12/11/2025
From our good friend and long time supporter - Jon Nisja - Historian Extraordinaire.
December has had its share of tragic fires – both in Minnesota and across the U.S. Here are some of the fire incidents:
On 12/1/1889 the Minneapolis, Minnesota Tribune Building fire killed seven in the eight-story brick building at the corner of First Avenue South and Fourth Street, which printed three daily, and a weekly newspaper. The building had been considered dangerous, not only in case of fire but in its apparently loose make-up construction; the use of heavy machinery in the job room frequently shook the building. There was only one fire escape, located on the north side of the building, where the fire started, one interior narrow spiral stairway, that followed the elevator shaft from top to bottom of the building, and one ordinary size elevator. The Trades and Labor Assembly petitioned the owners, the Fire Department, and the city to have the building put in the proper condition or condemned, but no action or repairs occurred. Around 10:00 p.m. the fire alarm was sounded but was not regarded seriously, although many of them started down the stairs. The fire started in the unoccupied Union League Club room near the elevator shaft. In an attempt to extinguish the fire, a window was opened, bringing in a draught of fresh air that caused flames to shoot across the hall and up the elevator shaft cutting off the escape of those who had delayed. The fire was brought under control at about 2 o'clock.
On December 1, 1958 a fire at Our Lady of Angels School in Chicago killed 92 students and three nuns. At the time of the fire, 400 of the over 1,000 schools in Chicago were deemed to need fire sprinkler protection but only two had sprinkler systems. Several books have been published about the fire and there is even a website exclusively about the fire. The famous photo of a firefighter carrying a dead 10-year-old boy from the building served as a fire prevention poster across the U.S. NFPA President Percy Bugbee was quoted after the fire: “There are no new lessons to be learned from this fire; only old lessons that tragically went unheeded.”
Photo: Firefighter Richard Scheidt carrying the body of John Michael Jajkowski, Jr. from the school.
Additional resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_the_Angels_School_fire
https://olafire.com/FireSummary.asp
https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-stories/angels-too-soon/video?v=full-ep
Michele McBride was a 13-year-old girl who was badly burned in the fire. She wrote a book in the late 1970s on her experiences. Here is an excerpt from her book “The Fire That Will Not Die”:
“I wish I could say that it was bravery or superhuman courage or some inner heaven-sent strength that sustained me through the agony, but I cannot. It was anger, raging anger that made me survive. I was angry at the lack of authority in my classroom when the fire broke out. I was angry because the firemen’s ladders fell short of my classroom windows. I was angry because I lost the skin of my birthright. I was angry because I had to endure the ravages of pain that I thought were reserved for those condemned to the torments of Hell. I was angry for having lived, and I was angry at those who died and left me behind. I was angry at being treated like a child after I had witnessed millions of years of burning all condensed into a single moment. Hellfire, the witches of Salem, the melting skin of Hiroshima – I saw them all, and yet I never left my classroom.”
For more information, please see the links above or consider reading one of the many books about Our Lady of Angels School Fire:
• The Fire That Will Not Die by Michele McBride
• To Sleep With The Angels by David Cowan and John Kuenster
• Remembrances of the Angels by John Kuenster
On December 2, 2016 the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland, California kills 36. The former warehouse had been illegally converted into artist / loft / living spaces. The first firefighters, from Engine 13 whose station was one-and-a-half blocks away, reached the warehouse at 11:27 p.m., within three minutes of the first 911 call. Their only access was a man-door that had been cut through a commercial steel roll-up door. The fire spread extremely quickly and generated heavy, deadly smoke. Several factors prevented visitors to the second floor from learning of the fire and impeded their escape from it. Most importantly, there were no fire alarms, fire sprinklers, or smoke alarms in the building. Once the fire was detected, the stairwells and their position relative to exits, the makeshift construction, and the huge fuel load created by the furnishings made it difficult to survive long enough to escape.
On 12/4/1881 two Minneapolis, Minnesota firefighters died fighting a fire that destroyed four flour mills on 1st Street and 6th (Portland) Avenue South. “Flames starting in the Pillsbury "B" Mill had spread to the Excelsior Mill south of it and were threatening the Minneapolis Mill to the north.” The two firefighters “were on 1st Street when a violent dust explosion in the Minneapolis Mill blew out its walls, burying them in the debris.”
A fire at the Brooklyn Theater in Brooklyn, NY on 12/5/1876 killed 295 people.
119 people died in Atlanta’s Winecoff Hotel fire on 12/7/1946. This is the largest loss of life from a hotel fire. The building was advertised as “fireproof”. The Winecoff Hotel fire, along with a few other hotel fires of that decade, led fire safety professionals to look at the role that interior furnishings and finishes were playing in building fires and to recognize that building construction is rarely a factor in the early stages of a fire. These fires also led then-President Harry Truman to convene the President’s Conference on Fire Prevention in 1947. Here are some of these other fires:
• 1/3/1940 – Marlborough Hotel – Minneapolis – 19 killed, 40 injured
• 9/7/1943 – Gulf Hotel – Houston, TX – 55 killed
• 3/28/1944 – New Amsterdam Hotel – San Francisco, CA – 22 killed, 27 injured
• 1/16/1945 – General Clark Hotel – Chicago, IL – 14 killed, 6 injured
• 6/5/1946 – LaSalle Hotel – Chicago, IL – 61 killed, over 200 injured
• 6/19/1946 – Canfield Hotel – Dubuque, IA – 19 killed
• 6/21/1946 – Baker Hotel – Dallas, TX – 10 killed; 38 injured (ammonia leak and explosion)
The Stouffer’s Inn Conference Center in Harrison, NY burned on 12/10/1980, just a few weeks following the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas. There were many calls for sprinkler protection in hotels following these fires.
On 12/11/1998, an explosion and subsequent fire in St. Cloud, MN killed four, injured 11, and destroyed five buildings.
On 12/11/1962 a Raymond, Minnesota firefighter died in the line of duty. “The Gunter Elevator in Raymond burned to the ground in one of the largest, most dangerous fires in village history. Fire departments were called in minutes, from Willmar, Clara City, and Raymond. All three departments fought for hours to save the three-grain bins adjoining the elevator proper. Raymond firefighters remained at the scene all through the night in sub-zero temperatures to make sure the fire would not start up again. The firefighter’s death was the result of a heart attack.”
A fire in Doctor’s Memorial Hospital in Minneapolis, MN on December 23, 1956 killed eight and injured 59 people. http://www.historictwincities.com/this-day-in-history/12-23-1956/ #:~:text=On%20This%20Date%20In%20Twin,fire%20lasting%20only%2010%20minutes.
https://hclib.tumblr.com/post/38650257032/doctors-memorial-eitel-hospital-fire-december
There is a photo of Minneapolis Firefighter Charles Birkeli carrying an infant out of the fire (see below). Tragically, Firefighter Birkeli was killed nine years later in a fire at the Old Dutch potato chip factory in Minneapolis.
On 12/30/1903, 602 people perished in the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago. This was the deadliest fire in U.S. History until the 9/11/2001 World Trade Center terrorist attack. Some additional resources are below, you are encouraged to review the YouTube video which describes the events of the fire and how it led to the development of “panic hardware”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_Theatre_fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNIJ1ToOHtg
A fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s Dupont Plaza killed 97 on December 31, 1986
The Story Behind Von Duprin provides a detailed description of the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire, and how that tragedy would inspire a hardware salesman from In...
