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List of town and city fires

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This is a list of major urban conflagrations. Before the 20th century, fires were a major hazard to urban areas and the cause of massive amounts of damage to cities.

For notable fires that involved a single structure, see list of building or structure fires. Other lists record wildfires (including forest fires) and transportation fires, though those that caused significant urban damage also appear on that list.

Antiquity through Middle Ages

16th century

17th century

Great Fire of London, 1666
  • 1666 – Great Fire of London, which originated in a baker's shop on Pudding Lane and destroyed much of London.
  • 1675 – Great Fire of Northampton, England. The blaze was caused by sparks from an open fire in St. Mary's Street near Northampton castle. In 6 hours it devastated the town centre, destroying about 600 buildings (three-quarters of the town) including All Saints church. 11 people died and about 700 families were made homeless.
  • 1676 – Jamestown, Virginia was burned by Nathaniel Bacon and his followers during Bacon's Rebellion to prevent Governor Berkley from using it as a base.
  • 1677 – Fire of Rostock destroys 700 houses and accelerates the city's economic decline at the end of the Hanseatic period.
  • 1678 – Hardegsen experienced a fire during the Christmas fair that destroyed most of the town centre. There were no injuries as people were in church.
  • 1684 – Toompea (part of modern Tallinn), a fire destroyed most of the hilltop-town.
  • 1689 – Skopje, present-day capital of the Republic of Macedonia, is burned.
  • 1692 – Two-thirds of Usingen is razed, later replaced by a baroque town centre.
  • 1694 – Great Fire of Warwick, England
  • 1696 – St. John's, Newfoundland, and 35 other settlements were burned by French forces under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville.

18th century

19th century

1800s

  • 1805 – Detroit, Michigan, then a wooden frontier settlement, burned except for a river warehouse.

1810s

1820s

1830s

1840s

  • 1842 – Hamburg fire, about a quarter of the inner city destroyed, 51 killed, and an estimated 20,000 homeless.
Views of Pittsburgh the day after the 1845 Great Fire. Detail from William Coventry Wall print, "Great Conflagration at Pittsburgh".

1850s

  • 1850 – Fire in Kraków, Poland, affected 10% of the city area.
  • 1851 – San Francisco Fire of 1851 destroyed 2,000 buildings.
  • 1852 – Vaasa, Finland
  • 1852 – Great Fire in Montreal left 10,000 of the city's 57,000 residents homeless.[11]
  • 1854 – The Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead, started by a spectacular explosion, killed 53 and levelled substantial property in both towns.
  • 1858 – A large fire in Auckland, New Zealand, destroyed 3 hotels, 20 shops, 17 houses, the police station, theatre, post office and several other buildings in the centre of town. At the time Auckland had a population of 1,500.

1860s

1870s

  • 1870 – Fire in Medina, Ohio, started in a wooden building with a barber shop and consumed all but two blocks of the business district, nearly wiping out the entire town.
  • 1871 – Strong winds fed several simultaneous fires in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois on October 8–9:
  • 1872 – Great Boston Fire of 1872, destroyed 776 buildings and killed at least 20 people.
  • 1874 – Chicago Fire of 1874, July 14, was in some respects very similar to the 1871 fire, but was stopped by a new fire-proof wall. It destroyed 812 structures and killed 20 people.
  • 1875 – Great Whiskey Fire, Dublin, 18 June, killed 13 people, and destroyed a malt house, a bonded warehouse, houses and a tannery in Mill Street and Chamber Street.
  • 1877 – Paris, Texas, the first of three fires that destroyed much of the town.
  • 1877 – Saint John, New Brunswick, fire destroyed 1,600 buildings.
  • 1878 – The Great Fire of Hong Kong[12] destroyed 350 to 400 buildings across more than 10 acres (40,000 m2) of central Hong Kong.
  • 1879 – Hakodate fire, Hakodate, Hokkaidō, Japan, caused 67 fatalities, 20,000 homeless.[13]

1880s

City of St. John's after the Great Fire of 1892

1890s

20th century

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

  • 1940–1945 – Air raids during World War II resulted in many major city fires:
  • 1941 – The great fire of Santander, Spain, destroyed the greater part of the medieval town centre.
  • 1944 – Destruction of Warsaw by the German army and Waffen SS, as a reprisal for the Warsaw Uprising, included the deliberate burning of many buildings.[21]
  • 1946 – Bandung, a city in West Java, Indonesia, was burned on March 24 by Indonesians to prevent the Dutch from retaking the city, an event called "Bandung sea of fire".
  • 1947 – Texas City Disaster, two ships explode, igniting fires throughout the city and chemical works, 460–600 killed.
  • 1948 – Fukui earthquake with fire, 46,000 buildings and houses lost on June 28.
  • 1949 – A fire burned for 18 hours in Chongqing's waterfront and banking district, on September 2, killed 2865 people[22] and left more than 100,000 homeless. 7,000 buildings were destroyed.[23]

1950s

1960s

1970s

  • 1973 – Second Great Chelsea, Massachusetts, fire on October 14 destroyed 18 city blocks.
  • 1974 – Chelsea, Massachusetts, a May 24 fire at the American Barrel Company spread to several other businesses in a two block area.

1980s

1990s

21st century

2000s

  • 2001 – Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Of the initial casualties, approximately 2,600 deaths (including 343 firefighters and 71 law enforcement officers) were caused by fires that followed the crashes of jetliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York. At the Pentagon in Washington, DC, 125 people were killed by the plane crash and subsequent fire.
  • 2002 – Lagos armoury explosion caused fires in Northern Lagos, Nigeria, which killed at least 1,100 people.
  • 2002 – Edinburgh Cowgate fire, Scotland, 150 people fled their homes but there were no injuries.[31]
  • 2002 – Rodeo-Chediski fire
  • 2003 – Canberra bushfires killed 4 and destroyed over 500 homes
  • 2003 – Cedar Fire, San Diego, second-largest California brush fire that killed 15 and destroyed 2,232 homes.
  • 2004 – The great fire of carraroe co.galway Ireland also known as 23/4 where there was the loss of Jarlath Depoar the former rugby champion who got lost in the smoke.[citation needed]
  • 2007 – Greek forest fires destroyed 2,100 buildings.
  • 2008 – Camden Market Fire, which caused severe damage to one of North London's most famous shopping districts.
  • 2009 – February Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria, Australia, resulted in 173 deaths

2010s

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Daily Life in China by Jacques Gernet, 34–35
  2. ^ "17 June 1652 - Great Fire of Glasgow". glasgowlife.org.uk. Retrieved 5 July 2017.
  3. ^ Blusse, Leonard & Cynthia Vaillé (2005). The Desjima Dagregisters, Volume XII 1650–1660. Leiden
  4. ^ "Cultural Properties", Official site, Nagasaki: Thomeizan Kofukuji, retrieved 23 December 2016
  5. ^ Screech, Timon. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822, pp. 152-154, 249–250;
  6. ^ Caminate Guiada Centro Historico de Ponce: Calle Isabel II. (In Spanish). Retrieved December 4, 2009. Archived March 16, 2010, at WebCite
  7. ^ a b c Verdadera y Autentica Historia de la Ciudad de Ponce.' By Dr. Eduardo Neumann. 1913. (In Spanish) Reprinted by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (1987)Page 194.
  8. ^ a b c Puerto Rico. Cuerpo de Bomberos. Historia. Datos Historicos. (In Spanish) Archived 2005-12-15 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved February 14, 2010.
  9. ^ E. Merton Coulter, "The Great Savannah Fire of 1820", Georgia Historical Quarterly 23:1–27
  10. ^ James C. Massey, Exec. Vice Pres., and Shirley Maxwell, Associate, National Preservation Institute (National Building Museum) Washington, D.C. and the Federal Historic Preservation Office, U.S. Department of the Treasury. (Washington, D.C.) January 7, 1988. In National Register of Historic Places Registration Form—U.S. Custom House, Ponce. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. (Washington, D.C.) Section 8, Page 3. Listing Reference Number 88000073. February 10, 1988.
  11. ^ Kalbfleisch, John (12 July 2003). "The Great Fire of Montreal". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  12. ^ Adam Nebbs (2010-09-20). "The Great Fire of Hong Kong". Open Library. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
  13. ^ Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. (1879). "Commercial Reports by Her Majesty's Consuls in Japan", Parliamentary papers, Volume 91, pp. 2–5.
  14. ^ Great Spokane Fire of 1889
  15. ^ "Great Lynn Fire of 1889". Celebrateboston.com. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
  16. ^ "25 de Enero Fire. Noticias Online. Ponce conmemora 110 años de los héroes del Polvorín, (In Spanish). By Jose Fernandez Colon. Published January 24, 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2009". Noticiasonline.com. 2009-01-24. Archived from the original on February 2, 2015. Retrieved 2013-09-16. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ "Great 1902 Confligration". www.patersonfirehistory.com. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
  18. ^ James, Charles D. (2002). "The 1923 Tokyo Earthquake and Fire" (PDF). Nisee.berkeley.edu. pp. 2–3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-03-16. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ "Item Display". usg.edu. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  20. ^ Special Correspondent (3 September 1939). "World War 2: 1,500 reported dead as German war planes drop bombs in Poland". The Telegraph. Retrieved 30 September 2016. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  21. ^ Editors. "Warsaw Uprising". Retrieved 30 September 2016. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |encyclopedia= ignored (help)
  22. ^ Death Toll in Chungking Fire Is Put at 2,865, Chicago Daily Tribune (October 3, 1949)
  23. ^ New blows suffered by Chiang regime, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (September 5, 1949)
  24. ^ a b c Fung, May; So, Sanna (1997-01-26). "Black days in HK's history". The Standard. Hong Kong. Archived from the original on 2014-03-26. Retrieved 2011-11-03. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  25. ^ Salvini, Emil R. (June 30, 2009). "The Freeman Pier Fire- 1955– Seaside". Tales of the New Jersey Shore and its Environs.
  26. ^ "Seaside begins rebuilding as fire ashes cool". The Star-Ledger. Seaside Heights. 1955.
  27. ^ "Fire Loss High, Insurance Low; Concessions Listed". Seaside Heights. 1955.
  28. ^ "California Wildfires – 1961 Bel Air-Brentwood fire – Bel Air Brush Wildfire – Stone Canyon, Roscomare Rd". Cccarto.com. 1961-11-06. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
  29. ^ [1][dead link]
  30. ^ Tymstra, The Chinchaga Firestorm (1950), p. 63-4
  31. ^ Seenan, Gerard (8 December 2002). "Fire devastates Edinburgh's Old Town". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
  32. ^ Tina Santos (19 April 2011). "Makati fire displaces 2,500 families". Philippine Daily Inquirer.
  33. ^ Lee, Amanda (2013-07-05). "Yarnell Hill Fire cut off Hotshots' access to safety zone | azfamily.com Phoenix". Azfamily.com. Archived from the original on 2013-07-08. Retrieved 2013-09-16. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  34. ^ "The Basics". www.YarnellFallenFireFighters.com. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
  35. ^ "Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec" (PDF). mmarail.com. 2013-07-06. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  36. ^ "Search resumes in Lac-Mégantic for 5 still missing". cbc.ca/. 2013-07-21. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  37. ^ "Canada train derailment: Death toll at 50; Lac-Megantic residents jeer rail CEO". Associated Press. 2013-07-11. Retrieved 2013-07-11.
  38. ^ Double Down (September 12, 2013). "Seaside Businesses Impacted by the Boardwalk Fire". WKXW, New Jersey 101.5 FM Radio.
  39. ^ "Fort McMurray fire largely contained thanks to rain, firefighters' efforts". www.cbc.ca. Retrieved 2016-06-13.
  40. ^ "Russia fire: Children killed in Kemerovo shopping centre blaze". BBC News. 25 March 2018. Retrieved 25 March 2018. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  41. ^ "Fire tragedy at Kemerovo shopping mall leaves at least 64 dead". TASS. 26 March 2018.