July 1944 - Hartford, Connecticut - fire in the great tent of the Ringling
Brs Circus - 168 dead.

June 1900 - Hoboken, New Jersey - fire on the dock - 326 dead

December 1958 - Chicago, Illinois - fire in a school - 95 dead

April 1940 - Natchez, Mississippi - dance hall fire - 198 dead

December 1946 Atlanta, Georgia - the Winecoff Hotel caught fire 119 dead.

December 1881 - the Ring Theatre in Vienna - 850 dead.

May 1845 - a theatre in China (Canton) burnt - 1,670 dead.

December 1863 the Church of La Compana in Santiago - 2,501 dead.

Hope this helps

- hm

1905: April 20: Ten young girls, four elderly women and a Roman
Catholic nun perished in a night blaze that could not be controlled at
a convent in Ste-Genevieve outside Montréal.

1907: February 26: Sixteen kindergarten children and a teacher died in
a fire at the Hochelaga School in Montréal. Public outrcy forced
tougher rules on fire safety in Ouébec schools.

1911: July 11-12: A wind-whipped forest fire raged through South
Porcupine in Northern Ontario, killing at least 70 people and burning
the town to the ground The next day it roared through the nearby town
of Cochrane.

1916: July: The Northern Ontario forest fire of 1916 (generally known as
the Matheson Fire) was the worst in Canadian history. It laid waste to
nearly 800 square miles of forest and razed small communities in its
path. The known death toll reached 282.

1922: Summer: A forest fire swept over the Haileybury area of Northem
Ontario claiming at least 44 lives.

1927: January 9: Seventy-six children were asphyxiated or trampled to
death while trying to flee a fire that was extinguished in minutes at
the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montréal.

1938: January 18: Fire at a residential school in Saint-Hyacinthe,
Québec, killed 41 students and five teachers.

1942: December 12: Ninety-nine people, most of them American service
men and their dates, perished in an arson blaze ignited at a social
club dance in St. John's, Newfoundland.

1949: September 17: The Great Lakes cruise ship Noronic caught fire at
2 a.m. and burned at her berth In Toronto Harbor with 119 elderly
Americans dying in the fire and smoke. An inquiry blamed the high death
toll on an undirected crew and panic. The catastrophe speed the
inevitable end of passenger ships on the Great Lakes.

1956: May 15. An RCAF CF-100 fight er on manoeuvres spiralled down in
the night, hit a convent near Ottawa, and exploded in a ball of flame
that killed 13 residents and both airmen.

1965: March 1: A gas explosion and fire levelled an apartment building
in Lasalle, Québec, killing 28 people.

1969: December 2: A blaze in a nursing home at Notre-Dame-du-Lac, south
of Riviere-du-Loup, Ouébec, killed 54.

1972: September 1: In an act believed to be gang-related, arsonists
torched the Blue Bird Bar in Montréal, killing 13 of the people inside
and injuring 54.

1976: December 26: A nursing home fire at Petty Harbour, outside St.
John's Newfoundland, claimed 21 lives.

1977: January 1: A deadly cell block fire in a jail at Saint John,
N.B., took the lives of 20 doomed prisoners

Here is some info:

On June 6, 1889, the Great Seattle Fire swept through what was then
downtown Seattle, wiping out sixty-six square blocks and paving the
way for "The Forgotten City" lying beneath the city's modern streets.
In fact, according to "Seattle Underground," by Bill Speidel, the fire
"knocked off about a million rats and cost about $15,000,000."

Because much of the downtown area was on stilts, the sidewalks and
streets were great fire carriers. In one instance, firefighters were
able to stem the fire north of University Street simply by tearing up
the streets and sidewalk and tossing them over the cliff and into the
bay.

To fight the fire, a 200-man bucket brigade was formed along the river
that ran past the Olympic Hotel. Water was hauled up from the river
and sloshed against the buildings. Some difficulity in fighting
occurred at the site of several hardware stores, which had 50 tons of
ammunition stored among their inventories. Firefighters had to wait
about an hour until all the ammunition had finished firing.

The fire began four blocks north of Pioneer Square in a cabinet shop
where someone had overturned a pot of burning glue. The hot glue hit
some shavings and then the roof.

The fire got out of hand because the city's water system relied on the
comings and goings of the tide, and the tide was low when the fire
struck. As a result, little water was available through the water
system's fire hydrants , permitting the fire to burn, aided by winds
from the north, for hours until it could be brought under control.

http://www.firewise.org/pubs/wnn/vol12/no2/pp-07.html

And here's an interesting read on who is/isn't responsible for the
melee:

http://www.magoo.com/hugh/fire.html
--

jan

"During the campaign the president did not express, as you put it,
disdain for nation-building ...."

1999 -- Childless Men Inflagration: Maggie revived after rescusitation.

2000 -- Marnie-Lilypond--usenet.kooks Blaze -- Po, Penny, remains never
recovered, damaged confined to the perimeter.

2003 -- Desi Plastics Factory Inferno & Jesica Santillan's Family B-B-Q --
Vanished in the blaze:  Disco Dancing, Malicious and Ignorant Sacks of Lying
Shit, Xenophobes GMS and Desi<hic>lets.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_rome/

Tacitus is the source for the "fiddling" legend. Nero claims the Christians
did it. Suetonius, following Tacitus, blames Nero himself and claims he
only fled the city when the fire got completely out of control. No mention
of any fiddle playing, but as I recall, he mentioned something about him
singing some hymn and playing a lyre. Pretty lousy fire marshal, our
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. I personally think he set it. A guy who
idolized his uncle Caligula is pretty much capable of anything.

RstJ

RstJ

The MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
The New York City upstairs club fire that killed large number of people
from El Salvador (?)
The hotel fire set in Puerto Rico that killed many was blamed on
disgruntled employees trying to form a union.
The road tunnel fires in Switzerland and Italy killed scores.
A 1930 fire at the Ohio Pententiary in Columbus killed 322 inmates

If one wants to include fire-sparked explosions with ensuing fire death
and  damage:
The Halifax Explosion (a ship collision) of 1917 killed 2,000; and the
Texas City, Texas explosion on April 16, 1947, sparked by a ship fire,
took more than 600 lives.

"When the British raided Washington on Aug. 24, 1814, they torched the
White House, and the blaze gutted the interior and damaged part of the
exterior. Dolly Madison was able to salvage some items, including the
Declaration of Independence and the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of
George Washington."

 http://www.theplumber.com/white.html

--

jan

"During the campaign the president did not express, as you put it,
disdain for nation-building ...."

Written about by John Maclean, son of Norman Maclean who wrote about the
Mann Gulch Fire (1948), a very similar fire, in his book "Young Men and
Fire."

Here's some links:

http://www.esb.act.gov.au/firebreak/southcanyon.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0119184/english/historical_fires_storm...

Good luck!

--
Coyote

Painted Cave fire in Santa Barbara County, June 1990.  500 homes were
burned.  I think this is the fire that Jane Fonda paid for private
firefighters to save her home.  Also Reagan has or had a spread here.
Michael Jackson now lives in this area.

I read about this.  It was a Catholic school and the nuns wouldn't allow the
fire alarm to be pulled because only some lead nun was allowed to pull it and
she couldn't be found.

<July 1944 - Hartford, Connecticut - fire in the great tent of the Ringling Brs
Circus - 168 dead.>

I saw this one on the one of the educational cable stations.  It was
horrendous. They had bodies laid out in a gym or something like that and some
of them were so hideously burned that they didn't even look like human beings.
One little girl took 50 years to be identified and they're still not 100% sure.
Melted burning stuff was raining down on people as they tried to get out and
they formed a bottleneck of bodies. One boy cut the tent and made a door out;
even with this, many of the people were like wild animals with panic and
couldn't logic a way out.  

Isn't this the one set by a fire inspector?