New Year firework disasters

It now seems that sparklers being carried too close to the ceiling was the cause of the New Year fire in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.  At least 40 people are thought to have been killed in the blaze in a bar.

Fireworks have been involved in a number of New Year accidents. On the first day of 2001, 350 young people had packed into three cafes in a building in the picturesque Dutch fishing village of Volendam, when sparklers set fire to ceiling decorations that had not been treated with flame retardants. 14 people died. 

One of the deadliest firework accidents ever happened in the run-up to the next New Year celebrations. The narrow streets of the Mesa Redonda shopping area in Peru's capital, Lima, were lined with wood and adobe buildings, and on 29 December 2001, hundreds had flocked there to buy fireworks for New Year.

Many traders were selling, and the ground was covered with gunpowder that had fallen from fireworks being unloaded. Witnesses said the blaze started as one trader was demonstrating his wares. It spread rapidly, destroying five blocks in a few minutes, and killing nearly 300 people. 

For more on firework accidents, see my book A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day. (Reaktion Books)

The world's deadliest tower block fires

A retired judge, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, has been appointed to head the official inquiry into London’s Grenfell Tower fire in which at least 79 people died, while the police say they are investigating any criminal offences that may have been committed.

The deadliest ever fire in a tower block (or blocks) was the result of the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, which cost more than 2,300 lives, but the worst accidental fire was probably the one that raged through the 25-storey Joelma office building in Sao Paulo, Brazil on 1 February 1974. (Grenfell Tower had 24 storeys.)

The blaze happened just a few weeks after the disaster movie, The Towering Inferno, was released, and it became known as ‘the real Towering Inferno’. It was started by an electrical fault on the 11^th floor, and spread rapidly thanks to the ready availability of combustible materials such as paper, plastics and wooden walls and furniture.

When the blaze began, there were more than 750 people in the building. More than 170 fled to the roof, but the heat and smoke foiled a helicopter rescue, and about 40 were killed jumping down or trying to get to firemen’s ladders out of reach below them. Altogether up to 189 people died. 

AIDS - are we winning the war?

Thirty years ago, I was one of the first foreign television reporters to report on AIDS in Africa. At that time, the disease was a death sentence. There was no effective treatment. But, at a speed that surprised quite a few in the medical profession, effective drugs began to appear, and, though still dangerous, the virus ceased to look all-conquering.

Now the United Nations says life expectancy of those with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, has grown by 20 years since 2001, thanks to a sharp increase in access to effective drugs, the price of which have fallen dramatically. In 2000, the cost per year was $14,000. Now it is just $100.

In 2000, fewer than 700,000 of those with the virus were getting effective treatment. Now the figure is 15 million. The executive director of the UN’s AIDS programme, Michel Sidibé (pictured), describes this as ‘one of the greatest achievements in the history of global health.’

Not that everything in the garden is rosy. Up to 41.4 million are now infected by the virus, the majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. So most are not getting access to treatment, and experts warn that if we do not invest more money, deaths will start increasing again. 

Mystery of another civil airliner shot down over Ukraine

We are still no nearer to knowing exactly who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine (see my blog of July 20), and perhaps we never will be, but it was not the first civil airliner to be shot down over the country.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberia Airlines Tupelov Tu-154 (similar pictured) was hit by what was believed to be a Ukrainian missile while en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Russia, and crashed into the Black Sea. None of the 78 people on board survived.

With the crash coming so soon after 9/11, the favourite explanation at first was terrorism, but Ukraine eventually admitted the aircraft had been hit by one of its missiles that had gone astray during a military exercise, and paid compensation to victims’ families.

Subsequently, though, the Ukrainian government denied responsibility for the disaster, and a claim against it by Siberia Airlines remains unresolved. 

Football disasters

At least 22 football fans have been killed in a stampede at the Ivory Coast’s World Cup qualifying match against Malawi in Abidjan. As with the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, it seems that latecomers, anxious not to miss the start of the game, pressed in on those already inside the ground.

The stadium had recently been refurbished, but a wall collapsed and there was panic, with some reporting that police fired tear gas to try to control the crowd. The game went ahead and the Ivory Coast won 5-0.

Africa’s worst football disaster came in 2001 at the end of a local derby between two Accra teams in Ghana. Supporters of the losing side mounted a demonstration, and police fired tear gas. As spectators tried to flee from the stadium, they found many of the exits locked. A total of 126 people died.

The worst football disaster of all happened in Lima, Peru in 1964, when more than 300 were killed in a riot over a disallowed goal. See also my blog of January 13th.