Obscure disasters (formerly "Ever hear of Texas City Disaster...?)

[youtalkfunny]

Is this one famous or obscure? I know it's well known in Boston, I don't know if younger people around the country are familiar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire

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The Cocoanut Grove was a nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts. On November 28, 1942, the fashionable nightclub burned in what remains the deadliest nightclub fire in United States history, killing 492 people and injuring hundreds more. It was also the second-worst single-building fire in American history. The Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago in 1903 killed more (602). The tragedy shocked the nation and briefly replaced World War II news headlines. The fire led to a reform of fire codes and safety standards across the country.

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As is common in panic situations, many patrons attempted to exit through the main entrance, the same way they had come in. However, the building's main entrance was a single revolving door, immediately rendered useless as the panicked crowd scrambled for safety. Bodies piled up behind both sides of the revolving door, jamming it to the extent that firefighters had to dismantle it in order to get inside. Other avenues of escape were similarly useless: side doors had been welded shut to prevent people from leaving without settling their bills. A plate glass window, which could have been smashed for escape, was instead boarded up and unusable as an emergency exit. Other unlocked doors opened inwards, rendering them useless against the crush of people trying to escape.

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The top-ranked Boston College football team had made victory party reservations at the club that evening, but canceled after an upset 55-12 loss to rival Holy Cross dampened their spirits.

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In the year that followed the fire, Massachusetts and other states enacted laws for public establishments which banned flammable decorations and inward-swinging exit doors, required exit signs to be visible at all times, and stated that revolving doors used for egress must either be flanked by at least one normal, outward-swinging door, or retrofitted to permit the individual doors to fold flat to permit free-flowing traffic in a panic situation.

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[youtalkfunny]

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I think a lot of people have forgotten about the 1980 MGM fire in Las Vegas

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I hadn't forgotten the fire--I just never knew about the extent of the casualties.

[soah]

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Construction on the 40-story Hyatt Regency Hotel began in 1978, and the hotel opened in July 1980 after some construction delays.[citation needed] One of the defining features of the hotel was its lobby, which featured a multistory atrium crossed by suspended concrete walkways on the second, third, and fourth levels, with the fourth level walkway directly above the second level walkway.

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On July 17, 1981, approximately 2,000 people had gathered in the atrium to participate in and watch a dance contest. Dozens stood on the walkways. At 7:05 PM, the walkways on the second, third, and fourth floor were packed with visitors as they watched over the active lobby, which was also full of people. The fourth floor bridge was suspended directly over the second floor bridge, with the third floor walkway set off to the side several meters away from the other two. Construction issues led to a subtle but flawed design change that doubled the load on the connection between the fourth floor walkway support beams and the tie rods carrying the weight of the second floor walkway. This new design could barely handle the dead load weight of the structure itself, much less the weight of the spectators standing on it. The connection failed and both walkways crashed onto the lobby, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_R...lkway_collapse

[ChipWrecked]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_R...lkway_collapse

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My college roommate was in a mechanical engineering class a year or two after this. Somebody in the class was whining that an exam should have been graded on the curve.

The professor said, "They probably graded the people who designed the Kansas City Hyatt on the curve."

[youtalkfunny]

The KC hotel lobby is another one where I remember the event, but not the numbers.

As I read the post, I'm thinking, "Yeah, I remember that...lobby, dance contest, crowded catwalks, faulty design...HOW MANY PEOPLE GOT KILLED????"

Either that, or 300+ casualties meant nothing to me when I was a kid, but it shakes me today.

[ChipWrecked]

I was on the road the night it happened. Every time the news came on the radio the body count was higher. It was chilling.

[KotOD]

Anyone ever hear of the Peshtigo Fire?

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wioconto/Fire.htm
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=889

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It was the largest natural fire in the history of the United States. By some estimates, nearly two thousand people were killed, and tens of thousands were left injured and homeless. The total destruction included entire cites, factories, mills, farms and hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland in two states. Yet, because it happened on the same day as a terrible, but far less devastating fire in a well publicized city to the south, little is known of this tragic disaster. But the scars of that October 8th night in 1871 are painfully visible nearly 130 years later, both on the land, and in the families who were there.

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Superheated winds and tornadoes pulled the heated air upward into the sky, allowing cooler air from Canada and the Western United States to rush in to fill the vacuum. At first these counter winds fed more oxygen to the fire, until ultimately the sucking force was strong enough to cause a major change in wind direction. The fire was blown back onto itself, and it soon starved from a lack of fresh fuel. A mere ninety minutes had passed since the inferno's arrival, but the entire town of Peshtigo had been reduced to smoldering rubble.

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More than 1,200 souls had perished in the Peshtigo Fire, although the true total will never be known due to the town records being destroyed in the blaze. It destroyed every building in town, save one newly-erected building with wood too green to burn. More than 1.25 million acres of forest and prairie were scorched before the winds died down and the fire burned itself out, and the fire caused millions of dollars in damage. Over 350 victims of the fire were buried together in a mass grave, their remnants too charred to be identified.

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A witness account:

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"By now the air was literally on fire, scattering its agony throughout the town. Men, women, and children, clad in nightgowns and caps, shrieked with horror when they saw their loved ones burned alive. The entire town was a blazing inferno; there was only one escape; the river! Thousands of people… pressed on with terror in their eyes, going further into the river, where they remained the next day and night. Families were separated; little babies tried desperately to secure footing in the mucky river… yet the river wasn't even safe, for swooping sparks and bits of fire dropped out of the sky burning entire bodies with an instant sweep!"

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[daveT]

I don't know what possessed me to think of sewage

A sewage reservoir burst next to a village in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 20 in a torrent of putrid water and waste that buried their homes, officials said.

Two children, aged one and two, were among the dead in Gaza's small Bedouin Village when the sewage overflowed in what one resident called a man-made tsunami.

"WAVES LIKE MOUNTAINS"

[Joeyflops]

This one isn't that exciting , but my mom has told me about being awakened by the explosion when she was a kid.

The Roseburg (Oregon) Blast


On 7 August 1959, at approximately 1:00 am, the Gerretsen Building Supply Company caught fire. Firefighters soon arrived at the building, located near Oak and Pine street, to extinguish the fire. Earlier in the evening, a truck driver for the Pacific Powder Company, George Rutherford, had parked his explosives truck in front of the building, a fact which went unnoticed until shortly before the truck exploded, destroying buildings in an eight-block radius and severely damaging 30 more blocks.

The truck was loaded with two tons of dynamite and 4½ tons of the blasting agent nitro carbo nitrate. Rutherford had parked the truck after arranging his delivery for the following morning, despite warnings given to the Pacific Powder Company two days earlier not to leave such trucks unattended or park them in "congested areas." Fourteen people died in the blast and fire and 125 were injured. Damage was estimated at ten to twelve million dollars; the Powder company was eventually made to pay $1.2 million dollars in civil damages, but was acquitted of criminal wrongdoing.

Roseburg's downtown was rebuilt, primarily by businesses using money collected from insurance claims. The city built a new bridge over the South Umpqua River on parcels affected by the disaster. Since the incident, it is commonly referred to as the "Roseburg Blast" or simply "The Blast." In 2005, SOPTV produced a documentary examining the Blast and the experiences of those who were involved or witnessed it, entitled The Roseburg Blast: A Catastrophe and Its Heroes.

[Jailblazers]

Not really a disaster, but this invasion by mice practically destroyed this one farm in Australia. Pretty disgusting. Mice world record

Also, wtf shout-out to daughter trying to eat one. LOL

Edit: Also the Tacoma Bridge collapse is pretty interesting. Who would've thought that solid concrete and metal could bend so easily? Tacoma Bridge