 6 foot high pile of incredibly dry wreaths. The roof consisted of wooden frames, reeds as a covering, 2 layers of felt covered in oil, then three layers of asphalt. On the evening of February 18, a movie was being shown in celebration of the Chinese New Year that was being celebrated traditionally for the first time since Mao gained power. Early on, a few children set off fireworks and were warned to stop. At the very end of the movie, a 12 year old boy set off a spinning firecracker that curved off into the massive pile of wreaths quickly setting them ablaze. Several of the children reported trying to tell adults about the fire but were ignored. Soon the fire spread up into the roof and felt and melted asphalt began to fall on those in the crowd which began to surge forward to the only door which was quickly overwhelmed with people and a crowd crush formed. When the fire was eventually extinguished, the pile of bodies in front of the door was about 6 feet high and by the time soldiers arrived to begin cleanup of the remains, they had frozen together from snowfall. It remains one of the deadliest disasters in Chinese history.

• February 20

Station Night Club Fire

On February 20, 2003 at the Station Club in West Warwick, Rhode Island. The fire began while the band Great White was playing a set. They activated pyrotechnics during their concert which ignited acoustic foam that was surrounding the drummers alcove. The fire spread quickly across the ceiling and filled the club with smoke. Most people attempted to escape out the main entrance but a crowd crush quickly formed trapping dozens of people inside the building in a large pile of people. In the end, 100 people died inside the fire and remains one of the deadliest nightclub fires in US history.

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Hinton Train Collision

On February 8, 1986, a passenger train called the Super Continental was leaving Hinton, Alberta, Canada headed eastbound. At the same time, a freight train was traveling west bound towards Hinton. Just before Hinton, there is a section of double track before it changes to a single track going in to Hinton. The freight train was on the northern portion of the double track and the signals had been set to stop for the freight train in order to allow the Super Continental to pass by on the southern track. However, the freight train did not stop. In fact, the train never even slowed down, maintaining a speed of 59 miles per hour, 9 miles per hour over the speed limit. The freight train left the double track and 18 seconds later the lead locomotive of the freight train and the Super Continental collided head on. The crews in the lead locomotives were killed instantly and diesel fuel from the locomotives burst into flames setting the passenger train on fire. One freight car was launched into the air by the force of the collision and crushed a passenger coach killing one person. In total 23 people were killed in the disaster. The cause of the collision has never been conclusively determined. Neither train appeared to slow down at all before the collision despite having been visible to each other for at least 20 seconds before the collision occurred. The engineer of the freight train was in extremely severe health so it is believed he may have had a heart attack or stroke and was incapacitated at the controls. If this was the case, the deadman’s pedal should have activated when his foot fell from the pedal although it is possible that the engineer found having to continuously press down on the pedal tiring so they placed a heavy weight on it.

• February 9

Japan Air Lines Flight 350

On February 8, 1982, Japan Air Lines Flight 350 took off from Fukuoka, Japan in route to Tokyo, Japan carrying 166 passengers and 8 crew members. As the flight was descending into Tokyo, the pilot, for unknown reasons, turned off the autopilot, pushed the controls forward into a dive, and brought the throttle down to idle in an apparent mass suicide attempt. The first office and flight engineer realized what was happening and began wrestling with the pilot in an attempt to stop the plane from crashing. They were partially unsuccessful and the plane crashed into the water about 1700 feet short of the runway. The cockpit of the plane ripped off during the crash and separated from the plane. During the ensuing rescue efforts, the pilot did not identify himself as such, but instead as an office worker. It was determined that the pilot was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and had suffered from hallucinations and other issues prior to the flight. He had been urged to see a psychiatrist numerous times by the company and his wife and friends were concerned about him. In the end, the crash killed 24 people. The pilot was put on trail but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

• February 11

Carnival Tragedy of 1823

On February 11, 1823, approximately 110 boys were killed in a crowd crush inside the Convent of the Minori Osservanti in Valletta, Malta. As there was a famine ongoing, the local convent was giving bread to boys of working class families. At the same time, the festival of Carnival was ongoing on the island. The original plan had been to give the boys bread at the same time the Carnival festivities were ending to keep them away from the revelry and chaos but because the mass prior to the distribution went an hour longer, the boys ended up walking to the Convent at the same time the festivities ended. As such, the crowd leaving Carnival realized where the boys were going and attempted to follow into the Convent to also try and receive free bread. So many people jammed inside the convent a crush began to form. At some point, the lamp inside the hallway where they had gathered went out and more people began to push. Several of the boys fell down a flight of 8 stairs and their bodies blocked the exit and became stacked several feet high. Eventually the nuns and passerby realized what was happening and managed to untangle the crowd but the damage had been done.

• February 12

1945 Tornado Outbreak

On February 12, 1945, a tornado outbreak began across Mississippi and Alabama. This outbreak produced at least 8 tornadoes: 1 F4, 4 F3s, and 2 F2s. It was likely that the system produced more than that but tornado research was still in its infancy and lower end tornadoes were not recorded. In total, the outbreak killed 45 people and injured well over 400. One tornado in particular from this outbreak struck Montgomery, Alabama and caused extensive damage as well as 26 deaths. This tornado was observed by four different US Weather Bureau offices as it traveled through the area of Montgomery. Because it traveled so closely to the office, it was extensively documented and an air sounding was plotted associated with the storm. Unlike a sounding today, this one did not have a hodograph but had the velocity and windspeed of winds with height plotted as separate lines. It also indicated the height of the storm on radar. This was likely one of the very first tornadoes tracked by radar even if they did not yet know what they were looking at.

• February 13

Louisville Sewer Explosions

At around 1:30 am on February 13, 1981, hexane began to leak from the Ralston-Purina plant in Louisville, Kentucky that was being used to extract oil from soybeans. The plant used a containment system designed to recycle the hexane back into the system after it had extracted the oil from the soybeans. It was not working at the time and the hexane began to leak out into the sewers below Louisville where it began to vaporize. The hexane continued to spread through the sewers for the next several hours until at 5:16 am, a car driving near the intersection of 12th and Hill Streets ignited the hexane fumes that had leaked up out of the sewers causing a cascading series of explosions. A police helicopter that was over the area stated it looked like a bombing run as the explosion traveled underneath the street and split them completely open. Water lines, gas lines, and raw sewage were exposed to the air as explosions continued to occur in 13 total miles of sewer lines. Manhole covers were launched skyward and crashed through homes, apartments, and vehicles. The last explosion occurred at 3:45 pm. In the end, the entire sequence of explosions caused zero fatalities and only a few injuries.

• February 14

Yaounde Train Explosion

On February 14, 1998 in Yaounde, Cameroon, a large train carrying crude oil into the capital collided with a freight train causing both to derail. This released the crude oil onto the ground spilling around in various areas. Numerous individuals swarmed the area in an attempt to collect the spilled crude oil and sell it later. At some point, an unknown ignition source ignited vapors which caused a large explosion and led to all of the oil tankers exploding. The subsequent fires killed at least 200 individuals and injured well over 100 more.

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Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster

At 9 am on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was reentering Earth’s atmosphere over Texas and Louisiana when it suddenly disintegrated killing all 7 astronauts aboard. The cause of the sudden disintegration was due to damage to the front portion of the left wing of the shuttle. During takeoff, a piece of foam separated from the bipod connecting the space shuttle to the external tank and struck the left wing of the shuttle.

This damaged the reinforced carbon-carbon covering that protected the aluminum skin of the shuttle from re-entry temperatures of 2300 degrees Fahrenheit. As a reminder, aluminum melts at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. The strike of the foam was observed by video taken of the takeoff and was continuously analyzed by a debris assessment team from NASA to try to determine what, if any, potential damage could occur from the foam hitting the wing. At one point, the debris team requested imaging of the wing of the Columbia to try and analyze photographic evidence of the wing but it was rescinded by the mission management team within 90 minutes of the request being placed as it was made outside of command and it was deemed by mission management unnecessary and a waste of time. In the end, both the debris assessment team and the mission management team determined there was no risk to the shuttle and informed the crew aboard the Columbia that there had been a strike and there was no concern for their re-entry. By 8:44 am on February 1, 2003, the shuttle re-entered earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet during which the damage to the covering allowed hot air to enter the wing and begin to melt the aluminum structure. It would take until 8:58 am for the crew inside the shuttle to realize anything was wrong. Communication was lost from the Columbia at 8:59 am, with the last known communication being “Roger, uh…” from the commander of the shuttle, Colonel Rick Husband. The last manual input from those inside the shuttle was at 9:00 am in which they switched the autopilot to manual control then back to automatic indicating at least some of the crew was still conscious and able to perform some functions. Just 15 seconds later, the shuttle blew apart, killing all 7 astronauts.

The loss of the Columbia space shuttle caused the shuttle program to be shutdown until 2005 for changes to be made to the program to prevent future disasters.

• February 2

Groundhog Day Tornado Outbreak

At around 3 am on February 2, 2007, the first tornado of a four tornado outbreak touched down near Wildwood, Florida. This tornado is historical as it was the first tornado to be rated using the enhanced Fujita scale instead of the Fujita scale. This first tornado would travel due east, causing 8 fatalities and over 100 million dollars worth of damage and receive an EF3 rating. This same supercell storm would produce a second EF3 tornado that caused 13 fatalities, making it the third deadliest tornado in Florida history and making the Groundhog Day Tornado Outbreak the second deadliest in Florida history.

• February 3

The Day the Music Died

On February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft Bonanza plane carrying musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper aka J.P. Richardson crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa. The three musicians had been participating in the music tour entitled the Winter Dance Party. This tour was, generously, terribly managed. Every single night was a different show in a different city which led to the musicians spending hours in a bus with no heating in the deep of winter in the midwest. Temperatures ranged from 20 degrees Fahrenheit to -20 degrees Fahrenheit and the buses regularly broke down, once in -20 degree weather which caused one of the band members to get frostbite as they tried to stay warm by burning newspapers inside the broken down bus. By the time they reached Clear Lake, Iowa, they were expected to play a show the next day in Moorhead, Minnesota. Which is a 5 hour drive in good conditions. Buddy Holly was tired of this so he chartered a plane for himself and his two band members Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup. The Big Bopper had come down with a sickness and asked Jennings if he could take his spot on the plane to try and get more rest and Jennings agreed. When Buddy Holly heard Jennings had given up his seat, he jokingly told Jennings “I hope your damned bus freezes up.” Jennings replied, “I hope your ol plane crashes.” Richie Valens also asked Tommy Allsup if he could take his seat and they decided to flip a coin for it. Valens called heads and won the seat. Afterwards, he said “This is the first time I’ve ever won anything.” Just after midnight on February 3, 1959, the three musicians and their pilot Roger Peterson took off from the Clear Lake airport. The weather at the time was dark and heavily overcast and most of the flight would have to be by instruments only. The problem was, Peterson was not cleared to fly by only instruments and the plane he was flying had a gyroscope that was inverted from what he was used to. In the gyroscope he was used to, the top was the sky and the bottom was the ground, so if you were pointing up you were heading up. In the plane he was flying, it was the opposite. So about 6 miles northwest of the airport, the plane struck the ground at about 170 miles per hour with the nose down in a 90 degree banked turn. The right wing struck the ground first and sent the plane tumbling through the air before coming to rest against a fence in a cornfield. The three musicians were ejected from the plane and killed instantly. The pilot was trapped in the cockpit of the plane and also died instantly. As they wreck was discovered the next morning, the news was immediately broadcast over television and radio and both Buddy Holly’s new wife, Maria Elena Holly, who was pregnant and his mother found out over the television and radio. The news hit Maria hard and she miscarried soon after the crash. Buddy Holly’s mother collapsed after hearing the news report. Because of this crash and the impacts it had on Buddy Holly’s family a new policy was adopted essentially countrywide to notify family members of deaths before releasing the names to the public. Waylon Jennings was haunted by the words he said to his friend Buddy Holly until his death, writing about it in at least one song.

• February 4

1977 Chicago Loop Derailment

On February 4, 1977, the Ravenswood train was waiting on the tracks in Chicago, Illinois for the Evanston Express train to move so it could proceed ahead. Because of this delay, the Lake-Dan Ryan train would also need to stop and wait. But against the in cab warnings and the warning lights on the track, the engineer of the Lake-Dan Ryan train moved forward out of the station and drove directly into the back of the Ravenswood train. The collision was only at about 10 miles per hour and probably would have only caused a minor delay had the engineer not continued to apply traction power to the Lake-Dan Ryan train. This continue to push the Lake-Dan Ryan train into the back of the Ravenswood train, eventually causing the first three cars derailed and fell off the elevated tracks. This caused 11 fatalities and over 180 injuries in the derailed passenger cars. The exact cause of why the motorman continued to add power has never been determined but he was fired 6 months after the accident.

• February 5

Tybee Island Collision

On February 5, 1958, an F-86 fighter jet performing in a training exercise over South Carolina and Georgia collided with a B-47 bomber carrying a Mark 15 nuclear bomb. The pilot of the jet ejected and safely parachuted and landed. The B-47 bomber carrying the nuclear bomb dropped from 38,000 feet to 20,000 feet before the pilot managed to regain control of the plane but because of the damage caused by the collision, the pilot requested to eject the nuclear bomb in order to be able to land safely. He was given permission and ejected the bomb near Tybee Island, Georgia. After they ejected the bomb, it never detonated. Several searches have been conducted in the area but the nuclear bomb has never been found. Whether or not the bomb actually contained a plutonium cap has never been conclusively determined. Some air force documents state it was a fully armed nuclear bomb, some state it had a dummy lead cap. Either way, the bomb itself contained 400 pounds of high explosives and enriched uranium. It still remains missing to this day.

• February 6

1958 Munich Plane Disaster

On February 6, 1958, the Manchester United Soccer/Football team was returning from playing a match against Red Star Belgrade in the European Cup. The plane they were taking was unable to fly from Belgrade, Yugoslavia to Manchester, England so they had to stop over in Munich, West Germany to refuel. On board was the entire Manchester United team, coaches, several reporters, and some fans. During their initial takeoff, the engine was acting unusual so they aborted. During the second takeoff, the same thing happened so that takeoff was aborted as well. After the second takeoff, the 44 passengers and crew disembarked from the aircraft while the captains and the maintenance crew discussed what was wrong with the plane. As they did so, it began to snow heavily in the area leading to the buildup of slush on the runway. Believing they could avoid the issues with the engine, the captain had everyone reboard the plane. One player, Billy Whelan said as they boarded the plane, “This may be death, but I’m ready.” Several of the players, including Whelan and one of the journalists moved to the back of the plane believing it to be safer. As they traveled down the runway for takeoff, the plane reached V1 speed, which is the speed in which it would no longer be possible to abort the takeoff. Expecting to continue to speed up, the plane suddenly slowed down inexplicably. The slush that had built up on the runway slowed the plane down enough that it could not take off but not enough that they could stop before the end of the runway. It skidded off the end of the runway, through a fence, the left wing struck a house and was sheared off, the tail of the plane was ripped off, the left side of the fuselage struck a tree and the right side of the fuselage struck a barn. Inside that barn was a fully loaded fuel truck. Which then burst into flame which ignited the plane itself. The goalkeeper for Manchester United, Harry Gregg, managed to kick a hole in the fuselage and rescue several of his teammates and others. Everyone who had moved to rear of the plane prior to take off, including Billy Whelan, died in the crash.

Before we get into this, let’s breakdown what a wildfire is, the types of crews that fight them, and specifically what hotshots are.

Now the Granite Mountain Hotshots were different than most other hotshot crews. Most hotshot crews are employed by state or federal agencies but the Granite Mountain team was the only hotshot team in the country embedded in a local municipality. They were funded and worked for the Prescott Arizona Fire Department. They had their own station, station 7 that had two crew carriers that carried 10 people each. They were originally founded in 2002 as a fuels mitigation crew, then became a hand crew in 2004, then a hotshot crew in 2008.

Now because they were the only municipal hotshot crew in the country, there has been some debate surrounding the attitudes of the crew themselves. In the fire service, both wildland and structural, there’s a lot of “we’re better than you” depending on where you work and the Granite Mountain Hotshots, being the only hotshot group of their type, would have gotten a lot of grief for not being attached to a bigger section. And they took that grief seriously. They trained hard to be better than everyone else. Their leader, a man named Eric Marsh, made sure they trained hard and worked hard.

The Granite Mountain Hotshots offered something that most other hotshot crews did not though. A path to structural firefighting. A path to a guaranteed position that required no travel and kept you with your families. That’s one of the things that drove this team to do what they do. That chance for a stable spot.

Now the crew consisted of 20 men who I’m going to list here.

Eric Marsh was the Superintendent, the man in charge.

Jesse Steed was the captain of the crew.

Clayton Whitted was a Squad Boss.

Robert Caldwell was another squad boss.

Travis Carter was another squad boss.

Then there was Travis Turbyfill, Christopher Mackenzie, Andrew Ashcraft, Joe Thurston, Wade Parker, Anthony Rose, Garret Zuppiger, Scott Norris, Dustin DeFord, William Warneke, Kevin Woyjeck, John Percin Jr., Grant Mckee, Sean Misner, and Brendan McDonough. All of them had their own job, and all of them would have known well what to do. The oldest was the superintendent Eric Marsh at 43. He was the one who had pushed and pushed to make Granite Mountain into a hotshot squad. The youngest was a tie between Grant McKee and Kevin Woyjeck at 21, both rookies on the team.

Most of them were married, many of them with children. They came from all walks of life, but all of them had a love for the outdoors and a love for the job. Overall the crew was one of the best trained hotshot crews in the country and they were always eager and willing to put in the work needed to save the wilderness they loved and protect homes and lives.

That brings us to June 28, 2013. Yarnell, Arizona sits right on the edge of the Colorado Plateau. To its west are the Weaver Mountains, topping out at around 6,000 feet. It is a town of about 700 people that was once a mining town that is about 80 miles northwest of Phoenix, Arizona. The area at the time was under a severe drought. It was incredibly dry and incredibly hot with not a single day below 100 degrees in that June with to date 0 appreciable rainfall. They were waiting for monsoon season to come to help alleviate some of the conditions. But unfortunately it was not time yet.

At around 5:30 pm on the evening of June 28, 2013, Lois and Truman Farrell were sitting on their back patio of their home in Glen Ilah, a subdivision near Yarnell, that had a great view of the Weaver Mountains. At that time she was watching a dry thunderstorm over the top of the mountains. She witnessed lightning strike the ground, then a few minutes later, a light blue whisp of smoke floating towards the sky. This was how the start of the Yarnell Hill Fire began.

A single lightning strike on a single hill.

From the moment the Yarnell Hill fire started, it burned incredibly slowly. Dry thunderstorms had started three additional fires in the area and so a recon flight was sent out in the evening to determine what the status of the Yarnell Hill Fire. Initially, the flight struggles to find the fire itself. There is almost no smoke and very few visible flames. But once they do spot it, the fire is determined to be in the middle of a field of boulders with no vehicle access and would be very difficult for firefighters to reach. It is also only burning in one very small corner of the perimeter. The incident commander receives this information and with the consideration that the fire is barely half an acre, has very little fuel to burn into, is not threatening any structures, and he really won’t be able to provide support to firefighters he does send up there overnight, decides to leave it until the morning. They’ll fully suppress the fire in the morning and deal with it then.

When morning came on June 29, 2013, only one fire was still burning. The Yarnell Hill Fire. The rest had gone out overnight. That morning, the fire is about 2 acres in size and burning slowly. The incident commander requested two single engine air tankers to drop fire retardant on the south and west side of the fire. By 11 am, the fire is holding on all four sides, the retardant on the south and west, a two lane track road on the east, and a ridge on the north. A helicopter dropped a team in while another team of 6 department of corrections firefighters hiked in on foot. By around 2:45 pm, the fire is holding and the incident commander releases the two tankers and then by 3:40 pm releases two local fire engines because they had prepared for multiple fires to start and none do. They should have enough manpower and equipment. But then things changed rapidly, as they often do.

Around 4 pm or so, the winds kicked up from the west and southwest increasing fire behavior and pushing the fire to the east and northeast. This increase in fire behavior was categorized by extended flame lengths and high heat drying out fuels. Realizing the fire was changing quickly, the IC immediately recalled the two tankers he had released. But he only got one back because more lightning was occurring across Arizona. The fire that afternoon jumped the two lane track running along the ridge line of the Weaver mountains and expanded to 6 total acres. The IC then requests a large helicopter tanker and a very large air tanker.

Just to break this down real quick so everyone understands. There are really two types of firefighting aircraft, fixed wing which are planes, and helicopters.

They then break down even further, almost entirely based on size. Within fixed wing there are single engine air tankers which are the smallest. They usually drop loads of fire retardant or water that consist of about 800 gallons.

Then there are large air tankers which deliver between 2000 to 4000 gallon loads.

Then very large air tankers which deliver up to about 9,400 gallon loads.

With helicopters, there are three types.

Type 3 are the smallest, they carry teams of four or five firefighters at a time and can deliver water loads of up to 180 gallons.

Type 2 helicopters are medium in size and can carry teams of firefighters up nine individuals or can drop loads of 300 gallons.

The largest are type 1 helicopters. These are usually split into either personnel carriers or water delivery. The personnel carries carry teams of up to 15 firefighters and the water delivery usually drops about 700 gallons.

Unfortunately, both would be rejected by dispatch due to high winds and potential severe weather. They then tell him a different set can take off from a different airport but he declines based on observed fire conditions calming down slightly.

Throughout the evening though, the fire begins to spread even more reaching about 100 acres. At this point, the IC determines this is becoming a significantly more complex incident and requests a full incident management team, 14 fire engines, 6 water tenders, two type 2 crews to make handlines, two bulldozers, two structure specialty crews, and 3 hotshot crews. He also tells the local sheriff’s office to prepare to make reverse 911 calls in case the fire continues to push to the northeast and threaten two towns in the area, Peeples Valley and Yarnell. He also requests a large amount of air support. The hotshot crew request is filled with the Blue Ridge Hotshot Crew from Coconino National Forest in Arizona and the Arroyo Grande Hotshot Crew from Arroyo Grande, California. The third request is filled by the local team, The Granite Mountain Hotshots.

At 7 am on June 30, 2013, all the new command team meet at the Yarnell Fire Station for a briefing on the day ahead and to give out assignments. They discuss the spot forecast they received for the day, who will command what, and review the satellite imagery of the area on Google Maps from an iPad so everyone has a good idea of what they are facing. Together, the team makes the decision to send the Granite Mountain team to the south end of the fire, at the moment the heel, to start an anchor point to create a handline to prevent further fire spread to the south. They also decide that the superintendent of the Granite Mountain Crew, Eric Marsh, will become Division A supervisor on the west side of the fire, essentially in command of that entire west side of the fire on the actual fireground. This gave him operational freedom to move around the area and direct different teams on where they needed to be at any given moment. This makes the Captain of Granite Mountain, Jesse Steed, in overall command of the actual Granite Mountain Hotshots Crew.

Just after the meeting, all 19 of the 20 crew members load up into their personnel carriers and drive down through Yarnell to a dirt road known as Sesame Street. Eric Marsh gets in his own truck with the supervisor of one of the structural protection groups and drives down the road. They stop at a house along sesame Street and the supervisor reminds Eric that there’s a ranch to the south of them that they have deemed “bomb-proof”. Essentially it is a fully defensible area where they could run to for safety in the event they were considered about being overrun by the fire.

Then, almost as an afterthought, says “Of course, you always have the black.”

The black is the burned area of the fire. All the fuel there is consumed. The fire can’t back down it and you’re safe there. Every wildland firefighter knows the black is safe.

Eric then pulls up further towards the ridge and parks his truck. There, he meets the rest of the crew and they have a briefing that includes the weather report, described as “super hot and super windy”. They also were informed that structures were threatened, their escape routes were back to the carriers or into the black, and their objective was to build and anchor point and then build a handline either directly along the black or indirectly along a two track road to rob the fire of fuel.

They took off on foot to hike the 45 minutes in to where they needed to begin building line. When they got there, they got to work.

Sawyers started cutting brush while some of the crew grabbed it and threw it down the mountainside. Then the rest of the crew would come in behind with pulaskis and other tools to clear out grass and anything else left over to make it a solid line.

This work would have been miserable. Hot, dry, dusty, and generally uncomfortable. Temperatures for the day were up over 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and there would be no shade. Anywhere. It was all brush and sagebrush. Each firefighter was likely carrying about 26 pounds of just water to stave off dehydration. On top of the anywhere from 30-50 pounds of regular gear they were carrying.

By this point, the fire was sitting at around 500 acres in size. But it wasn’t so much how large it was but the way it had burned that would make the rest of this day a living nightmare. It had originally burned north along the ridge line but when the winds had shifted the previous day, it started to move east turning into an almost crescent moon shape. The head of the fire was pushing east hard and any change in wind out of the north to the south would drive it right towards where the Granite Mountain Hotshots were working.

While the Granite Mountain crew was building the line, Eric scouted up ahead to the top of the ridge. There he could see in the far distance to the north the signs of some clouds building. The first indication that there may be some storm systems up north of the fire. Depending on how this system move it could continue to drive the fire north towards the homes in Peeple Valley or shift the fire back towards them and the houses at Yarnell and Glen Ilah. There was no way to tell just yet.

They worked this way before the Blue Ridge Hotshot Crew showed up around 11 am. Eric and the Blue Ridge Hotshots superintendent, Brian Frisby, met together to discuss tactics. The plan was easy. The Granite Mountain Crew would continue to build line on the eastern side of the fire. The Blue Ridge Crew would use their chainsaws and a dozer to widen a two track road between the fire and Yarnell to act as a firebreak. If the fire made a push for Yarnell, Blue Ridge would set the brush on fire near the road to try and prevent it from spreading to the town proper. They also agreed they would send one of the Granite Mountain Hotshots down from the mountain to act as a lookout. Eric Marsh chose Brendan McDonough to act as a lookout. He was still in the process of getting over being sick and Eric wanted to give him a more relaxed day to try and fully recover. Brendan, who the team called donut, climbed into Frisby’s UTV and was driven down to his chosen lookout spot at around 12:39 pm.

Before he left, Frisby told McDonough, “If you need me, call, and I’ll come get you.”

Once he reached his location, McDonough selected a trigger point for himself and the crew. Essentially, if the fire reaches here, it is time to move.

McDonough sat down at his lookout spot and ate his lunch.

The rest of the crew up on the hill also sat down and enjoyed a meal together in the hot early summer sun.

Then got back up and got to work on their line. Chopping brush, throwing it down the mountain. Chopping brush, throwing it down the mountain. Over and over again.

Meanwhile, Brendan is sitting at his lookout spot and is taking weather readings. 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius), winds from the southwest at 5-10 miles per hour gusts up to 15 miles per hour. By this time, it is about 2 pm.

Elsewhere, a man by the name of Gary Cordes, was overseeing structure protection in Glen Ilah and Yarnell. He was driving around the neighborhoods trying to determine if it would be defensible or not for most of the night of June 29^th and the day of June 30th.

His conclusion, a resounding no. He told fire command if the fire hit Yarnell, they would lose it. There was nothing that anyone could do. It was not defensible at all.

As he drove through town and analyzed the situation, he selected three trigger points for when they would need to start evacuations. One was a mountain range about 1 mile north of town. If the fire hit here they would start evacuations and would give them an estimated hour to get everyone out of the town of 700.

The second trigger location was a shrine of St. Joseph on the north side of town. If the fire hit here, firefighters working in that area needed to get out.

The third trigger location was the actual edge of town. If the fire hit there, everyone had to get out immediately. Period.

But by 2 pm, county officials were already driving around giving pre evacuation notices to people.

That’s because at 2:02 pm, the fire behavior analyst at the Yarnell Hill Fire received an update from National Weather Service Flagstaff. Those clouds that Eric Marsh had seen building north of the fire earlier? They had made storms. They were sitting northeast of the fire and they were about to change the whole situation. The new weather report was coming in and the winds were going to do a 180 and speed up. An outflow boundary was going to hit the area and bring wind gusts of 35-45 miles per hour out of the northeast. The exact opposite direction of where they were currently blowing.

Now this was an issue for a lot of reasons but the big one was what I alluded to early. The fire had been burning in a crescent moon shape towards Peeples Valley. With the wind shifting, it was now going to begin running the opposite direction, straight towards Yarnell.

But that wasn’t the end. NWS Flagstaff dropped another weather update about an hour and a half later at 3:30 pm, that the outflow boundary would be coming more from the due north and would actually be 40 to 50 miles per hour.

This makes it even worse and puts the Granite Mountain Hotshots directly into the path of the oncoming fire.

Now after this weather announcement was made, the incident commander listens to radio traffic to confirm everyone has heard the latest weather update. Not hearing Eric Marsh reply, he contacted him directly to ask if he received the weather update. He says he did and the winds are starting to get squirrely up on the ridge and he was going to head down. The IC tells him to hunker down and be safe.

It was around 3:30 that the wind began to shift. It started to blow the wind quickly from the north north west. This began to push the fire directly at Yarnell. It hit Cordes’ first trigger point, that range about a mile west of town by 3:30. He requested an evacuation of the town at 3:40 pm. It was too late. It hit the second trigger point around 3:45 pm. It was in Yarnell by 3:55 pm. They got 15 minutes compared to the estimated hour he thought they’d have. The fire moved 1 mile in 15 minutes. It would be a sprint to get everyone out of town to safety.

From here, the timeline becomes a bit of a mess. So stick with me.

At 3:50 pm, an air attack crew lets Eric Marsh know that the fire is making a run at Yarnell and their crew carriers are in the way. He radios back that he has a plan for this and at about this same time, Brendan McDonough looks at the fire, takes a weather reading, looks at his crew on the ridge, then looks back at the fire. In that 2 or 3 minutes, the fire has moved all the way to his trigger point. He contacts his captain to tell him he’s moving because it has hit his trigger point. He gets picked up by Frisby who contacts the Granite Mountain crew on the radio to let them know the lookout is safe and they are moving him back and away. The captain and now acting superintendent, Jesse Steed replies that they have good eyes on the fire and are in the black. Meaning they are safe. When Frisby drops McDonough off at Marsh’s truck, McDonough can hear Marsh and Steed talking about what their options are to deal with the current fire situation. Whether they should stay in the black or come up with a plan to move.

At 3:54 pm, one crewmember from the Granite Mountain crew texts a family member “This fire is running at Yarnell”

At 4:04 pm, Wade Parker of the Granite Mountain crew texts a photo of the fire and says “This thing is running straight for yarnell. Just starting evac. You can see fire on left town on the right.”

A few minutes after this, Eric Marsh radios out “I want to pass on that we’re going to make our way to our escape route.” Frisby responds with “You guys are in the black right? Marsh replies with “Yeah, we’re picking our way through the black.” Then mentions going down to a two track road and a ranch for safety. Frisby then asks to confirm if it’s the road that Marsh saw him in the UTV on earlier. He replies yes. Based on this conversation, everyone believes the Granite Mountain Hotshots are in the black and safety.

By 4:00 pm, Air Support Module tagged as Bravo 33 coordinating tankers in the area, overhears a discussion about a crew and a safe zone and asks if they need to take a timeout to check on them. Operations Chief 1 replies, “No, they’re in a good place. It’s Granite Mountain and they’re safe.”

Immediately after this, Marsh announces over the radio “We’re going down our escape route to our safety zone.” Bravo 33 asks if everything is ok and Marsh replies “Yes, we’re just moving.”

At this point, everyone thinks Granite Mountain is heading through their escape route through the black. No one knows that they are not at all in the black anymore. They are heading down the two track alright, but they’ve exited the black and are moving south of the fire. But no one knows where or why.

Back in town, Cordes is at the designated safe zone in town, the Ranch House Restaurant. But he’s feeling antsy. He decides to leave the restaurant and head up in to Glen Ilah to see if anyone needs to be evacuated. It’s a good thing too. As the evacuation orders came out, one elderly couple, Bob and Ruth Hart, holding hands, wearing pajamas and slippers, and walking down a road with ash and embers swirling around them. Turns out, in the panic to leave, 94 year old Bob had turned their truck the wrong way and rolled it into a ditch. They’d managed to extract themselves but could only manage to start walking in a way they hoped would be safety until Cordes found them and brought them to the restaurant. He then turned right around to go back into what was rapidly becoming the mouth of the fire. There he found a mother and daughter who were reluctant to leave because their elderly neighbor wasn’t leaving. He flat out told them, “You are going to die if you do not exit the area. I cannot emphasize that enough.” Then he continued north further towards the fire just to make one last attempt to get everyone out. As he was driving along, out of the smoke emerged a man waving frantically at him. Opening the door the man hopped in and pleaded with him to go get his elderly cousin he had to leave on the side of the road further up. They drove through the smoke and eventually found her and carried her to the truck and to the restaurant.

Back on the hill, at around 4:37 pm, just after Bravo 33 flies a flight path to guide the VLAT in a fire retardant drop, Marsh radios over and says that’s exactly where they want it. Then, two minutes later, a very staticy voice comes over the radio and says “Breaking in on Arizona 16, Granite Mountain Hotshots, we are in front of the flaming front.” Then a few seconds later a wind filled message of “Air-to-ground 16, Granite Mountain, Air Attack, how do you read?”

It is very hard to understand what is happening and because at this very moment the fire is pushing into town, there is a lot of radio communication going on. Bravo 33 does not recognize what is being said and isn’t overly worried about Granite Mountain since everyone believed they were still safe in the black and doesn’t acknowledge the transmission. But they weren’t. And it was becoming dire.

Operations Chief 1 tries to reach Granite Mountain after hearing these messages and receives “Air Attack, Granite Mountain 7, how do you copy me?” back in reply. But there’s additional context surrounding this message. It’s on a frequency that everyone can hear. Other firefighters in the area can hear it and two things concern them.

The first thing is the background noises of the radio transmissions. They can clearly hear chainsaws in the background. If they are in the black, they should not be using chainsaws. They’d have no reason to. It’s all burnt.

The second thing is the crewmember sounds worried. Which also doesn’t make sense since they are supposed to be in the black.

At about 4:38 pm over the radio everyone hears the following sentence yelled “Air attack, Granite Mountain 7!”

Bravo 33 replies “Ok.. unit that’s hollering in the radio I need you to quit.”

Operations Chief 1 replies to Bravo 33 and says “Ok, Granite Mountain 7 sounds like they got some trouble, they’re trying to get you on the radio let’s go ahead and see what we got going on there.”

Just seconds later, Marsh radios in sounding incredibly calm, “Bravo 33, Division Alpha with Granite Mountain.”

Bravo 33, acknowledges him then Marsh replies again, sounding slightly more rushed but still eerily calm and says “Yeah, I’m here with Granite Mountain Hotshots, our escape route has been cut off. We are preparing a deployment site and we are burning out around ourselves in the brush and I’ll give you a call when we are under the shelters.”

Bravo 33 tells them they are going to send the VLAT over to them.

Then the last broadcast from the Granite Mountain Hotshots comes through.

A windy, static filled, yell of “Affirm!”

Bravo 33 would try 7 more times to reach the Granite Mountain Crew over the radio. They would receive no reply.

At about this same time, the smoke column would push to heights of over 38,000 feet. Combining with the outflow boundary this would form a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. Essentially a fire generated thunderstorm. It began to thunder and spritz rain. This little bit of rain mixed with the ash falling from the sky and obscured the vision of the pilot in Bravo 33. This severely hampered the ability of anyone to actually find the Hotshots.

The 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots would deploy their fire shelters.

In those last few moments they likely faced flames that were nearly 80 feet high with sustained temperatures of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit or about 1100 Celsius. At this point the fire was likely moving at speeds of 10-12 miles per hour. It got so hot in the canyon they were in that numerous granite boulders in the area got so hot they began to spall.

All 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots in that canyon would die together.

It would take until 6:10 pm for the smoke to clear and a helicopter to spot the shelter location near the Boulder Springs Ranch. A paramedic would be dropped by the helicopter and he would hike up to the location and confirm at 6:35 pm that there were no survivors.

When he arrived on scene he found the firefighters in various states of shelter deployment. It is utterly silent other than the occasional squawk of a somehow still functioning radio.

The crew made it to within 1800 feet of the ranch.

So let’s talk about the actual deployment situation and how the crew was found.

There are certain factors that you look for in a survivable deployment site. The biggest one is making sure that there is an absolute minimum amount of fuel around you in a good space. You want a significant buffer between where your shelter is deployed to where the nearest fuel is so you don’t have direct flame impingement on the shelter. In the situation the Granite Mountain Hotshots were in, the canyon had very few to no survivable deployment sites. They would have had to make their own essentially. But that presents its own problems because shelter deployment is last resort. First, they would have had to recognize that there were no other options for escape than deployment. Second, they would have had to try and find a place quickly to actually set up deployment. Third, they would have had to begin clearing the space. Any delay in any step leads to catastrophic results. In this case, the delay was in step one. Because they were in a canyon, they lost full sight of the fire and would not have known the fire was coming at them. From the time of the transmission when the sound of chainsaws can be heard in the background, to when the radio transmission came over that they were deploying shelters was approximately 2 minutes. That is not enough time to cut and clear an adequate deployment site. But they were desperate. You also want to make sure all of your chainsaws and gas cans are clear of the site for, you know, very obvious reasons.

Sheltering procedure calls for firefighters to deploy first followed by bosses, then captain, then superintendent. This is to make sure that the chain of command can confirm all their crew has successfully deployed.

Looking at the various states of deployment, that seems to have held true for the Granite Mountain Hotshots.

It takes a well trained wildland firefighter anywhere from 15-25 seconds to go from shelter in bag to fully deployed. The fire was moving at about 100 yards in 19 seconds. From the top of the ridge to the deployment site was about 350 yards. Similar from the opening of the canyon to the deployment site. They would have just about 1 minute to clear the space, toss their equipment, open the shelter, and deploy.

Now to give you all an idea the steps required to deploy your shelter.

Step one is to remove the shelter from the pack its in.

Step two is to shake out the shelter. You have to grab the shake handles and make sure it fully unfolds with the opening facing towards you.

Step three is to climb inside the shelter with your feet towards the flame front. This ensures that your exposed to the superheated gases for the least amount of time absolutely possible.

Step 4 is to push out the tops and sides the shelter. This provides you with a cushion of air around you that will help keep the shelter from getting too hot inside. You don’t want any folds or bunches because this can cause the shelter to not operate properly.

Step 5 is to lay as fully flat to the ground as possible and shove your face into the ground. This is to keep your airway as clear of superheated gases as possible as the flame front washes over you.

And remember, you have to do this as quick as humanely possible while a massive wildfire is bearing down on you.

So that’s how you do it, what are fire shelters made of?

They consist of two layers.

The outer layer is aluminum foil laminated to a silica cloth. The inner layer is aluminum foil laminated to a fiberglass cloth. The entire thing is sewn together using fiberglass and quartz thread. The floor of the shelter is a silica cloth with aluminum foil laminated to both sides. The fire shelter is designed to reflect as much radiant heat as possible. The problems arise when it is no longer radiant heat, it is convective heat from direct flame contact. This rapidly raises the temperature of the aluminum foil and causes the laminate holding the aluminum to the silica cloth to begin to break down which can rip off the aluminum foil. This allows for direct flame contact with the silica cloth which can rapidly heat up the interior of the shelter.

Now not all of the Granite Mountain Hotshots had time to fully deploy their shelters before the flame front hit them. But I’ll use one example of the intensity of the fire they faced. And remember, all of these numbers are consistent temperatures. It isn’t like it instantly hits this temperature and the material fails. It takes at least some time to cause this material to fail.

So silica cloth, the outer shell, becomes brittle at around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit or right around 1100 degrees Celsius. Quartz thread becomes brittle at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit also right around 1100 degrees Celsius. Fiberglass becomes brittle at around 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit or about 870 degrees Celsius. Aluminum foil melts at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit or about 650 degrees celsius. The firefighter’s clothing becomes charred at 824 degrees Fahrenheit or 440 degrees Celsius. And Human tenability is 300 degrees Fahrenheit or about 150 degrees Celsius.

The worst damaged shelter at the deployment site was damaged as the following. 100% of aluminum foil was completely consumed. The entirety of the silica cloth was brittle with numerous holes in it. The inner shell was essentially completely consumed, both aluminum foil and fiberglass. 95% of the aluminum foil on the floor was consumed and the silica cloth was brittle. The entirety of the back of the firefighter’s shirt was fully consumed. Just think about that. The floor, the part that is fully on the ground and should not be fully exposed to temperatures that high as it doesn’t have nearly as much surface area, was essentially fully consumed. That is incredible heat.

Meanwhile in Yarnell and Glen Ilah, the evacuation was a nightmare. Alerts were supposed to have gone out to let people know that they should be leaving but many didn’t receive it. A lot of individuals learned they needed to evacuate from neighbors or by calling 911 themselves. One woman learned because a random man in a truck stopped in her driveway and told her she had three minutes at most to get out. Fire behavior from the beginning of June 30^th was incredibly underestimated by essentially everyone on the fireground. Yarnell had a siren to use for evacuation alerts but it didn’t work. Residents complained about the noise during tests, someone stole it then returned it, and it finally broke after something chewed through the wires. The evacuation was a chaotic disorganized mess.

But in spite of all of that, the lack of evacuation alerts received, the lack of any real plan, no civilian deaths occurred in either Yarnell or Glen Ilah. Everyone made it out safely. Which is honestly a miracle.

The Yarnell Hill fire would end up burning approximately 8400 acres and destroy 129 structures in Glen Ilah, Yarnell, and Peeples Valley. It would burn until it was declared fully contained on July 10, 2013.

So the question is, what happened to the Granite Mountain Hotshots. How did they end up trapped? Why did they drop down into the box canyon?

The truth is, no one really knows. No one knows what their motivations were for moving south of the fire and dropping into the box canyon knowing they would lose sight of the fire. The only thing we have is speculation.

So first, the mechanics. As they were moving south towards their safe zone at Boulder Springs Ranch they traveled down the two track road on the top of the ridge until they reached the box canyon that lines up with the Boulder Springs Ranch off to their east. The canyon itself was more or less like a walkout basement. There was a ridge on the north side and a ridge on the south side that created the walls. As the hotshots reached this canyon, they could see the ranch in the distance. From the top of the ridge, it looks incredibly close. But in actuality, it is 3000 feet or 914 meters away through incredibly thick, incredibly dense chapparal. As soon as they stepped off that ridge into the canyon, they lose complete sight of the fire. They lost complete knowledge of the wind. The outflow boundary that would shift the wind due south arrived around 4:30 which would have been just minutes after the Hotshots descended into the canyon. This pushed the fire south at incredible speeds. It spread across the entrance to the canyon between the Hotshots and the ranch cutting that path off. They could not go back up the way they came because it was too steep. They couldn’t go up the north side because the fire had crested the ridge. The couldn’t go out the south side because they didn’t have time. Their only option was shelter deployment. They were trapped.

That’s the how. But what is the why? This has been speculated on significantly. Some believe that the issue was they were attached to a municipal fire department and as such were trained to value structure protection over anything else so they were trying to get back to Yarnell to help defend structures. I personally think this is inaccurate. I don’t think their motivations were structural protection at all.

It’s very likely they could hear the chaos of the evacuation of Yarnell and Glen Ilah. They knew that it was scattered and not going well. I think they made the decision to leave the black and get to town to help with the evacuation. To not sit in a safe spot and watch as a town burned to the ground knowing that people were in danger. That goes against the entire ethos of firefighters. Both wildland and structural.

As far as why they decided the box canyon was the way to go? I’m guessing that was simply the fastest route from point A to point B. It doesn’t explain why they didn’t account for the wind shift or the complete loss of sight of the fire. The only explanation I have for the failure to account for the wind shift is they believed the shift to the southeast had been the wind shift. That it simply hadn’t been an accurate forecast and they were safe. That’s about the only thing that makes sense.

I cannot explain the decision to lose sight of the fire. That one will never make sense to me. Especially for a seasoned superintendent. I can rationalize just about every single decision that was made, but that one. Will never understand. Losing sight of the fire is losing sight of the enemy. You never want to lose sight of the enemy.

In the aftermath of the fire, the industrial Commission of Arizona lay blame for the deaths on the Arizona Forestry Division saying they placed structure protection above the safety of firefighters.

In addition, many of the widows and families of the Hotshots struggled for years afterwards to receive benefits from the disaster. The city of Prescott argued the Hotshots were part time season employees and their families were not eligible to receive benefits. The city also essentially told city workers and residents that raises would have to wait and taxes would have to go up because of the deaths and how much it cost. Which in turn caused many of the widows to receive significant harassment with at least one widow permanently moving out of Prescott.

In the end, recommendations were made to have better operational control of wildfires and better radio control.

A monument was erected in the place where the Hotshots deployed. A circle surrounded by 19 cages with a memorial describing what occurred there. There is also a 7 mile Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial trail with a plaque dedicated to each man and his life that you can read along the walk.

Currently, worldwide attention is on Crans Montana, Switzerland after a horrific fire occurred there on January 1, 2026 that killed 40 teenagers inside a basement bar called The Constellation.

The cause of the fire is a familiar one.

Pyrotechnics indoors igniting acoustic foam on the ceiling.

One single exit from the crowded bar up the stairs.

Emergency exit locked to prevent people sneaking in.

No smoke detectors.

No fire extinguishers.

No protected routes of egress.

This is the third time this particular thing has happened in a calendar year.

Club Pulse Fire in March of 2025 in Kocani, North Macedonia.

Killed 63.

Birch by Romeo Lane Nightclub Fire in December of 2025 in Arpora, India.

Killed 25.

And as such, the conversation has centered around foam and fireworks indoors and how to ban them. Which is desperately needed. This should have been a lesson we learned already from numerous fires previously.

Station Nightclub Fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island in 2003 that killed 100.

Kiss Nightclub Fire in Santa Maria, Brazil in 2013 that killed 242.

Colectiv Nightclub Fire in Bucharest, Romania in 2015 that killed 64.

Cromanon Nightclub Fire in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2004 that killed 194.

All of these had the combination of pyrotechnics and acoustic foam with minimal or locked exits and were overcrowded.

The obvious answer to prevent these fires is to ban both flammable acoustic foam and indoor pyrotechnics.

Which, obviously, has been tried before and should continue to be tried. Flammable interior furnishings plus pyrotechnics is a bad combination.

But the problem is, the focus on flammable interior material and pyrotechnics is only half the battle because there are a number of nightclub fires that had nothing to do with either that are some of our worst fires in history.

Cocoanut Grove Nightclub Fire, no pyrotechnics, no acoustic foam, killed 492.

Club Cinq-Sept Fire, no pyrotechnics, no acoustic foam, killed 146.

Stardust Nightclub fire in Dublin, Ireland, no pyrotechnics, no acoustic foam, killed 48.

The issue with all three of those was the lack of exits or locked exits and the rapid loss of livable conditions.

None of these issues are new. We know that protected egress is important in fires. We know that the longer we can stave off a room reaching flashover the better for survivability. We know that limiting the fuel load of a room limits the chances of a room reaching flashover. And we know exactly how to stop it.

The answer is sprinklers.

In the aftermath of the Station Nightclub Fire, NIST ran several experiments testing the tenability of the interior of the club had it been properly sprinklered even with all of the acoustic foam still in the drummer’s alcove and the walls. In the non sprinklered testing, the drummers alcove and the area around it reached flashover conditions in approximately 90 seconds. In the sprinklered testing, flashover conditions were never reached and temperature and oxygen conditions remained at pre fire conditions 1.5 meters off the ground throughout the entire fire in the structure.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re looking at the nearest sprinkler to you and saying wait, that points down and gravity but the fire is on the ceiling. The fire will still be able to spread on the ceiling and won’t activate the sprinklers.

And you would be correct, sort of.

There are two big issues with this acoustic polyurethane foam.

1. It is easily ignitable and is thermally thin compared to most other material. This means that the temperature gradient through the material when subjected to heat is essentially non existent. It takes a relatively small amount of heat to begin to break down the material into flammable gases that actually burn.

2. As it burns, the material drips flaming globules onto other flammable material ie. paper/wood/clothes/hair spreading the fire and causing severe burns/death.

While the first one is not readily fixable by sprinklers, the second one is. You see, when a sprinkler that would be installed in a nightclub type occupancy is activated, the water flows out, hits the deflector, and spreads out in a circular pattern. It looks almost like a water based umbrella. Which is essentially what would occur. All of those globules falling down would be extinguished by the sprinklers as they fell from the ceiling. Those below would be protected by this water umbrella.

And the activation is not a worry at all. Light hazard occupancies, of which a nightclub would be, generally have sprinklers that are activated at 135 to 170 degrees Fahrenheit. That is easily achievable very early on in these fires without how hot and how quickly these fires develop.

And while the most common cause of death in fires is smoke inhalation, much of the superheated gases and smoke created by these fires would be kept to a relative minimum within a few feet of the ground, again by the water umbrella.

The reason this works is in order for something to burn, it has to be broken down by heat from the solid or liquid state to a gaseous state. The higher that heat of vaporization, the more heat can be absorbed into whatever material has the heat directed towards it. Water has an incredibly high heat of vaporization somewhere around 2200 kj/kg at 100 degrees Celsius. That means you need 2200 kilojoules of heat to evaporate a kilogram of water. That is a lot of heat. The peak heat release rate of the acoustic foam used at the Station Nightclub Fire was around 1100 kilowatts per second which is about 1100 kilojoules. This means that water has more than enough specific heat capacity to absorb the heat produced by burning acoustic foam.

If the material that the acoustic foam is mounted to is anything other than wood, then the fire ends there. Acoustic foam burns hot but for a very short time period. The vast majority of the heat produced in these fires is from things other than the foam. If it is attached to drywall or anything else that is not flammable, the fire ends there.

But it isn’t just the acoustic foam based fires we can avoid. This works for any nightclub fire.

Cocoanut Grove would have been severely hampered in spread by sprinklers. Stardust nightclub, Iroquois Theater, Grenfell Tower, the recent Hong Kong high rise fire, the list goes on and on.

In the vast majority of fires inside nightclubs, even with locked or obstructed exits, the majority, if not all, of the people inside the building would have made it out, wet, but alive in each of these situations.

The problem is sprinkler installation is expensive and is another thing for business owners to maintain. A lot of whom have fears of sprinkler pipes busting causing water damage.

And we would have to defeat the “It won’t happen to me” mentality which is just rampant among just about everyone.

But the unquestioned key to eliminating mass casualty fires is without a doubt, sprinklers.

First, we see the map below of tomorrow’s projected wave heights.

This map shows waves in the southern portion of Lake Superior upwards of 20+ feet high with waves on Lake Michigan between 17-19 feet high around 8 am central time December 29, 2025.

But why are the waves expected to be so high?

Well, there’s expected to be a low pressure system in the area. And you can tell exactly where that low pressure system will be centered simply by looking at this map.

Each arrow is showing the direction of the winds. With the knowledge that winds travel counter clockwise around low pressure systems in the northern hemisphere, we could pretty confidently put this surface low in the general neighborhood of Alpena, Michigan.

And looking at the HRRR model for the same time tomorrow morning, we can see indeed it is hovering right over Alpena.

An MSLP(Mean Sea Level Pressure) of 979 mb in a mid latitude cyclone is pretty impressive, which is why its projecting the wave heights to be so large. The model is putting 45 knot winds over both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.

Now the reason for this high windspeed is because of the large pressure gradient surrounding this storm system. If we zoom in on the low pressure system, you can see all the solid black lines surrounding it. This solid black line is the next level of pressure. Every solid line adds 2 mb of pressure. The closer together these lines are, the larger the gradient. Since air naturally wants to reach equilibrium by moving air from an area of higher pressure to lower pressure, this large gradient is going to make the air move faster.

But how does this compare to the Edmund Fitzgerald storm track? Well, it doesn’t.

The Fitz storm moved directly over Lake Superior and when the Fitz sunk it had moved into Canada subjecting the Fitz and the Arthur M. Anderson to west winds. You can see a weather map from the morning the Fitz sank below.

But that doesn’t mean this storm doesn’t have a historical reference point. It’s just much older of a reference.

The storm we’re observing tomorrow is very, very close to the historical track of the first storm of the legendary White Hurricane of 1913 in which 12 ships on the Great Lakes foundered with the loss of all crew members. The US Weather Bureau map of November 8, 1913 is below.

Almost the exact same track and very similar isobar locations for the storm on the west side of the low for both tomorrow’s storm and the November 8, 1913 storm.

Luckily, with modern meteorology and safety standards, we are very very unlikely to see any great lakes ship disasters tomorrow like we did with the White Hurricane or even the Fitz storm.

And as an added bonus, you can see the wave heights and wind change as the storm moves over the Great Lakes below.

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So what gives? Why are we paying these meteorologists to be wrong all the time?!

Turns out, snow is hard to predict, and you’re about to get a crash course into why.

The first thing you have to understand is all precipitation starts as snow. All of it, even in the middle of summer.

As an example, here’s an image showing the temperature of the tops of the clouds from hurricane Melissa this year.

The tops of those clouds are registering at -70 to -90 Celsius. Obviously, this is a hurricane. It doesn’t snow in a hurricane. But those cloud top temperatures are well below zero, meaning everything in these clouds are frozen. As they fall, they melt into the raindrops we see at the surface. Makes sense.

Now that’s all great and good but what does this have to do with snowfall totals?

Well all of it comes back to air temperature and where you’re at in relation to the surface low and warm and cold fronts.

Those snowflakes at the tops of hurricanes melt on their way down.

Snowflakes when it snows do not, obviously.

Problem is, only 1 or 2 degrees can be the difference between snow, sleet, freezing rain, or just straight up rain. And where and how the air moves with a storm system can make or break a snowfall forecast.

Let’s look at a standard(ish) December storm in the United States that produced all different types of precipitation.

If you’re a weather nerd, this storm may look incredibly familiar and I’ll tell you why in a minute.

First, let’s look at the national radar composite.

Looking at this radar map, you’d think the entire thing was rain.

But it wasn’t!

Let’s look at the breakdown of the location of the surface low and the warm and cold fronts at the time of this screenshot.

The red L is the location of the surface low for this storm.

The red line with half circles is the warm front.

The blue line with blue triangles is the cold front.

Just about everything north of Milwaukee produced a large amount of snow. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the upper peninsula of Michigan received around 8 to 18 inches of snow. Everything south of there was rain.

And that random purple circled storm and the reason you would know it if you’re a weather nerd? That was the Mayfield, Kentucky EF4 supercell. This storm had everything.

So why did this storm have multiple violent, long tracked tornadoes on one end and a massive amount of snow on the other? It’s all about air temperature and the movement of those air masses. In the image below I’ve highlighted where different temperatures of air are.

The giant blue circled area is cold air, the giant red circled area is warm air. Air moves in a counter clockwise pattern around a low pressure system in the northern hemisphere which on the southeast side of this low brings up warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and cold, dry air down from Canada. You can vaguely see this in the map of surface temperatures below. I’ve highlighted the general-ish areas of the fronts at the time.

Cold fronts bring cold air into an area of warm air and force the warm moist air upward quickly to create towering thunderstorms. Warm fronts bring warm moist air towards and area of cold dry air and are slowly lifted up over the top of that cold air.

So, if you’re south of the warm front and east of the cold front, you’re probably going to end up with less snow. That’s just how a mid latitude cyclone works.

BUT, what if you’re on the north side of the warm front and you still end up with less snow? Why does that happen? Well for the answer to that we need to look at air soundings. Twice a day in most NWS offices, a weather balloon is released to take measurements of the atmosphere and give us an overall profile of what the atmosphere above that location is like at that very moment. The data produced by those weather balloons as well as data collected from ships and planes provide the data used to initialize weather models to allow us to try to forecast the weather. We’re going to look at a current air sounding from just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota for a storm that is supposed to happen tomorrow December 28, 2025. This is from the GFS model (We will see if it actually verifies after the storm happens.). This particular air sounding is going to be from an area that is expecting a large amount of snow, around 6 inches. We will then look at an area that is expecting less snow, and even sleet or freezing rain.

The parts of this we most care about are the red line, the green line, and that bit of yellow you can kind of see on the red line. Red line is the temperature profile, green line is the dew point profile, yellow line is the dendritic growth zone.

The closer these are together and touching, the more likely precipitation of some kind is happening. The red and green lines touching indicate that net condensation is occurring. But what type of precipitation is happening has to be figured out by the temperature of the air.

So first things first is we have to recognize a couple things from this sounding.

Across the bottom is the actual temperature in degrees Celsius. So our dew point and air temperature at the surface are right around -5 degrees Celsius. And then the actual plot of the temperature angles to the right. It is not up and down. I’ve annotated below.

What that means is the peak temperature the air reaches above Minneapolis is about -5 degrees Celsius or 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Well below freezing. Meaning that any precipitation falling at this time is most likely snow.

The other part of this that is important is the location and temperature of that yellow line, otherwise known as the dendritic growth zone. This is where snow forms and grows and the temperature of that specific zone changes what type of snowflakes actually fall to the ground. Each different type of snowflake changes the amount of snow that builds up.

You can see the general temperatures that snowflakes of each type are made below.

Breaking down this chart a little bit easier into a table we can determine what type of snow may fall according to this sounding. Basically, the colder it is and the more available moisture, the larger and more complex the snowflake. The larger and more complex the snowflake, the more snow accumulation on the ground.

In this particular case, the dendritic growth zone is located between -10 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit with a large amount of available water vapor meaning it is very possible our larger dendrite snowflakes will form to allow for much higher accumulation rates. The larger the snowflake, the higher the snow to liquid ratio.

So this is the standard snow sounding. But what would make the snow totals lower than expected? Let’s look at the below sounding from northern Wisconsin showing an area of what is likely going to be sleet.

Looking at this, the surface temperature is below freezing, the dendritic growth zone is from about -20 to -10 but has a lower amount of available moisture so would likely be producing plate snowflakes.

HOWEVER, this would likely end up falling as sleet. Why is that?

This little section right here kills the snow.

The temperature profile goes ever so slightly above freezing which will melt the snow into rain, before dropping back below freezing. But because there is a large distance ~1 kilometer to of below freezing temperature air to fall through, it is refreezing and hitting the ground as sleet. Obviously, any amount of precipitation that falls as sleet will lower your snow totals.

But what happens if that layer at the ground that is below freezing is even smaller? You get freezing rain as shown in the below sounding.

The temperature profile goes well above freezing, then drops to below freezing right before ground level. This cools the raindrop but doesn’t quite freeze it. Since the ground, trees, cars, etc. on the ground are below freezing, when the cooled rain hits it it instantly freezes. However much of your snow falls as freezing rain will also lower your snowfall total.

And then finally, we have the dreaded dry air.

In order for the snow to actually reach the ground, the air at and below where it forms has to be saturated enough with water vapor to actual condense and fall to the ground. Looking at the below sounding, you’ll note that the green and red lines are far apart.

This indicates dry air high in the atmosphere. In order for the snow to actually fall vs evaporate, the green line and red line need to be much, much closer. A dry air pocket like this can really chew into snowfall totals. This particular sounding has the two lines close at the ground level, but that’s only helpful if the location where the snow is forming is already saturated. It will take time for the upper portion to actually become saturated and fall as snow. This cuts into your snowfall total.

So if you’re expecting a certain snowfall amount and don’t receive that amount, now you know the most common reasons that it didn’t quite reach the amount expected.

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Now the investigation into the fire is ongoing but we do have video of the ignition of the fire before it spread.

As you can see from the above video, pyrotechnics are set off behind the band and hit the ceiling for 24 seconds continuously. Based on the look of the ceiling, it appears to be some kind of tropical themed wood covering that does not appear to be well attached. If you look directly over the dancer’s head, you can see some of it falling away from the ceiling.

Further with the video, we can see the fire beginning to develop.

The first thing to notice in this clip is the spread of the fire early on as below.

It looks more like a glow than actual flames. It appears like the space between this decorative covering and the actual ceiling is what is burning. My assumption is there was some kind of acoustic foam in that area which contributed to the very rapid spread observed.

Another piece of supporting evidence of some type of foam involved is in the below video.

Watch as the fire begins to burn behind them, you can see the rapidly dripping flaming embers. The speed at which they are dropping and maintaining flaming combustion indicates some type of burning liquid as solid wood particle embers don’t often produce this kind of debris.

We likely have a combination of multiple flammable materials contributing to the spread of the fire. Which often leads to deaths, especially in nightclubs. But its never the deciding factor. Fast flame spread is bad, but lack of exits always makes these worse.

And boy was this one bad.

There were two exits from the Birch By Romeo nightclub, one on either end. But its how these were set up that makes it so much worse.

That oddly shaped building in the center is the nightclub. Those two long straight lines on either side are the bridges that served as the exits.

Yes.

Bridges.

The nightclub was built in the middle of a lagoon.

And it shouldn’t have even been there, it had been shut down and reopened and shut down several times prior to the fire, did not follow applicable fire safety standards, and just was generally not a safe place.

The actual bridges across the lagoon looked like this.

Now, there were at least 100 people inside the club at the time of the fire.

So not only do people have to evacuate across this narrow bridge, firefighting crews have to get passed evacuees and get equipment across this 90 foot narrow bridge to even begin fighting the fire. It is an utter logistical nightmare for fire crews.

But once again, a nightclub fire is started and spread by pyrotechnics indoors and flammable decorations with minimal exits. The second one this year after the nightclub fire in North Macedonia in March.

One day, the world will learn from the history of nightclub fires. Hopefully soon.

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Winecoff Hotel Fire

On December 7, 1947, a fire began on the third floor of the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Advertised as “absolutely fireproof”, the fire quickly spread from the third floor to the 15th floor, fueled by flammable furnishings of burlap covered in mineral spirits and paint. In addition, the unprotected stairway allowed easy fire spread from floor to floor. In total, 119 people died in the fire making it the deadliest hotel fire in American History.

• December 8

Church of the Society of Jesus Fire

On December 8, 1863, a fire broke out in the Church of the Society of Jesus in Santiago, Chile. The church was packed full of people celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and as such the entire church was lit with thousands of candles, oil lamps, and decorated with hundreds of strands of garland made of dried flowers and paper. During the service, a fire began near the altar for the church. An individual attempted to stamp it out but it quickly spread up the altar and on to the roof. Prior to the service, all side doors had been closed, leaving only the main doors to the church available for the nearly 3000 people inside the church to escape. In the incipient moments of the fire, several of the priests and the men in the church were able to escape into the sacristy where the priests began to save items in the church. The women in the church, separated by a metal fence, attempted to scramble to the exit but a crowd crush quickly formed. In addition, because of the sheer amount of people inside the building, many stumbled and fell on those who had knelt on the ground to pray. And on top of that, many of the women were wearing hoop skirts which became tangled in the mass of people. In total, somewhere between 2 thousand to 3 thousand people died in the fire, making it one of the deadliest single building fires in history.

• December 9

Cross Mountain Mine Disaster

On December 9, 1911, an explosion occurred in the Cross Mountain Mine near Briceville, Tennessee. A portion of the ceiling in the mine collapsed near the entrance. This collapsed released a large amount of methane gas unbeknownst to the miners. They approached with their open flame oil lamp head lamps and it ignited the methane cloud causing the explosion. This explosion trapped 89 miners inside the mine itself. 84 of the 89 miners would die trapped inside the mine, including 14 sets of brothers. The 5 rescued miners managed to seal themselves in an area that still had good quality air and despite suffering burns managed to survive. The rescue attempt of the miners was the first time canaries were used in cages to detect dangerous levels of gases in mine rescues.

• December 10

Mayfield Tornado

On December 10, 2021, a large EF4 tornado touched down just over the Tennessee-Kentucky border at 8:54 pm. This large tornado began traveling northeast towards the town of Mayfield, Kentucky where it reached high end EF4 strength and caused numerous brick structures in town to collapse including a factory where several dozen people were ordered to stay or risk losing their jobs during the multiple tornado warnings. In total, 22 people were killed in Mayfield, Kentucky by the tornado. The tornado would continue on through Kentucky, remaining on the ground for almost 3 hours and 165 miles, killing 57 people and destroying over 4000 structures. It was the deadliest American tornado since the 2011 Joplin tornado. It reached maximum estimated wind speeds of 190 miles per hour and lofted debris over 30,000 feet into the air.

• December 11

Interstate 75 Fog Disaster

On December 11, 1990, a sudden fog appeared near Calhoun, Tennessee across interstate 75. Fog suddenly appeared around 9 am and a semi traveling through the area in the southbound lanes slowed down due to a lack of vision. A second semi rear ended the first semi. Both drivers climbed from their vehicles. A car hit the second semi and then a semi hit the car which caused the car to burst into flames and kill those in the car. While this was happening, a car in the northbound lanes slowed down due to the accidents and a lack of vision and was struck by a second car. These two cars were hit by a third truck and a chain reaction of collisions followed. In total, 99 vehicles were involved in the pileup with 12 deaths and 42 injuries. The fog was reportedly so thick that one person stood underneath an overpass in the area and could not see it above him. A police officer that responded to the scene could hear the accidents happening but could not see any of it occurring despite it being less than 40 feet from him. The cause of the sudden appearance of the fog has been argued but was never conclusively determined. The state of Tennessee implemented an early warning detection for fog in that area that drops the speed limit or closes the interstate depending on the level of fog observed.

• December 12

Clapham Junction Rail Crash

On December 12, 1988 at 8:10 am, a passenger train crashed into the rear of another passenger train near Clapham Junction Railway Station in London, England. A few seconds later, a third train, traveling the opposite direction, collided with the debris scattered by the collision of the first two trains. When electrical work had been done on the signals for the area, the old wire had not been removed. Basically when the train passed the signal, the wheels of the train would interrupt the current to the signaling box turning the light red indicating to subsequent trains that they should stop. But because the old wiring in the signal box had not been removed and was still connected to the fuse, it jostled around and was able to come into contact with the metal of where it had been previously attached. This meant that there was a continuous flow of the circuit and the light would never change to indicate a train ahead. So when the first train passed and witnessed the light acting strangely, they stopped to notify control that it wasn’t working properly. But the signal never changed to red on that section of track and the train behind his crashed into them. The crash killed 35 people and injured nearly 500. In the aftermath a large number of changes were made to railroad working conditions in England including the amount of hours an employee could work. The employee who had changed the wiring had worked for 91 straight days.

November 2013 Tornado Outbreak

On November 17, 2013, a day 1 high risk outlook was issued for western Illinois and essentially all of Indiana. The first tornado of the outbreak touched down around 11 am near Peoria, Illinois and would produce EF2 damage. The very next tornado, just five minutes later and only about 8 miles away, would be the strongest tornado of the outbreak. It was on the ground for almost an hour and traveled 46 miles producing EF4 damage in numerous locations throughout its path. Three fatalities were recorded in this tornado. This tornado obliterated homes throughout Washington, Illinois and caused upwards of $935 million worth of damage. The damage from this tornado was so extensive the National Severe Storms Laboratory stated that it was an EF5 candidate that was not rated as such. It was the first of two EF4 tornadoes that would be produced in this outbreak that would have 77 total tornadoes across Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. In total there were 8 fatalities and well over $1 billion worth of damage.

• November 18

King’s Cross Station Fire

On November 18, 1987, at around 7:30 pm, a fire broke out on the wooden escalator leading to the Picadilly Line of the station. An unknown individual dropped a used match on the wooden escalator. It fell between the slats and ignited a years long pileup of debris and grease on the running track of the escalator. As the fire grew, it began to burn up along the angle of the escalator, igniting the stairs themselves. Because the escalator was still running, it spread the fire further up the escalator shaft. Due to a previously unknown, fire effect known as the trench effect, the fire began to spread up the escalator hugging along the steps of the escalator. Essentially, when a fire travels along an angled path, the fire will hug along the incline due to the pressure differences in the flame path. This allowed the fire to essentially preheat the entirety of the escalator before erupting out into the ticket office. The ticket office reached flashover almost instantly killing 31 individuals. It is the second deadliest peace time disaster in London Underground history.

• November 19

San Juanico Disaster

On November 19, 1984, a facility consisting of 54 LPG storage tanks exploded consistently over and over again for approximately 4 hours in San Juanico, Mexico. The facility itself contained 54 LPG storage tanks that were fed by multiple pipelines that had recently had their pressure supply amount increased. Immediately next door to the tank farm was another LPG storage facility and then next door to that was a bottling facility for LPG. Basically, the area contained a little more than one third of the LPG used for the entire city of Mexico City. And then in addition to that, the actual houses for San Juanico started approximately 130 meters from the tanks. At around 5:30 am, the storage plant was being filled from a different facility approximately 400 kilometers away. Sometime around 5:40 am, the control room operators in the pumping station noticed a distinct decrease in pressure as the tanks were being filled. For approximately 10 minutes, LPG was able to leak freely into the area. This gas cloud eventually spread to the area of a waste gas flare and ignited. This caused a vapor cloud explosion, essentially a massive fireball that expanded rapidly in the very confined space of the facility. About a minute and a half later, one of the larger LPG vessels ruptured in a massive BLEVE. The explosion was observed by a pilot landing a plane in Mexico City and told air traffic control he thought a nuclear bomb had been dropped. This explosion caused more leaks and more BLEVEs. This created an even bigger fire. These fires continued to ignite more and more tanks which then became projectiles as they failed. So many fires were burning at one time that it is estimated the threshold of pain for radiant heat (2.5 kW/m^2) was reached in a 1.15 mile circle around the plant. Essentially, if you were within a mile of the facility, you would be in pain by one minute. In the end, at least 500 people died including 5 plant workers with over 5000 severe injuries. Other sources place the death toll as high as 2000 people. This higher figure is likely more accurate as many of those who died in the disaster were completely incinerated by the extreme temperatures with some sources stating only 2% of recognizable human remains were recovered. The cause of the pipe failure was determined by the Mexican Petroleum Institute to be a disgruntled employee that sabotaged the plant. This more or less removed the company which owned the tanks, Pemex, from liability. Which is convenient for them because numerous other international entities determined the cause of the failure was a complete lack of relief valves on the pipelines and the pressure in the pipelines being higher than designed which caused an overpressure in the tanks. In addition to that, the pipelines were not isolated which meant that LPG continued to pump into the facility for nearly an hour after the initial explosions. This disaster brought about a ton of changes in regards to facility change management, safety management, and storage requirements.

• November 20

Garley Building Fire

On November 20, 1996, a fire broke out in the 16 story Garley Building in Hong Kong. The building was being renovated to install new elevators. Two of the elevators had been removed from the elevator shaft and replaced with bamboo scaffolding. A fire began on the second floor of the building from welding material. The work in the building had set off smoke detectors so many times that they were wrapped in plastic and essentially ignored. The fire quickly entered the bamboo filled elevator shaft and spread upwards. The superheated gases reached the 13th through the 15th floor and quickly ignited fires on those floors from the stack effect. On the 15th floor, the fire rated doors had been replaced with glass doors which quickly shattered from heat. Those on the 15th floor rushed to open windows for fresh air which provided fresh oxygen to the fire and caused it to reach flashover much more quickly. In total, 41 people died and over 80 were injured making it one of the deadliest disasters in Hong Kong history.

Veterans Day Weekend Tornado Outbreak

From November 9 to November 11, 2002, a large tornado outbreak occurred across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. The storm system produced 76 tornadoes in total with the vast majority of them occurring during the daylight and evening hours of November 10. The largest and strongest tornado of the outbreak was located in Van Wert and Roselms, Ohio. The tornado touched down southwest of Van Wert and began moving northeast quickly intensifying to F4 status. It killed one man inside a home as he was protecting his wife. The tornado then continued on and hit the Twin Cinemas in Van Wert, tossing three vehicles in to the cinema seats were 60 people had just been sitting. One man died in one of the vehicles that landed in the theater. It then continued northeast and struck the small town of Roselms. After the tornado passed through, only one structure was still standing in Roselms. Not much was rebuilt after the tornado. The entire outbreak killed 36 people and caused 1.2 billion dollars worth of damage.

• November 11

Kaprun Disaster

On November 11, 2000 in Kaprun, Austria, a funicular designed to carry skiers from Kaprun to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier caught on fire killing 155 people. At 9:00 am 161 people and the conductor boarded the funicular to travel upwards to the glacier. About 8 minutes into the journey, the train unexpectedly stopped nearly 600 meters into the tunnel going through the mountain. A fire was reported by the conductor a few minutes later and he tried to open the doors but they failed. Power was then lost to the entire ski resort as the fire caused a power cable beside the track to fail. The passengers inside the train began to attempt to break windows but struggled to do so as they were shatter resistant. 12 passengers in the rear of the train managed to break one with a ski pole and escaped down the tunnel. A large portion of the deaths occurred inside the train itself as they were unable to escape. Eventually the conductor was able to force open the doors of the funicular but those who escaped went further up the tunnel instead of down. The draw of the fire burning the train pushed smoke and flames up the tunnel and everyone in the tunnel above fire level died including the conductor and sole passenger of the downbound funicular train. In addition, three people in the ski center at the top of the tunnel died of smoke inhalation. The fire was caused by the failure of a space heater in the conductors compartment. In the aftermath, multiple people were charged with criminal negligence but all were acquitted.

• November 12

1970 Bhola Cyclone

On November 12, 1970 a category 4 cyclone made landfall during the evening hours of November 12 in what at the time was called East Pakistan but is now the country of Bangladesh. At landfall, the central pressure was 960 millibars and had sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. It became the deadliest cyclone in history with an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 deaths in the coastal areas of East Pakistan primarily due to storm surge flooding. The people living in these areas received essentially no warning. The Indian government did not share meteorological information with East Pakistan because it was a Pakistan territory and the two countries had increasing friction at the time. Pakistan was also delayed in releasing information to the territory only issuing warnings during the day on November 12.

• November 13

MV Prestige Oil Spill

On November 13, 2002, a winter storm caused the failure of the hull of the MV Prestige carrying 77,000 tons of crude oil and the ship began to take on water. The captain called for help from Spain and they evacuated the crew. The ship then began to drift towards the Spanish coast so they lowered a different captain aboard the ship as it continued to take on water. The ship at this point had a 15 meter wide hole in the side of it and was leaking oil. The original captain, Apostolos Mangouras, was told by the new captain to restart the engines and take the ship out to sea. Mangouras refused saying it should be brought into port to contain the leaking oil. Mangouras only gave up the argument when the Spanish Navy literally threatened him. Then the French Navy threatened him he headed into Portuguese waters. The Portuguese also sent out their navy and forced them further off shore. After 6 days of taking on water and leaking oil, the MV Prestige finally split in half and sank on November 19, 2002. This released millions of gallons of oil into the ocean causing a massive oil slick. The investigation into the ship revealed a murky ownership and numerous complaints from captains that the ship was not seaworthy when she left St. Petersburg, Russia prior to the disaster. The captain, Apostolos Mangouras was arrested by Spanish authorities and charged with and convicted of Recklessness resulting in catastrophic environmental damage.

• November 15

Louisiana Explosion

On November 15, 1849, the steamboat the Louisiana exploded as she backed out of the New Orleans dock. Suddenly and without warning, the boilers aboard the Louisiana exploded sending large pieces of the ship flying through the air. The ship exploded between two other steamboats causing damage to those as well. In total, over 150 people died from the explosion making it one of the deadliest in Louisiana history.

Iberia Flight 062

On November 4, 1967, Iberia Flight 062 was descending into London Heathrow Airport in London, England with 30 passengers and 7 crew members aboard. The flight had been cleared to descend from flight level 11000 feet to flight level 6000 feet. For completely unknown reasons, the flight continued to descend well below 6000 feet. At around 10:00 pm, the flight clipped the tops of trees, rolled across a meadow killing a large number of sheep, before exploding in a massive fireball. All 37 people aboard the flight were killed in the crash. The cockpit transcript indicated nothing unusual prior to the collision. There was also no indication or evidence of any issues with the actual plane itself. The only theory is the flight crew misread the altimeter and were confused at what height they were at in the dark.

• November 5

Byford Dolphin Accident

On November 5, 1983, 4 men were diving in a diving bell off of the Byford Dolphin which was a drilling platform in the Norwegian section of the North Sea. At 4 am, they were pulled up to begin decompression in two separate decompression chambers. The ambient atmospheric pressure outside the chamber was 1 atmosphere. The pressure inside the decompression chambers and diving bell was 9 atmospheres. The procedure for disconnecting the diving bell was as follows:

1. Close the diving bell door

2. Increase the pressure in the diving bell to seal the door properly

3. Close the door to the chamber and the section that was called the trunk, essentially a hallway to the diving bell

4. Depressurize the trunk and diving bell to 1 atmosphere

5. Release the clamp between the diving bell and the trunk to release the diving bell

The first step and the second step were done successfully. One of the divers inside the chamber was in the process of closing the door to the chamber to the trunk when for unknown reasons, one of the tenders on the outside released the clamp from the diving bell to the trunk prematurely. This rapidly dropped the pressure on the interior of both the decompression chamber and the trunk from 9 atmospheres to 1 atmosphere almost instantaneously. This rapid decompression pulled the diver attempting to close the door through a gap 24 inches long ripping all of his organs out of his body and launching them 30 feet across the deck of the Byford Dolphin. The tender was killed by the rapid separation of the diving bell from the trunk. The other three divers inside the decompression chamber were killed instantly when their blood essentially rapidly boiled as the gas that had dissolved in the divers blood at higher pressure instantaneously was separated into bubbles. This also separated a layer of fat in the blood. After the disaster, a number of safety features, that should have already been introduced, were introduced. Primarily a safety feature that prevented anyone from opening the clamp when the interior was still pressurized. In addition, an actual communication system was set up that wasn’t just a megaphone they had to yell into. And they added pressure gauges to the outside of the chambers. All of which feel like they should have already been included.

• November 6

Ufton Nervet Rail Crash

On November 6, 2004, the London Paddington to Plymouth train left Reading Terminal Station in Reading, England at approximately 6:00 pm. They were traveling at approximately 100 miles per hour, the speed limit for that section of track, when they approached the rail crossing for Ufton Lane, a small road that had half barriers on it. As the train was approaching, a man in a Mazda negotiated his vehicle in between the barriers then parked his vehicle in the way of the oncoming train. The driver of the train managed to activate the emergency brakes 2-3 seconds before impact but it was too late. The engine block of the car became wedged underneath the front of the train and derailed the entire train after traveling for some distance down the line. In total, 7 people were killed in the crash, the driver of the car, the train driver, and 5 passengers all of whom were ejected from the train. An investigation into the disaster revealed there was nothing wrong with the train or the operation of it, the sole responsibility lay in the hands of the driver of the Mazda who was in a perilous mental state.

• November 7

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

On November 7, 1940 the Tacoma Narrows Bridge began to sway wildly back and forth in the midst of a 40 mile per hour windstorm. The bridge stretched across the Tacoma Narrows Strait of the Puget Sound just outside of Tacoma, Washington. The swaying started at around 9:45 am with two vehicles on the bridge, a delivery truck with two employees, and a Buick with one man and a three legged cocker spaniel by the name of Tubby. The two men in the truck got out and escaped to the edge of the bridge. The man in the car got out after hearing the concrete cracking around him but almost as soon as he exited the car it began to slide back and forth on the bridge. He attempted to return to the car to get Tubby but was nearly thrown off the bridge. Another individual attempted to reach the car but was forced back as the bridge started to fall apart. At 11:00 am, the bridge collapsed into the Tacoma Narrows Strait sadly killing Tubby. The design of the bridge caused the bridge to begin to buck up and down wildly with the right corner of one side rising while the left corner of the other side dropped down. Winds were unable to blow through the bridge spans, instead being forced above and below the bridge. This up and down movement caused several cables to fail which transferred load to different cables, which also failed leading to the collapse. The remains of the bridge were left in the Narrows to make an artificial reef.

• November 9

White Hurricane of 1913

On November 9, 1913, the storm that would become known as the White Hurricane reached full strength over the Great Lakes in the Northern United States and Canada. The storm was the combination of two different low pressure systems, one originating in Colorado and one originating in Alberta. The low pressure system from Alberta moved over the eastern portion of Lake Superior on the 8th causing winds from the north. The warmth from the Great Lakes combined with warm air moving up from the Gulf of Mexico allowed the low to continue to deepen and produced winds that were sustained around 70-80 miles per hour causing waves nearly 50 feet in height at their maximum and an average wave height of 30 feet. By November 9th, the low had moved northeast of Lake Huron. But at the same time, the other low system, the one that had originated in Colorado, moved north then northwestward centering itself over Lake Erie. What this meant was the winds on the west side of the low would be blowing from the north the entire length of Lake Huron. Because there is a lack of friction over the open waters of the lakes, wind is able to continue to build with waves growing increasingly in size with nothing to break them up. Freighters on Lake Huron made a desperate attempt to reach locations of safety but many were unsuccessful. In total, 12 ships on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Erie were lost with all hands. Several other ships became trapped throughout the lakes. In total, well over 200 mariners were lost to the storm making it the deadliest single disaster in Great Lakes history.

Donora Death Smog

On October 27, 1948 a temperature inversion settled in over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania. A temperature inversion is when warm air settles in over a mass of cold air and remains in place due to a lack of mechanical mixing by air flow. Since the earth’s atmosphere is normally warmed from below by the surface being warmed by the earth then the surface heating up the lower portions of the atmosphere. This then causes mixing of the lower layers as the warmer air at the surface rises and mixes with upper layers of the atmosphere. But for a number of reasons, this may not happen and a warm air mass can move over a colder air mass. This will capture any pollutants along the ground and also causes fog. When this inversion moved in, the Donora Zinc Works and American Steel & Wire plant were producing material that created high levels of hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide. Because of the inversion, the pollutants created by the plant just… never left. They floated around and mixed with the fog. And it just sat there. By October 28, the residents of Donora began to cough and wheeze amongst the thick yellow fog. It spread everywhere throughout town, even getting inside could not escape the horrible fog. By October 29, no one could drive in town anymore the fog was so thick. Doctors made house calls on foot with a flashlight to guide their way through the town. The Donora Fire Chief and Assistant Fire Chief John Volk and Russell Davis carried air packs through town to give fresh oxygen to those suffering the most. The only thing keeping them going from the 29th until rain finally dispersed the fog was a single shot of whiskey when they returned to the fire station. Rain finally fell over Donora on October 31st. During the smog itself, 20 people in town died and just about half the population of 14,000 became ill with respiratory issues. The death rate would remain higher than elsewhere for decades after the disaster. Throughout the entire incident, the plants did not shut down.

• October 28

Baku Metro Fire

On October 28, 1995, a subway train consisting of five passenger cars was traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan with at least 600 people in total. As they were moving through the tunnel, a fire began in the rear of the fourth car due to an electrical fault. This electrical fault caused the train to come to a full stop about 200 meters (600 or so feet) from the subway station. Passengers in car four saw white smoke followed quickly by heavy black smoke. Many of the passengers attempted to exit the car but could not get the doors to open so resorted to breaking windows to escape. The driver of the subway requested the power to be turned off to the rails but this was not done so numerous people were severely electrocuted attempting to grab ahold of rails and cables to escape. In addition to this, someone changed the ventilation system in the tunnel to exhaust, most likely in a belief this would clear the smoke to help passengers escape but it only drew the smoke in the direction of evacuation causing numerous passengers to die while outside of the train itself. In total, somewhere around 300 people would die, the vast majority of them trapped inside the subway cars themselves.

• October 29

Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy began as a tropical wave just south of Jamaica on October 22, 2012 before quickly organizing into a tropical storm and then a category 2 hurricane before making initial landfall near Kingston, Jamaica killing 2 people. It then emerged offshore and strengthened into a category 3 hurricane before making landfall in Cuba killing 11 people and causing extensive storm surge damage. It then moved northward before making landfall near Brigantine, New Jersey. As the storm moved ashore it caused significant coastal flooding up and down the east coast of the United States despite being officially no longer tropical by the time it made landfall. One of the most interesting parts of Hurricane Sandy is its massive size. Gale force winds (40-55 mph) stretched 1,150 miles across the entire eastern seaboard causing significant power outages and damage. In total, 160 people in the United States died due to the storm.

• October 30

Bradford Sweets Poisoning

On October 30, 1858 a sweetmaker in Bradford, England accidentally sold approximately 1000 lozenges that contained amounts of arsenic trioxide. A few days earlier, a man by the name of William Hardaker was due to receive a delivery of peppermint sweets from a confectioner named Joseph Neal. Now the sweets were supposed to be made of peppermint oil, sugar, water, and gum. But sugar was incredibly expensive, so Neal would substitute the sugar with gypsum. Yes, basically powdered plaster. The problem was, Neal had run out of gypsum to put in his lozenges so he sent another man to buy some from a druggist. When he arrived, the druggist, Charles Hodgson, was sick in bed. So Hodgson sent his assistant, William Goddard, upstairs to get the gypsum with the instructions that it was in a wooden barrel. Going upstairs Goddard was met with two identical wooden barrels. Both barrels had a white powder in them. He pulled 5 kilograms of the white powder from when and gave it to the man. He brought it back to Neal who made it into a lozenge but noticed the mixture was a darker color and smoother than normal. Thinking it was just an off batch, he continued on working with it occasionally tasting it to make sure it tasted right. Eventually Neal and his assistant both fell sick and started vomiting. Hardaker picked up the completed lozenges and noticed they were a weird color and managed to negotiate a lower price for them. He began selling them that evening and started to eat some before becoming ill and vomiting. Hardaker’s assistant continued selling the candy until around 11:30 pm and sold around 1000 in total. The next day, people began to die. Authorities initially believed it was a cholera outbreak but quickly determined the sickness was connected to the candy. They went back to the druggist and was shown the cask that the powder was pulled from. Pulling it over, the bottom was labeled arsenic. Neal, Goddard, and Hodgson were arrested for negligent manslaughter but were eventually acquitted and the incident was ruled an accident. 20 people died in the poisonings and well over 200 ended up sick with arsenic poisoning. None of the bodies were alleged to have been hidden in a window seat though.

• October 31

Indiana State Fairground Explosion

On October 31, 1963, leaking propane tanks in the Indiana State Fairground Coliseum filled a space below the southeastern corner of the grandstands in Indianapolis, Indiana. Approximately 4,400 spectators had gathered in the Coliseum to watch Holiday on Ice. At 11:03 pm, just as the grand finale was about to start, the cloud of propane gas reached a popcorn burner and ignited causing a large gas explosion that launched several hundred people and several thousand pounds of concrete up into the air and onto the ice. The first explosion weakened a load bearing wall which caused a small collapse dropping people down into the hole that was made by the initial explosion. Then, a few minutes later a second explosion occurred that injured even more people. Throughout the entire disaster, the Holiday on Ice orchestra continued to play music to help with the evacuation. In total 81 people died in the disaster making it one of the deadliest disasters in Indiana history. Multiple people were charged in the aftermath of the disaster but either had their charges dropped or overturned in the aftermath.

• November 1

Club Cinq-Sept Fire

On November 1, 1970 in Saint Laurent du Pont, France, around 180 individuals had gathered together in Club Cinq-Sept to hear the band the Storm perform a concert. At around 1:40 am, a fire began in the club and quickly spread along the polyurethane foam covered ceilings and paper mache decorations in the club. In order to prevent people sneaking into the club without paying, the owners of the club locked the emergency exits with padlocks then nailed them shut with boards leaving the only exit a pair of turnstiles at the entrance. Because of the build of these turnstiles, only one could be used to exit and only fit one person at a time. A crowd crush quickly formed at the exit as too many individuals attempted to escape at once. One of the owners managed to escape out a side door along with approximately 40 guests but due to the lack of a phone, he had to run 10 minutes to the fire station to get help. When the fire department arrived on scene, there was minimal smoke showing and the scene was almost silent. They believed most of the club guests had escaped. When they finally were able to force open the doors, firefighters found piles 4-5 feet high of bodies fused to the doors. In total, 146 people died in the fire. This particular fire has one of the most poignant memorials I’ve ever seen. The turnstiles were left in place and on them is a plaque that reads, “Placed in the entrance hall, these turnstiles made by unconscious and money-hungry men caused the death of 146 young people burned alive on 1.11.1970.”

Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosions

On October 20, 1944 a gas leak from a storage tank of liquid natural gas began to push approximately 100 million gallons of natural gas into the sewer system through eastern Cleveland, Ohio. As it leaked, it eventually found an ignition source causing a gas explosion to rip through the sewer system sending flames erupting out of the ground through drains in homes, setting them alight, sending manhole covers flying miles away, and killing numerous people. The initial explosion quickly subsided but the flames from it remained. A large area of eastern Cleveland would be set on fire and burn throughout the day into the night. As the fire department arrived, people believed that the fire department had it under control. Unfortunately though, the situation was absolutely not under control. About 30 minutes later, around 3:00 pm, another explosion ripped through a second above ground storage tank completely destroying the entire facility. But that wouldn’t be the end. Throughout the day, several homes throughout eastern Cleveland would spontaneously burst into flames and burn down as natural gas emitted through the drains in various homes. In total, 79 houses, 2 factories, and several miles of sewers were completely destroyed in the explosions. A total of 131 people died in the disaster. In the aftermath, changes were made to how and where natural gas was stored with the vast majority of natural gas storage tanks being moved underground.

• October 21

Clarkston Explosion

On October 21, 1971 a large explosion occurred in a row of shops in Clarkston, Scotland. The day before on October 20, multiple shoppers and store owners in the building complained of the smell of gas. The Scottish Gas Board sent out several engineers to locate the source of the smell but were unsuccessful. The engineers returned the next day to try and find the source but were unable to find it. Despite not being able to find it, they allowed people to continue working and shopping inside the shops. Dozens of people were inside the building when it suddenly exploded at 2:50 pm. 21 people were killed inside the shops and 1 person was killed on a bus that was passing by at the time. Over 100 people were injured. The leak was eventually determined to be a gas main that had developed a crack due to corrosion and vibration of cars traveling over it over the years. No one was held liable for the explosion.

• October 22

Montparnasse Derailment

On October 22, 1895, the Granville to Paris Express train was running slightly behind. As people are likely to do, the engineer approached the station at a higher than normal rate of speed, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 miles per hour. As they approached, the engineer attempted to use the air brake but it didn’t work. The guard who was supposed to be paying attention and applying the airbrake when in an emergency was instead doing paperwork. The train plowed through the end of the line, through the concourse, through the opposite wall, and dropped 30 feet onto the street below. Standing in that exact spot in the unluckiest location in the world was a woman by the name of Marie-Augustine Aguilard who was working at her husband’s newspaper stand at the time. She was hit in the head by a falling piece of masonry and died. She was the only fatality in the accident. The engineer, a 19 year old man, served two months in prison for speeding in the train and was fined 50 Francs. The guard was fined 25 Francs.

• October 23

Hurricane Patricia

On October 23, 2015, the lowest central pressure ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere occurred in the eye of Hurricane Patricia with a staggering low of 872 millibars. Hurricane Patricia also achieved the highest ever recorded sustained wind speeds in a hurricane with 1 minute sustained winds of 215 miles per hour. Hurricane Patricia would make landfall after weakening considerably to a category 3 hurricane which was still the strongest landfalling hurricane on the western Mexico side in history. It caused extensive flooding and lead to 13 fatalities throughout Mexico.

• October 25

Sinking of the SS Principessa Mafalda

The SS Principessa Mafalda set off from Genoa, Italy on October 11, 1927 bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina with 971 passengers, 288 crew, 300 tons of cargo, and just a lot of gold. Issues began almost immediately on board the ship. They were stuck in Barcelona for an extra day due to mechanical issues. Every few hours the ship would just stop working entirely and sit on the water floating up and down for hours. At one point, the refrigeration system just quit working but no one noticed. Dozens of passengers ate the spoiled food and came down with food poisoning. Which is terrible on land but even worse when you’re trapped on a ship. And to make it even worse, the toilets regularly stopped working. I can’t imagine a worse torture than food poisoning on a ship that randomly would stop working without any working toilets. The captain, a man by the name of Simone Guli, requested a new ship when they stopped at Cape Verde before traveling across the Atlantic. He was told no. Luckily enough, the trip across the Atlantic was relatively uneventful. Until October 25, when at around 5:15 pm, the ship suddenly shook hard several times. The propellor had disconnected from the shaft and passengers were assured there was no danger. This was not actually the case. The propellor had indeed separated from the shaft but it had also cut several large holes in the hull of the ship and water was now pouring in to the engine room. This should have been able to mitigated by closing off the watertight doors. The problem was, the watertight doors, similar to everything else on the woe begotten ship had not been maintained and were stuck in place unable to close. Due to even more poor maintenance, the lifeboats were unusable on one entire side even before the ship began the significant list to port. As rescue and evacuation efforts began, lifeboats became over full and started to fall apart. When the list happened, the starboard lifeboats became unable to be released. Much of the crew abandoned the ship very early on and left the passengers to fend for themselves. Just about four hours after the initial separation of the propellor, the SS Principessa Mafalda sank below the waters stern first. In total, 314 people died in the disaster including Captain Guli who went down with the ship. There were numerous oddities during the disaster including the high death toll. This was unusual because numerous ships were in the area with available lifeboats. Some didn’t approach out of fear of a boiler explosion although some were able to get close enough to rescue well over 100 passengers each. There should have been plenty of time to get all 1200 or so people off the ship but a disorganized and delay d evacuation caused major panic.

Andes Flight Disaster

On October 12, 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 took off from Montevideo, Uruguay headed to Santiago, Chile carrying the Old Christians Club rugby team, several family members, and 5 crew members. In total, 45 people were aboard the plane and it was fully loaded with luggage and equipment. The original plan was to fly over the Andes Mountains on the 12th to arrive in Santiago but a storm front sitting over the Andes forced them to land in Mendoza, Argentina and wait overnight for the storm to pass. Eventually they took off from Mendoza, heading due south to fly through the Planchon Pass, fly over the Andes, then turn due north to land in Santiago after reaching the Chilean town of Curico. Because of the cloud cover at the time of the flight, the pilot and copilot were flying via instruments only. The pilot was training the copilot on how to navigate the Andes Mountains leaving the copilot at the controls. At around 3:20 pm or so, the copilot notified Chilean air traffic control that they would be reaching Curico in about 1 minute. The problem was, it took 11 minutes to fly from Planchon Pass to Curico. It had been at most 3 minutes since they had actually passed Planchon. But no one noticed. The copilot then stated he was flying over Curico and requested to begin descent into Santiago’s airport. Problem was, he absolutely was not over Curico. He was in the middle of the Andes Mountains. The plan began to descend and when they came out of the cloud cover, they realized their mistake. The mountains were directly below them. But even worse, a massive ridge was directly in front of them. The copilot attempted to raise the plane to miss the ridge but there simply was not enough power. The plane struck the ridge and ripped the tail off causing 5 people to fall out the rear of the plane and die. It then lost both wings striking the ground again, one of which caused a hole in the fuselage that pulled out two more passengers out of the plane, before the fuselage fell down a slope and slamming into a snow bank. One of the passengers died instantly, the other asphyxiated in a pile of snow trying to find the crash site. There the seats were ripped off the bottom of the plane and the cockpit was crushed, killing the pilot instantly and trapping the copilot. Four more passengers died in the collision with the ground. The copilot asked the survivors to find his pistol and shoot him because he was pinned in the cockpit with catastrophic injuries but everyone refused and he died the day after the crash. 33 people survived the crash, the vast majority of them with major injuries. 5 more would die that same day and the day after. A search and rescue mission was launched almost immediately and the searching aircraft flew over the crash site multiple times, but were unable to see the bright white fuselage amongst the bright white snow. Survivors attempted multiple times to make something that would show where they were but were unsuccessful. The search was called off after 8 days. One of the survivors had found a radio jammed between the seats and managed to get it working well enough for the survivors to hear that the search had been called off. They were on their own. They quickly used available material to turn the fuselage into a shelter to survive the temperatures that dropped to -30 degrees Celsius overnight. But then came the big problem, food. The plan had 8 chocolate bars, 3 jars of jam, a tin of mussels, a tin of almonds, dates, some random candy, a few dried plums, and bottles of wine. And because the crash occurred well above the timber line, they had no animals or plants to be able to scrounge food from. All of the above lasted one week. After that they ate foam from the seat cushions and leather from luggage. But that did not last long and made them incredibly sick. Because of this, they made the ultimate decision. To eat the remains of their friends and family members. They laid the strips of flesh out on the ground to dry it out to make it easier to eat. Several survivors only would agree when it was compared to taking Holy Communion as most of the passengers were deeply Roman Catholic and believed consuming human flesh would lead to eternal damnation. Not long after the last survivor with reservations finally decided to eat some of the deceased passengers and 16 days after the crash, the shelter was struck by an avalanche that buried the fuselage to within 1 meter of the top of the shelter. 8 more survivors died smothered by the avalanche. The remaining survivors soon realized they had to make it out of the fuselage or they would run out of air. The dug an emergency tunnel to climb out only to find themselves trapped in a blizzard. They retreated back into the shelter and stayed for three days, eating the bodies of those who died in the avalanche for sustenance. It was after this they realized their only chance was to hike out. Before he died, the copilot had kept repeating they had flown over Curico which they clearly had not since the city was in the flat plains and they were in the mountains. But they did think that because of this insistence, they were only a few kilometers from any towns along the mountain range. They were wrong. They were actually just about 60 kilometers away from the closest town and about 90 kilometers from Curico. The first expedition out planned to go east because of the high mountain to the west. Three individuals would find the tail section intact with some extra food and some batteries they would use to try and power the plane’s radio but it would not work because the plane radio required 115 volts of AC current, the batteries were only 24 volt DC. The final three deaths would occur on November 15, November 18, and December 11. They finally decided to make a trip west to try and make it to Chile believing they were closer than they were. Three men set out to the west believing they were only at about 2,100 meters altitude based on the altimeter in the plane. But they were actually at 3,664 meters. What this meant was they had to go significantly farther than any of them planned for. It would take 10 days to hike essentially 55 kilometers to happen upon three men walking along the river on horseback who then rode 10 hours into town to notify authorities. Helicopters were provided and they arrived at the crash site on December 22, 1972, 71 days after the initial crash. They were only able to collect half of the survivors so four rescuers stayed behind at the crash site to sleep with the survivors on the mountain. The next day, the remaining 8 survivors were rescued. The remains of those who died in the crash were buried in a common grave at the site protected by avalanches except for one passenger whose dad arranged to have the body returned to his home for burial. In total, 29 of the 45 people aboard the plane died in the crash.

• October 14

Sinking of the SS Mohegan

On October 14, 1898, the SS Mohegan set off from Dover, England, bound for New York City, New York carrying approximately 150 people and 700 cattle. They were traveling down the English Channel at approximately 13 knots. But the problem was, they were on the wrong heading and were moving directly at a group of rocks known as The Manacles. The coastguard in the area attempted to notify the crew of the Mohegan of the danger but they did not appear to notice. One person on shore noticed where they were headed and gathered the crew together to launch a lifeboat to head to where the ship may hit the rocks. And hit the rocks they did, it tore a hole through the bottom of the hull causing the ship to list to port then suddenly rock hard to starboard and sink in 12 minutes. In total, 106 people drowned aboard the ship including the entire crew. It has never been determined why the ship traveled so quickly at such a well known hazard.

• October 15

West Gate Bridge Collapse

On October 15, 1970, the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, Australia was under construction. At about 11:50 am, a 112 meter span collapsed suddenly and fell 50 meters to the ground below where a number of construction workers were relaxing on their lunchbreak underneath the structure. Numerous construction workers were also on top of and inside the span working when it collapsed. In total, 35 construction workers were killed and 18 were injured. The collapse was caused by the removal of about 80 tons of concrete blocks. When the span was placed, it was realized that on the west end of the span, two half girders were slightly off with one having a higher camber than the other. They placed the 10 8 ton concrete blocks on the higher one to force it down so they could join the girders. But the weight of the blocks caused the span being worked on to buckle so orders were given to remove them. When they were, the span collapsed downward. It is the deadliest industrial disaster in Australian history.

• October 16

On October 16, 1996, a FIFA World Cup Qualification game for the 1998 World Cup was scheduled to be played between Guatemala and Costa Rica at Estadio Doroteo Guamuch Flores. On the day of the match, approximately 50,000 people were trying to enter the stadium but it only seats 37,000. Hundreds of people with counterfeit tickets surged into the stadium and broke through the gates in an attempt to make it to the seats. When that happened, a crowd crush began and security could not find a way to get the doors onto the pitch open with everyone pinned behind the fence. Eventually, the fence gave way and the crush cleared out. In total, 84 people died in the crowd crush at the stadium.

• October 17

23rd Street Fire

On October 17, 1966, a fire began around 9:30 pm in the American Art Galleries, an art dealer just off 22nd street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. THe building stored a significant quantity of flammable material for painting in the basement. When the fire arriving engine arrived on scene, they were unable to make entry into the 22nd street side of the building. So they elected instead to enter through a drug store on the 23rd street side of the building. Unbeknownst to firefighters at the time, the two separate buildings held a common cellar that extended from the 22nd street building 35 feet underneath the 23rd street building. A construction project had been completed that removed a loadbearing wall in the basement that allowed the art dealer to store even more flammable material underneath the 23rd street building. The floor supports for the 23rd street building under the drug store were absolutely massive 3 inch by 14 inch wood beams with 3/4 inch wood planks over top of them. In addition, five inches of concrete were poured on top of that. Because of these changes, the fire was able to grow undetected in the cellar while firefighters operated on the first floor. Eventually, the fire caused the floor to fail and 10 firefighters fell into the burning basement and died. Two other firefighters died in a flashover that occurred on the first floor at around the same time. It remains the second deadliest firefighting incident in New York City.

Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead

On October 6, 1854, a small fire started in a factory along the banks of the River Tyne in Gateshead, England. The building in questions was a 7 story structure that created worsteds. The fire started in the upper floors of the building from an unknown source. As the fire burned, the fire brigade attempted to prevent it from spreading but due to radiative heat, it ignited a warehouse full of sulfur next door. The sulfur quickly began to melt and produce a blue flame. Fearing the rapidly flowing sulfur would spread the fire to other buildings, the fire brigade moved to the warehouse leaving the factory to burn. Because of the rapidly spreading fire, thousands of spectators from Gateshead and Newcastle directly across the River Tyne. It was at this moment that everyone should have known things were going to go horrifically wrong as a small explosion occurred. But no one paid any attention. A second explosion occurred. Also ignored. Finally, a massive explosion erupted from the basement of the warehouse lifting boats in the river out of the water, sending massive pieces of stone flying nearly a full mile away. Houses surrounding the area in all directions collapsed. Amongst the debris, the fire began to spread through Gateshead. But not just Gateshead, the explosion sent embers across the river to Newcastle and it began to spread through the city. Over the next several hours, firefighters fought the fire and created firebreaks throughout both cities in an attempt to prevent the complete destruction of both cities. Once the fire was fully extinguished, the death toll stood at 53 people with hundreds more injured. An investigation was launched into the cause of the explosion in the warehouse. It was believed at the time that sulfur and sodium nitrate, the two items stored inside, do not explode. And they were half right. Sulfur does not explode when burning. But when sodium nitrate is exposed to sufficient heat for a long enough time, it can cause an explosion when heated above 1000 degrees Fahrenheit for a significant period of time and when hit with mechanical impact. The collapsing warehouse would be more than enough mechanical impact to cause an explosion.

• October 7

Swissair Flight 316

On October 7, 1979, Swissair Flight 316 was traveling from Zurich, Switzerland to Beijing, China with planned stops in Athens, Greece and Mumbai, India. The first leg of the flight was operating as normal and the flight descended into Athens with zero problems. But as they were going to land, the pilots landed the plane too far along the runway at 168 miles per hour, well higher than was mandated. Because of this, the plane overshot the runway and landed on a public road where the wing and tail separated and a fire began. In total, 14 people died in the disaster. One of the interesting parts about this crash is that the plane was carrying approximately 1,000 pounds of various radioactive isotopes. In addition, a doctor on board was carrying a small amount of plutonium in his luggage that was lost for a short period of time.

• October 8

Peshtigo Fire

On October 8, 1871, a cold front swept through the Great Lakes region of the United States bring a massive amount of wind to a tinder dry area. At the same time, several slash and burn fires to clear land were burning around the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin and quickly grew out of control into a massive wildfire. As the fire spread, it quickly turned into a massive firestorm with a potential fire tornado. Multiple witnesses that survived the fire stated a large column of rotating fire lifted trees and homes and tossed them aside. The fire pushed its way into the town of Peshtigo and quickly turned into a raging firestorm with temperatures likely nearing 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The residents of Peshtigo had only one hope, diving into the Peshtigo River and trying to ride out the fire there. In the town of approximately 1,500 people pre fire, only about 700 lived through the fire. One man attempted to escape with his family on a covered wagon but as they were fleeing the wagon wheel broke. As he exited the wagon to see what happened, the horse pulling the wagon caught on fire. Then the covered wagon. The whole family burned to death on the road. One man attempted to flee with his children but realized they would not make it and slit their throats before he burned to death. Several men and women were trampled by a herd of cattle running to the river in a desperate attempt to survive. In total the Peshtigo Fire would completely destroy 17 towns in Wisconsin. The official death toll is approximately 1,500 people but that death toll is likely at least a thousand people too low as numerous mass graves have been discovered in the decades since. Entire families were completely killed with all records completely burnt in the lost towns.

• October 9

Vajont Dam Disaster

On October 9, 1963, approximately 2 kilometers (1.2 square miles) consisting of around 260 million cubic meters (9.2 billion cubic feet) of the Monte Toc mountain slid down into the lake that had been created by the Vajont Dam at around 110 kilometers per hour (68 mph). This mass of debris completely displaced the entire reservoir of water behind the dam, causing 115 billion liters (30 billion gallons) to rush towards the dam. Of that amount of water, 50 billion liters (13 billion gallons) overtopped the dam in a wave that was at least 250 meters (820 feet) high that immediately came crashing down the valley at an incredibly fast pace. The massive wave came crashing down the mountain and wiped away the entire town of Longarone, with the only remaining structures the belltower for the church and the town hall, as well as the entire towns of Pirago, Rivalta, Villanova, and Fae. The official death toll for the disaster stands at 1,917 people according to government sources but it is likely the death toll is significantly higher. At least 350 entire families were killed in the disaster. Now this feels like it was a catastrophic disaster that could not have been avoided. The problem with that is the entire thing could have been avoided. At least, the deaths could have been avoided. From almost the very moment construction started on the Vajont Dam, known as one of the tallest dams in the world at 262 meters (860 feet), things were already bad. The electric company tasked with building the dam claimed that studies had been done to prove the mountain was stable. That was a lie. Construction started in 1957 and by 1959, the nearby mountain was clearly moving. Cracks appeared all over the side of the mountain next to the dam. These were ignored. Three separate engineers informed the agency that if the dam were completed and water was funneled in behind the dam, there was a major risk for a huge landslide with part of the mountain coming down. This was also ignored. Construction was completed and water was added beginning in 1960. That’s when the landslides started. Reporters attempted to write about the landslides but the government had them silenced for “upsetting the social order.” Over the next three years earthquakes and landslides would be the norm for the mountain behind the Vajont Dam. Terrified townspeople regularly complained and were ignored. On the 15th of September 1963, the massive side of the mountain moved downhill 22 centimeters (9 inches). It was after this point that the electric company decided to lower the water level in an attempt to prevent the water from overtopping the dam but it was too little too late. There was no attempt to warn townspeople. There was no attempt to warn anyone working on the dam. Engineers for the electric company gathered on a nearby mountainside to watch as the mountain gave way and 2,000 people were killed. The government immediately ruled it to be a tragic and unavoidable disaster. A government run newspaper called it “a mysterious act of God’s love”. Several engineers would get very light punishments. The majority of the dam remained standing and is still in place today but is not used as a dam.

• October 12

Hard Rock Hotel Collapse

On October 12, 2019, the Hard Rock Hotel that was under construction in New Orleans, Louisiana suddenly collapsed on one side of the 16th floor killing three construction workers and injuring several dozen others. The building was an 18 story high rise that was 190 feet tall. During design, several requests were made by the owner of the building for various changes that would require smaller steel beams be used along the ceilings to allow room for higher ceilings on the 16th and 17th floors. These steel beams were effectively halved in size, going from 21 inches thick to 10 inches thick but no additional beams were added to account for the loss of strength. In addition, along the Rampart Street side of the building where the collapse originated, the original drawings called for 11 steel columns that were 10 inches wide. This was subsequently changed to steel columns that were 6 inches wide. More columns should have been added to account for this change. At least 13 more columns. But only 1 more was added. This meant that there was not nearly enough support on this wall for the concrete that was poured for the two floors above it. On top of the complete lack of support for the building, there were several locations where holes for structural bolts should have gone through the column and beams for the floor but the holes did not properly line up so crews welded them instead. The concrete for the 17th and 18th floors were poured on October 5, 2019. By October 10, several construction workers recorded videos of steel columns on the 16th floor bending under the weight of the added load. The investigation and litigation into the collapse is still ongoing.

• September 29

SS El Faro

On September 29, 2015, the combination roll on/roll off and lift on/lift off cargo ship the SS El Faro left Jacksonville, Florida bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico at around 8:15 pm with 33 crew members, 28 Americans and 5 Poles, aboard. At the same time, then Tropical Storm Joaquin was a few hundred miles east of the El Faro traveling in a generally southwesterly direction. The National Hurricane Center released multiple warning graphics at 2pm on September 29 indicating that not only would Joaquin continue to strengthen, but by the time the SS El Faro reached the area the storm would be, the storm would be a hurricane and the ship would be directly in some of the strongest winds of the storm. Despite these warnings, the captain of the El Faro elected to continue on his normal path towards San Juan for some reason believing the route would be farther south than the storm. As they traveled their normal path, the conditions began to become worse and worse. With the updates from the NHC on September 30 at around 7 am, the captain decided to shift their track slightly further south. Meanwhile, Joaquin became a hurricane early in the morning of September 30 and was still drifting southwest, directly into the path of the SS El Faro. All day September 30, the SS El Faro continued on its path southeast directly into the path of the rapidly intensifying storm. Joaquin hit Category 3 major hurricane status at 11 pm on September 30. Not long after this, winds from the storm officially hit 115 miles per hour sustained and multiple crew members requested a further diversion south from the storm to try and keep everyone safe. The second mate sent an email to her family stating “There is a hurricane out here and we are heading straight into it.” It would be the last time her family would hear from her. At around 7:30 am on October 1, the Coast Guard received a message from the El Faro. It stated they had lost propulsion, they were taking on water, and the ship had a pronounced list. The Coast Guard attempted to open communications with the ship but were unsuccessful. The last ping from the ship’s GPS placed it directly in the eyewall of Hurricane Joaquin. At 7:24 am, the captain had given the order to abandon ship. The last recording of anyone alive was at 7:39 am as the captain was still attempting to help a helmsman escape the bridge before the recorder died. At least one life raft was recovered during the search in the days afterwards but it was deflated. In addition, one heavily damaged lifeboat was also recovered but was empty. The El Faro had two lifeboats, but they were the old open style, not the modern survival craft with a roof for protection. All 33 people aboard the El Faro died in the sinking. Only one body was ever observed but they were left to continue searching for survivors and the body was lost. None of the others have ever been found. In the end, both investigations into the disaster placed most of the blame on the captain who made multiple decisions that would have resulted in losing his captains license had he survived. The company that owned the ship was also blamed for a lack of appropriate survival craft.

• September 30

Bourne End Disaster

On September 30, 1945, a Perth to London express train with 15 carriages carrying 398 passengers entered a turnout at nearly 60 miles per hour which caused the locomotive and first six passenger cars to derail and slide down a hill near Bourne End, England. The driver had been working for 26 straight days due to staff shortages from World War II and may have briefly fallen asleep at the controls and did not see the warnings to slow down but it is unknown exactly because the driver died in the disaster. The disaster was only observed by one person, a pilot who happened to be taking off from a local airfield and saw the crash happen as his plane lifted off the ground. He was able to radio to help to be sent to the crash site. In the end, 43 people died in the disaster making it the 7th deadliest rail disaster in English history.

• October 1

Bulgarian Ammo Plant Disaster

On October 1, 2014 at around 5 pm, a large detonation of explosive material occurred in a factory in Gorni Lom, Bulgaria. There were 15 people inside the facility working at the time of the explosion. It is believed the workers were attempting to dismantle old Greek landmines and there was approximately 10 tonnes of explosives stored on site. It is believed that the first explosion killed all 15 people. A second, smaller explosion occurred about 5 hours later. Both explosions completely obliterated the entire factory leaving essentially nothing still standing. It took 24 hours before the scene was declared stable enough for investigators to enter using a remotely controlled robot to ensure all explosives were either destroyed or rendered inert. The explosions were so large and destructive that it was never determined what sequence of events led to the initial explosion however this was no the first explosion at this factory. Or the second. This was the third such explosion with the first two injuring six total people.

• October 2

Wichita State Football Crash

On October 2, 1970, a plane nicknamed “Gold” chartered by the Wichita State Shockers football team crashed into a mountainside in Colorado carrying 37 passengers and 3 crew members. The 37 passengers consisted of the entire starting players for Wichita State, the head coach, the athletic director, numerous boosters, and other individuals. The end destination for the flight was Logan, Utah for a game against Utah State. When they landed in Denver to refuel, the president of the charter company who was acting as first officer informed the passengers they were going to take a more scenic route through the mountains in order to show them a ski area that was to be used in the 1976 Olympics that had been awarded to Denver. The president had bought sectional charts while they were on the ground in Denver to use to show the passengers interesting landmarks they passed. But they were not studied well enough to actually understand what they were flying over. When they took off, they did not gain enough altitude to actually make it over the mountains they were flying into. One of the offensive guards who survived the crash, stated that as they were flying along, he could see mine shafts and mining equipment above the plane. He headed to the cockpit to ask questions and could only see the green mountainsides in front of them. Multiple people higher on the mountains witnessed the plane flying below them. The plane became trapped in a box canyon with mountains on three sides and an inability to climb fast enough. The plane struck the tops of trees and crashed nearly 1600 feet below the peak of the mountain it hit. The majority of people survived the initial crash, allowing several to escape alive however the fuselage soon caught fire and those still alive but trapped in the plane died. In total, 29 people died at the scene and two more would die later at the hospital. The first people to arrive at the crash site were construction workers working on the Eisenhower tunnel through the Continental Divide. Because of the remoteness of the crash, most of the remains of the plane is still in location and has become a memorial site.

• October 4

Ajka Alumina Spill

On October 4, 2010, a massive wave of dark red sludge erupted from a large open air reservoir in Ajka, Hungary. The initial wave was nearly 2 meters tall and consisted of 1 million cubic meters of liquid rushing out all at once. The red sludge was the remains of a process known as the Bayer process in which aluminum oxide is extracted from bauxite ore. The liquid is stained red by the presence of iron (III) oxide. The wave caused 10 total deaths and extensive damage throughout several towns. The cause of the failure of the dam was never conclusively determined, although numerous government officials blamed human error.

US Wildfires

Well, the US wildfire situation is honestly fantastic. Currently down to Preparedness level 2. There are a number of active wildfires but none that are out of control.

And that pretty much ends our wildfires section. Everywhere has more or less chilled out this week. Which is pretty nice considering how everything has been so far this year.

Global Hurricanes

Atlantic Ocean

Post Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle

Let’s start with Gabrielle. Gabrielle had quite the adventure this week, starting out as a tropical storm early Saturday morning the 20th, reaching Category 4 status on the afternoon of the 22nd and then consistently maintaining strength for a shockingly long time before slowly beginning to weaken. As of right now, it is still at what would technically be tropical storm strength but has lost most tropical characteristics. As of right now, Gabrielle looks like it will retain much of that strength and hit Portugal early next week with extensive rainfall.

I would not say it is well organized as it has very clearly become a frontal low but Portugal and some of Spain should expect major rainfall and some significant winds.

Hurricane Humberto

Hurricane Humberto is likely going to be a fishstorm. But it is important to note because the track of Humberto will likely have major effects on the eventual track of what will be Imelda later this weekend. As of writing this, Humberto is a category 1 hurricane sitting a few hundred miles northeast of Puerto Rico. Current track has it continuing west northwestward before hooking hard around Bermuda and going off into the Atlantic.

But depending on how far west it does end up traveling will give us an idea of how what is currently Invest 94L will act. If it moves further west before turning north it will likely have some impact on Imelda. Whether that is pulling Imelda out to see or pushing it in towards the coast remains to be seen.

Humberto looks like it will continue to strengthen and will at least hit category 4 and has an outside shot of hitting category 5.

Invest 94L

Invest 94L is the big one to watch for the US this week. Currently there isn’t too much spin with the invest as you can see with the water vapor imagery below but that is likely to change by the time I post this dispatch.

The current models have Invest 94L turning into Imelda likely by Saturday September 27 and making landfall sometime Monday September 29 or Tuesday September 30. The strength of the storm depends on how much time it gets over open water between the Bahamas and the east coast. Sea surface temperatures in that area are very high and will provide plenty of fuel. If the storm stalls at all based on Humberto or steering, it could rapidly intensify.

The track currently from most spaghetti models show it making landfall somewhere between Georgia and North Carolina. But the big risk with this is going to be rainfall. Many models currently show western North Carolina specifically getting hit with anywhere from 4-8 inches of rain. This is nothing like Helene, but with not much regrowth since then it could destabilize the ground causing landslides and significant flash flooding in an area that is still recovering.

But we will have to wait for Invest 94L to figure out its life before we can really start to narrow down a track.

Eastern/Central Pacific

Hurricane Narda

Hurricane Narda is currently spinning in the eastern/central Pacific and is entering hostile conditions and will likely completely fall apart by midweek next week, likely the 1st of October. Waters up where it is currently located are relatively cool and not at all conducive to tropical development or sustainment.

Western Pacific

Super Typhoon Ragasa

We will start with the big one, Super Typhoon Ragasa. This monster storm reached category 5 status and caused extensive damage in Taiwan, the Philippines, and southern China.

In the Philippines, Ragasa caused 11 deaths from various causes including falling debris and flooding.

In Taiwan, heavy flooding caused a massive landslide at Matai’an Creek Barrier Lake in southern Taiwan that buried the town of Hualien in approximately 5 meters of mud killing at least 14 people with at least 22 people still missing.

It also caused extensive flooding damage throughout southern Taiwan.

As the storm moved through Hong Kong, even more flooding occurred with several areas receiving several inches of rain.

Tropical Storm Bualoi

Tropical Storm Bualoi is currently sitting just west of the Philippines at tropical storm status with sustained winds of about 60 knots. At least 10 people have died in the Philippines in association with the storm. It is currently forecast to move west northwestward and eventually reach about category 1 status before making landfall in Vietnam.

Fires/Explosions

Wyoming Gas Pipeline Fire

On September 21, a gas pipeline ruptured near a Union Pacific freight train carrying hazardous materials about 1 am and sparked a large fire. The fire was quickly controlled by the local fire department. The fire caused damage to the train but it did not derail and there were no injuries associated with the fire. It is not currently known why the pipeline ruptured or how the fire started.

Collapses

India Steel Plant Collaspe

At least six workers were killed when the roof of a steel plant collapsed in the city of Raipur, India early September 26. It is not currently known what caused the collapse.

Bangkok Road Collapse

Early on the morning of September 24, a 50 meter deep sinkhole opened up in a road in Bangkok, Thailand. The sinkhole was approximately 900 square meters in size but caused no deaths or injuries. It was located directly above an underground railway station for the Vajira Hospital. The cause is not yet known.

Columbian Gold Mine Disaster

23 gold miners in Colombia were trapped inside a collapsed gold mine shaft at the La Reliquia mine for 48 hours from September 22 to September 25 approximately 80 meters underground. Underground pipes allowed rescue workers to send the trapped miners food and water and allow them to talk to family members while the rescue operation was underway.

• September 22

Lathen Train Disaster

On September 22, 2006 the brand new Transrapid 08 maglev train was running one of its test runs before opening to the public. During this test run, 32 passengers were aboard the train who were associated with the various companies involved in the installation of the train. That morning, a diesel powered maintenance vehicle had done their daily maintenance of the track to make sure it was free of debris. The two maintenance workers in the vehicle attempted to contact dispatch to receive clearance to leave the track but did not get a response. As they needed permission to move on, they waited there. At 9:53 am, the Transrapid train 08 begain its first test run and accelerated to 167 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour). Less than one minute later, the emergency brakes were activated but it was too late. The train smashed into the rear of the maintenance vehicle which weighed nearly 60 tons. The shape of the maglev train shoved it underneath the vehicle and peeled the roof off the train. In total, 23 of the 32 individuals on the train died in the disaster. Several of the survivors were only found by cutting through the exterior of the train. This was the first fatal accident of a maglev train.

• September 23

Flying Tiger Line Flight 923

Flying Tiger Line Flight 923 was a chartered military flight transporting 68 military members and 8 crew members from New Jersey to West Germany. As they were flying over the Atlantic Ocean, engine number 3 caught fire but during the operation of shutting down the engine, the flight engineer accidentally activated the firewall for engine number 1. This eliminated all fluid flow to engine number one which caused it to overspeed, essentially speeding up past its maximum RPM which caused engine 1 to fail. Attempts to restart engine 1 failed and the plane was stuck with only two engines. Approximately 1 hour later, a fire warning was received for engine number 2 and power was reduced. They managed to maintain altitude at 3000 feet for approximately 30 more minutes before engine 2 also failed and they were forced to ditch into the ocean. Instead of ditching parallel with the waves to maintain minimal forces of impact on the plane, the pilot ditched into the waves because he disagreed with the instruction and decided to ditch right into a wave. The waves at the time were approximately 200 feet apart and 15 to 20 feet in height. The plane landed in a wave and the left wing with two of the liferafts was ripped off and sank beneath the waves. For unknown reasons, the right wing liferafts were unable to be retrieved either leaving only one liferaft for 51 people. The max capacity for each raft was 25 people. Because the liferaft was overloaded, it regularly sank below the waterline and had to be bailed out. In the end 48 of the 51 people aboard the life raft survived. It is not known exactly what caused the deaths of the other 25 people who died. When the plane came to rest in the wave, there were a number of seats that became dislodged in a pile and survivors stated they were unsure if anyone was in the pile. Several survivors also stated they expected to step out onto the left wing but fell in the ocean instead unexpectedly.

• September 25

Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182

Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 departed Los Angeles headed to San Diego at 8:34 am on September 25, 1978 with 128 passengers and 7 crew members. As the flight was on approach to land in San Diego, a small two passenger Cessna plane was traveling in the general vicinity. Air Traffic Control notified Flight 182 to keep an eye on the plane. Flight 182 assumed they passed the Cessna off behind them and began their descent into San Diego. Unknown to them, the Cessna had made a slight right turn which placed them directly in the path of the descending Flight 182. The pilot and copilot could have seen the Cessna below them as it was within their sight lines in the cockpit, but it is theorized the yellow of the Cessna blended with the yellow of the subdivision of houses below. At 9:01 am, Flight 182 collided with the Cessna at about 2,600 feet. Flight 182 began a nearly straight up and down nose down descent into a home and driveway at nearly 300 miles per hour instantly exploding leaving only the engines and landing gears as the most recognizable debris. All 135 people aboard Flight 182 died, 7 individuals in the neighborhood where Flight 182 landed died, and the two individuals in the Cessna died in the disaster.

• September 26

MV Le Joola

The MV Le Joola was a roll on/roll off ferry owned by the Senegalese government that regularly traveled from Casamance, Senegal to Dakar, Senegal. On September 26, 2002, the ship left Casamance headed toward the capital of Dakar. The ferry had a capacity of around 525 people but nearly 2000 people boarded the ferry, of which only about 1,000 actually had purchased tickets. Anyone under 5 and many who were allowed to travel for free were not required to have a ticket. As the ferry left for the trip, it was reported there was at least minor tilting of the ship. At 10 pm, the last message was sent from the ship indicating good sailing conditions. At around 11 pm, the ship entered a storm off the coast of The Gambia. According to the survivors, almost as soon as heavy rain started the ferry completely capsized. Some individuals were thrown clear of the boat. Others had to attempt to swim through open portholes and take refuge on top of the overturned ship. Many of the lifejackets had been tied so tight they could not be undone because many previous lifejackets had been lost or stolen. The ship had capsized so quickly and so suddenly that no distress signal had been sent. The Senegalese government had no idea the disaster had even occurred until other ships arrived around 7 am and informed them of the upside down ship in the ocean. It would take the Senegalese government another 4 hours to organize a rescue effort which began in earnest at around 12 pm the next day, a full 13 hours after the capsizing. Survivors had been sitting on the upturned hull for hours and could hear screaming and crying of people still alive inside the ship. Local fisherman were the only individuals who were able to rescue anyone. One diver managed to make it inside the ship and found the unflooded cabins where he could see survivors waving and pleading to be rescued inside the rooms through the windows. But the government didn’t send any equipment to cut into the hull of the ship and if he opened the doors it would sink the already barely floating upside down ship. They had to wait and hope equipment came. It never did. The ship finally sank at around 3 pm. The official death toll for the disaster stands at 1,863 deaths making it the second deadliest maritime disaster in history behind only the sinking of the Doña Paz. Only 64 passengers survived. It was determined after the disaster that only one engine was working, none of the vehicles or cargo aboard the ferry were secured, and the captain did not check with weather reports. No one was prosecuted for the disaster and the investigation was closed placing sole blame on the captain of the ship who died in the disaster.

• September 27

The SS Arctic Disaster

On September 27, 1854, the SS Arctic was an American paddle steamer that was being used to carry passengers from England to the US. This particular trip was from Liverpool to New York City and they were located approximately 50 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The steamer moved into a bank of fog and soon after was hit by the French iron hulled propellor driven ship the SS Vesta. Initially, it was believed the damage to the SS Arctic was slight and the damage to the Vesta was catastrophic. As such, the Arctic’s captain ordered several of their lifeboats to be launched to begin pulling the passengers off the Vesta to rescue them before the boat sank. But before they could launch the second lifeboat, the Arctic’s captain told them to stop. He noticed the Arctic had begun to list heavily. Closer inspection revealed two large holes above the waterline and two large holes below the waterline caused by the Vesta’s anchor. They were taking on water quickly. The captain of the Arctic began to try different ideas to stop the flow of water. Placing a sail over the bow of the ship worked briefly before the sail tore and water rushed in anew. They then tried to stuff random debris in the holes but by that point the water was too deep. Then the captain of the Arctic had his last final desperate idea, full speed at land as fast as possible. But in the fog, they had lost sight of the lifeboat with 12 people in it that had escaped from the Vesta. The Arctic plowed into the lifeboat killing 11 of 12 people aboard. Realizing that making it to shore was hopeless, the captain of the Arctic ordered the lifeboats filled with women and children. This order was effectively ignored by the crew of the SS Arctic as several lifeboats were cut away filled only with crew members. There were also not enough lifeboats for everyone aboard the ship. As the ship began to sink, the captain of the ship asked one of the last crew members aboard to fire the cannon in one minute intervals in a desperate hope to have a passing ship hear them. That crew member was Steward Holland, who told the captain, “Let it be known that one crewman aboard this ship did not abandon his post.” He did not survive the sinking. The captain, with his son, climbed aboard the command post and waited for the end. The captain would survive the sinking by clinging to the shattered remains of the paddle box for two days after his son was killed by that very paddle box rocketing to the surface and striking him. In the end, the exact death toll aboard the SS Arctic was never conclusively determined but it is at least over 200 people. The SS Vesta was able to reach port under her own power, only losing the crew who were struck by the SS Arctic.