Forest fires

This month’s forest fires in Portugal, which killed 64 people, were the worst in the country’s history. Most of the deaths happened in Pedrógão Grande in the centre of the country when flames swept across a road filled with people trying to escape in their cars.

More than 1,700 Portuguese firefighters fought the blaze along with others from Spain, Morocco, Italy and Canada. Although most reports point to a thunderstorm as the cause, there have been some claims that it was arson.

Probably the deadliest forest fire ever happened in the USA, in Wisconsin on 8 October 1871. It began in the woods after a long dry spell, but was carried on the wind to Peshtigo and other nearby lumber towns on the banks of Lake Michigan, where the sawdust that always clogged the streets provided convenient fuel for the flames.

Peshtigo was burned to the ground, and more than 1,150 people were killed, but because it happened on the very same night as the Great Chicago Fire, it has tended to be rather forgotten.

For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World. See also my posts of 7 February 2009, 3 July 2013, and 7 May 2016. 

London's deadliest fire since the Blitz - another story

On July 19, I blogged about a story in the Express on the Denmark Place fire of 16 August 1980 - an arson attack that killed 37 people  - in which I was quoted.

Now I am also quoted in a story the Independent has written about the blaze - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/denmark-place-arson-why-people-are-still-searching-for-answers-35-years-on-from-one-of-the-biggest-mass-murders-in-our-history-10467987.html

For a long time, the crime was largely ignored by the media, so as it passes its 35th anniversary, it is good to see that being rectified, and Simon Usborne has done a really good job, turning up a lot of material I have not seen before.

Hotel fires

At least 29 people have died in a hotel fire at Suleimaniya in the Kurdish autonomous area of northern Iraq. Among the dead are four children, and a number of foreign oil engineers. Some perished trying to jump from their windows to safety.

It was seven hours before the blaze could be brought under control. Officials say it was caused by an electrical fault, and that there was no indication that it was started deliberately.

Perhaps the worst hotel fire in history was the one that devastated the 15-storey Winecoff in Atlanta, USA on December 7, 1946. Built in 1913, the building had 150 rooms, and was claimed to be “absolutely fireproof”, but it had no fire escape, no fire doors and no sprinklers.

About 160 guests escaped – some through jumping from their windows. Others using this desperate escape method died, and the total death toll was 119. The official reason for the blaze was that a cigarette set fire to a mattress, but some still claim it was arson.

Arson

Police in Australia are questioning two men in connection with the bush fires that have killed at least 180 people, though it is not clear whether they are under suspicion of arson or looting. If many of the fires turn out to be arson, this will be one of the worst cases in recent years, though probably not as deadly as the incident on February 18, 2003, when 198 people died on an underground train in Daegu, South Korea.

The arsonist was an unemployed former taxi driver, who was apparently unhappy about the medical treatment he had received following a stroke, and the fire may have been a failed suicide attempt. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but died in gaol a year later.

A more novel punishment was handed out to an arsonist in the fourth century BC, who destroyed the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus - one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The young man was named Herostratus, and apparently did it so that, in the words of a Roman historian, “his name might be spread through the whole world”. Not only did the authorities execute Herostratus, they also forbade anyone to mention his name under pain of death. The fact that we are still writing about him 2,300 years later suggests this latter penalty was not altogether effective.

The very worst acts of arson, of course, have been committed by armed forces in wars. The Luftwaffe tried the tactic of creating a firestorm – notably in Coventry, where they killed more than 500 people. The same method was adopted with even more deadly effect by the allies, who killed more than 40,000 at Hamburg, a similar number at Dresden, and perhaps 140,000 in Tokyo.