When man was first introduced to fire – ignited by lightning – he realised that it could warm him on cold days and nights, and that food cooked over it was better. These were the pleasant qualities of fire. It never occurred to him that it might one day become his enemy and burn everything he owned. But then it was still the case that he had nothing to lose but his bare life. Fire was the driving force of the civilisation process and a prerequisite for the development of man, and only when it got out of man’s control did it become his worst enemy. It could devour and destroy everything in its path.
Around 400,000 years ago, our ancestors managed to domesticate fire, keep it in the hearth and make it useful. At that time, our ancestors had no idea how to start one. They depended on natural events such as lightning and fires. No one knows when man started rubbing two flint stones or pieces of wood against each other and using the resulting sparks to set fire to firewood or straw.
Fire was considered a symbol of divinity at the beginning of our lineage, and as it still usually came from the sky, it was also a gift from God. According to legend, it was the Titan Prometheus who tried to trick Zeus into bringing fire to mankind. As punishment, Zeus nailed him to a rock and the eagle pecked at his liver every day, but it grew back overnight. When man was able to start the fire himself, the fear of this divine gift, which represented God’s wrath and anger, disappeared. But with the fire came its curse. Man handled it carelessly and unknowingly started fires, harming himself in the process. His pastures and fields burned, his livestock fled, and famine became his daily routine.
The ancient Romans used a special water pump to extinguish fires, and only gradually did people realise that fires could be prevented by careful handling, fire-proof construction and proper regulations. Hydrants were introduced after 1666, when a great fire destroyed almost all of London, and this was also the time when they started to think about monetary insurance against fires. The nineteenth century already boasted a pump where water was forced into a pipe by steam. It was also the time when Napoleon founded the first professional fire brigade, and in 1903 the first petrol-engined fire engine appeared. So development was slow but steady.
Contemporaries never doubted that the fire that broke out in Rome on 19 July 64 AD was caused by the Emperor Nero himself. What drove him to do such a crazy thing has never been explained. His palace, which occupied two of Rome’s seven hills, was not to his liking. Moreover, many of the buildings in Rome were very old and in a dilapidated state, and this greatly disturbed the mad ruler, who had killed his half-brother, mother and sister, and had similarly crucified many of his rivals. The fire, which, according to the official explanation, started for unexplained reasons in a shopping street near the Great Circus (Circus Maximus), quickly spread to a nearby residential area and from there to other parts of the city.
Much to the astonishment of the residents, no one has tried to restrict it. Anyone who did so was mercilessly killed by savage gangs. They were said to have thrown burning torches at houses, claiming that someone had ordered them to do so. Soon the fire engulfed the whole town and people were running for their lives. All that was left of the shrines and houses were smoking ruins.
Meanwhile, Nero, who had arrived in the coastal city of Actium two days before the fire, returned to Rome and watched the fire from a tower in the garden of his Roman palace. He was so overwhelmed by the grandeur of the scene and the beauty of the flames that he took up his lyre, hummed and recited verses from the Fall of Troy. His dream had come true. Instead of watching imaginary scenes from a theatre box in an amphitheatre, a real catastrophe was unfolding before his eyes.
The fire stopped after six days and seven nights, when residents started demolishing the buildings themselves to prevent the fire from spreading. Three of the city’s 14 districts were completely destroyed, and only the smoking ruins of seven remained. Nero had Rome rebuilt after the fire, taking care to ensure that fire regulations were followed. Houses had to be at least partly built of stone and constructed to allow quick access to all parts of the city. Officially, Christians were blamed for the fire in Rome, so they were crucified en masse and thrown to wild beasts for food in the circus. But after the city was rebuilt, Nero breathed a sigh of relief: “Now I can finally start living like a man.”
Many centuries later, another capital was burning, on the other side of the world, in distant Russia. Napoleon’s troops entered Moscow in the early afternoon of 12 September 1812. Little did the Emperor know then that this city would also be the place of the greatest disappointment of his life. Soon afterwards, rumours spread that the city had been abandoned. But the same night, a fire broke out. Napoleon, who bloodily needed Moscow as a winter base, thought at first that it had been started by careless French soldiers looting empty houses. But by 2am, the city centre was on fire too, and the blaze soon spread to half of Moscow. Churches, warehouses, squares and artisans’ workshops were on fire. A gunpowder warehouse also went up in flames.
The burning of Moscow was a patriotic act of self-destruction. The Commissar of Police of Moscow was ordered to burn the city if French troops entered. Even before the French invaded, the Russians had freed all the prisoners and equipped them with flammable material in the utmost secrecy.
The town was still burning on 15 September. The Kremlin itself and the city centre were still intact. But the next morning, the flames reached the Kremlin walls and Napoleon had to retreat from the buildings. Stunned by the terrible scene he was witnessing from the Kremlin window, the Emperor exclaimed, “They are burning themselves! What determination! You barbarians!” He had to leave the Kremlin less than 24 hours after his foot had set foot in it and take refuge in the Petrovsky Palace, which was still intact. But the fire was still raging and the carpet of fire over Moscow was almost two kilometres long.
After four days, Napoleon left Moscow with only a quarter of the buildings intact. French troops were, of course, frantically searching for the arsonists, and as the Emperor was leaving Moscow, he wrote a letter to Tsar Alexander of Russia, informing him that he had ordered 400 arsonists to be shot. On 18 September, the rain started to fall and only then were the French troops able to return to the capital. A month later, snow began to fall and Napoleon ordered a retreat to France, as the burnt city could no longer offer him winter shelter.
Parties in flames
In the decades that followed, mankind stopped burning down capitals, because big cities in particular were pleasant places to live in and had no shortage of entertainment. A deserted and burnt capital no longer tempted anyone, not even the enemy. Everyone who entered it, whether native or foreigner, wanted to have fun. But fate often interrupted these human pleasures. At the end of the 19th century, Vienna was also surrounded by the glow of fun, and this attractive power attracted Sigmund Freud, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and other musical artists. In the evening it was pleasant to wander around the Schottenring, surrounded by magnificent palaces.
In 1881, just eight years after the opening of the famous Ringtheatre, Jacques Offenbach’s romantic opera The Tales of Hoffmann was performed there on 8 December. The theatre was to be packed to the rafters for the opening night, and the newspapers were already full of rave reviews of the opera. Vienna audiences were notoriously impatient, and half an hour before the performance, which was due to start at 7 pm, only a third of the seats were occupied, and carriages were still bringing in visitors.
The orchestra was about to start and the first sounds were heard when suddenly flames appeared behind the red curtain of the barge. The fringes on the stage curtain caught fire. Immediately, panic broke out and people scrambled for the exits, so that soon all the doors were almost impassable. Only those who had seats in the boxes were able to escape immediately, everyone else was desperately fighting for their lives. The fire had reached the gas pipes, so that the lamps pointing the way to the exits were extinguished and people were wandering the corridors looking for a way out.
Nobody grabbed a fire extinguisher and nobody remembered to lower the stage curtain, which every theatre had as a fire protection. The electric fire alarm phone was no longer working and the fire brigade was notified verbally. When they arrived at the theatre, they found no hydrants in the darkness and smoke, stumbling over bodies, realising that the fire ladders were too short and that they had no rescue firefighting canvases with them. Desperate visitors jumped out of windows into the crowd of curious onlookers. Hundreds of people found themselves dead inside the theatre. “It was as hot as a blast furnace and the stench of singed hair and charred human flesh hit my nostrils with a warm, sweet smell,” said one eyewitness.
Archduke Albrecht, City Commandant Filipovič and Prime Minister Count Taaffe arrived at the theatre. They tried to calm the excited crowd, but when rumours spread that there were still dead bodies in the corridors, Count Taaffe wandered for hours through the stinking corridors, carrying the corpses out of the rubble. The firemen worked until the next morning to put out all the flames. Desperate relatives and acquaintances flooded police stations and hospitals looking for the missing. The corridors of the hospitals were full of corpses, some appearing unharmed on the outside, others completely charred or melted. The fire killed 896 people and burned hundreds more.
The newspapers savagely attacked the theatre’s director Jauner, accusing him of not having briefed the staff well enough on safety measures. He was also reproached for being one of the first to escape from the fire. Jauner served four months in prison and committed suicide shortly after his return.
The second fire, which completely destroyed a building frequented by curious visitors, was at Madame Tussauds, London’s wax museum. On 12 March 1925, at around 10 pm, few passers-by noticed a reddish light in the windows. The electrical cable in the main hall had burnt out and within minutes the fire had engulfed most of the then wooden building. Firefighters arrived after 45 minutes and extinguished the fire with 25 water pumps. The smell of melting figures and the large amount of smoke made it difficult to extinguish.
The beautiful dresses of kings and princesses, made from the originals, were consumed by flames. Some important originals, such as the cloak Napoleon used to keep himself warm during his march to Russia, were also lost in the fire. The fire also shattered the chimneys on the upper floor and the iron support columns twisted in the heat like matches. Soon afterwards, the dome and roof of the building collapsed. After two and a half hours, the fire was extinguished, but the water from the fire hoses did irreparable damage. In the early hours of the morning, firefighters and police officers patrolled the interior of the building and found two famous Frenchmen, Jean Paul Marat and Maximilien Robespierre, watching them – both wet but unharmed.
Murderers and criminals have proved to be the most persistent inhabitants of the museum. The popular section, which also housed the torture chamber, remained almost intact. But all the figures handmade by the enterprising Madame Tussauds and exhibited at the museum’s opening in 1835 were destroyed. After the fire, the museum took three years to reopen its doors. Fortunately, many of the moulds remained intact and still usable. The Queen Victoria, which was only “burnt”, was repaired and re-displayed.
Fire in the heights
It was a beautiful day, Saturday 28 July 1945. The pilot’s wife, who often accompanied her husband to the airport, had vague premonitions and panic gripped her as she watched her husband, Lieutenant Christopher Smith, sitting at the controls of a twin-engine Boeing 25 military aircraft. The sight of her husband’s pilot, Dimitrovich, was supposed to calm her down, as he was known to be a good flyer, but it did nothing. There was nothing to fault the plane either. The military bomber was not of the latest production, but it was in very good condition.
The pilots flew from Bedford Airport, intending to land at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. They had already been instructed to land at that airport, but the pilot decided to land at nearby Newark instead. He also apparently decided to disregard one of the ironclad rules of the air over Manhattan, which stipulates 600 metres as the minimum flight altitude. His plane was only 250 metres above the ground. Contrary to forecasts, the weather was foggy and visibility was very poor, and the pilot was apparently having problems with the controls.
Suddenly, the outline of the Empire State Building appeared out of the fog in front of the pilot’s eyes. He tried to avoid it, but failed. At 8.45, the aircraft crashed into the north side of the skyscraper between the 78th and 79th floors, 280 metres above the ground. The impact created a 6 x 6 metre hole. One of the plane’s engines and some of its parts shot through the 78th floor and fell onto the roof of the adjacent 12-storey building, setting it on fire. Other parts of the aircraft fell into the lift shaft.
The aircraft’s tanks immediately exploded and 5600 litres of fuel caught fire. The flames were 30 metres high. The burning fuel poured down the stairs of the building up to the 75th floor. All the people who were in them or in the lifts were charred. Those on the higher floors could not go anywhere because of the smoke. Firefighters arrived immediately after the collision and started carrying fire-fighting equipment to the upper floors, as the lifts were only operational up to the 60th floor. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes, using 120,000 litres of water. In the end, only 14 people were counted dead, and they could only be identified by metal objects such as rings, watches and bracelets.
But that was a minor incident compared to what happened in New York on 11 September 2001, when 19 terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and crashed two of them into the twin skyscrapers of the World Trade Center. Within 1 hour and 42 minutes, the two skyscrapers collapsed, and the surrounding buildings were damaged by fire and debris. 2996 people died and 6000 were injured.
The first Boeing 767 with 20,000 gallons of fuel crashed into the north twin at 08:45 near the 80th floor, and 18 minutes later the second plane crashed into the south twin near the 60th floor. After the explosion, a massive fire broke out, causing smoke to billow and the steel structure of the skyscraper, which would have withstood the usual fires and impacts of smaller aircraft, began to melt. The building steel starts to melt at 425 degrees Celsius and loses half its strength at 650 degrees Celsius, so the weight of the whole building is transferred to the remaining steel beams. But they cannot withstand that weight. The twin towers soon collapsed in a cloud of dust.
Another tragedy has been recorded in American aviation history. It may not have happened in the air, but the events followed each other as they would have happened in flight. This is the Apollo tragedy. Before Neil Armstrong proudly stepped onto the lunar surface in July 1969, NASA had to endure several defeats. But few of them ended in death, which made the loss of human life all the more painful.
On 27 January 1967, astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee boarded the Apollo spacecraft at 1 p.m. at the launch pad at Cape Kennedy, not to fly, but to simulate and practise flight on the ground. In a month’s time, Apollo is scheduled to fly on a 14-day orbit around the Earth. The Apollo programme was a NASA space agency programme launched in 1960, with Mercury and Gemini as its predecessors. But the Apollo programme was plagued by bad luck from the start and was strongly opposed by some experts. It had several problems with its ventilation system, oxygen supply and power system.
The designers then watched every manoeuvre of the astronauts inside the capsule on monitors for hours. Just ten minutes before the end of the experiment, one of them suddenly announced, “Fire.” A few seconds before that, the designers had indeed seen what looked like a flash on the monitors. Before everyone knew it, fire erupted from the capsule and a thick cloud of smoke engulfed the spacecraft. Within five minutes, rescue teams were at the capsule and quickly opened the entry hatch. A hot cloud of fire blew in. They knew then that there was no way out for the astronauts, who were strapped firmly into their seats. Their bodies were charred in seconds.
Experts speculated that there was a short circuit in the air supply system, which then caused a fiery inferno in the pure oxygen atmosphere. All film and sound recordings of the astronauts’ exercise were kept top secret, so the truth only came out much later. This disaster delayed the programme to launch a manned crew to the moon by a year and a half. After the tragedy, a second crew of astronauts was immediately available to resume work, but NASA wanted to wait for the results of the accident investigation.
There was also a fire at sea
Once the largest passenger ship in the world, the Queen Elizabeth was built in 1938 and could accommodate 2,285 passengers on her 14 decks, travelling at speeds of almost 60 kilometres per hour. Even tourist class passengers had their own swimming pool. But the war came and the beauty of the sea was turned into a transport ship, ferrying American troops from America to Europe. On each voyage, she took as many as 15,000 of them with her.
After a wartime career and after carrying more than 800,000 troops, it was rebuilt in 1946 and converted to passenger service. She could accommodate 823 first-class, 662 second-class and 798 third-class passengers on board. From then on, she and her sister ship, the Queen Mary, were constantly on the move between Europe and America. In 1955, she was given stabilisers and later refitted once more. But the ravages of time had worn her down and she was less and less suited to the demands of passengers. By 1961, she was no longer sailing, but was just a tourist attraction in Port Everglades.
In 1970, a Chinese shipowner bought it and renamed it Seawise University, intending to transport it to Hong Kong to be a kind of floating university. She arrived there in July 1971. Just before the renovation work was completed, it caught fire on 9 February 1972. For unexplained reasons, the ship’s fuel tank exploded. There were 200 workers on board who could only be saved by jumping into the water. Fire-fighting vessels surrounded the ship as soon as possible, but by then 80% of the ship had been destroyed and the thick smoke made fire-fighting difficult. Because of the size of the ship, they were unable to tow it into shallower waters and the fire soon reached its peak. The speed with which the fire spread through the ship immediately raised suspicions that the fire had been set, but this could not be proven.
At dawn the next day, the fire went out of its own accord, but the ship was completely destroyed. It had tilted even more to one side and was overwhelmed by water. The port authorities were extremely worried about the 3000 tonnes of fuel still in the ship’s tanks. In the event of an explosion, it would certainly leak and pollute Hong Kong harbour. Fortunately, this did not happen. The wreck was not recovered from the water until two years later. Not much was left of the beauty of the oceans, and what was left was worth as much as old iron.
Hell in the sand
Mina is eleven kilometres from the holy city of Mecca and is considered the place of the “stoning of the devil”. Around two million pilgrims gather there every year, pitch their tents and stay for three days. It was in this giant tent city that a fire broke out on 15 April 1997. A pilgrim wanted to make tea and, even though it was 40 degrees Celsius outside, his gas burner blew up. The strong desert wind quickly blew the flames around. “I thought the Day of Resurrection had come,” recalls one surviving pilgrim.
The sky darkened with black smoke clouds and winds from the south-southeast made firefighting impossible. The fire soon spread to ten neighbouring tent camps and soon 25 square kilometres were burning. Rescue teams could not even make their way through the veritable maze of tents to the centre of the fire.
Meanwhile, pilgrims were burned alive, many suffocated by smoke or killed by gas bombs, which many pilgrims used for cooking, but now fly through the air like rockets. In the panic, many pilgrims were also marched. After three hours, firefighters managed to put out the blaze. 70 000 tents were destroyed, 800 000 pilgrims had to be evacuated, and pilgrims coming from the nearby port were no longer allowed to leave. 343 pilgrims died and 2 000 were hospitalised in neighbouring towns.
Hundreds of thousands continued their pilgrimage the very next day, despite the terrible event. The Saudi National Guard erected 700,000 new tents in record time, and the tragedy sparked fierce arguments about the responsibility of the authorities, as only a small part of the tents were made of flame-retardant material.
Mina is the most important place of the Muslim Hajj. The tent city is where pilgrims settle before the climax of the pilgrimage, the procession to Mount Arafat. Here, according to tradition, the Prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon before his death in 632. The faithful must reach the top of the mountain before midday and pray there. So far, no one has been able to answer the question of whether the large number of pilgrims makes it possible to guarantee the safety of the faithful. Accidents have happened before this event and have happened afterwards. In 1994, 270 Indonesian pilgrims lost their lives in a stampede. In 1990, 1400 pilgrims were trampled in a crowded tunnel and in 1987, 400 died when Khomeini supporters clashed with Saudi police.
The Rhine is a dead river
On the night of 2 November 1986, the people of the Swiss city of Basel experienced what they could only imagine to be hell. Smoke clouds reeking of sulphur poisoned the city and the Rhine River, which runs through the city, turned red. Sirens wailed and fire engines rushed to the scene, from where red flames were rising. The flames were spotted shortly after midnight in a warehouse of the Sandoz chemical concern. The fire-fighting services reacted quickly because they knew what was in the warehouse. It contained 1 250 tonnes of highly toxic insect repellent, as well as mercury compounds and various solutions. The high temperature caused the chemicals to dissolve and turn into 30 metre high flames. Gases, smoke and acrid sulphur oxides billowed out of the factory like black clouds.
The tireless firefighters managed to contain the fire. They had no idea what would happen if the fire engulfed the adjacent warehouse, where several tonnes of the deadly poison phosgene, used in World War I, were stored. The city authorities radioed Basel residents to ask them not to open their windows. Basel was cut off from the world for several hours as the police cut off all traffic. At 7 a.m. the state of emergency was lifted, as the danger was thought to be over.
But when the inhabitants looked into the Rhine River, they were horrified. The 30 tonnes of chemicals that had been poured into it had turned it red. Sandoz reassuringly claimed that there was no cause for alarm, saying that there were only non-hazardous dyes in the river. This upset the citizens so much that several thousand of them gathered for a protest march through the city. They were right, because the Rhine is not only the busiest river in Europe, but also the source of drinking water for 20 million people.
When more dead fish started floating in the river, Sandoz only admitted that some hazardous substances such as phosphoric acid, uric acid and mercury “may” have entered the river. Mercury was particularly dangerous because it is not broken down by nature, but gradually enters our food chain. It was not only Switzerland that was at risk. The Rhine River was poisoning at least 80 kilometres downstream. Investigations in Mainz and Wiesbaden also revealed that the chemicals had caused a veritable plague among aquatic animals, and among the very animals that fish feed on.
This has had terrible consequences for the fish. In the German province of Baden-Württemberg alone, more than 15,000 dead fish have been counted. The eel brood was completely destroyed for many years. Some places in Hessen had to be supplied with drinking water from cisterns. Only in recent years have the fish fry recovered.
A fiery day in the metro
Londoners refer to their favourite tube and its stop at King’s Cross, the intersection of five underground lines and therefore the busiest station on the system, as the “tube” or tube. By the early evening of 18 July 1987, the main rush of Londoners hurrying home had passed, but there were still plenty of passengers at the station. Shortly after 7pm, a fire broke out on the wooden escalator panelling at King’s Cross. Passengers and local firefighters, who soon arrived on the scene, were not panic-stricken at first. At first, smoke billowed from under the wooden panelling of the escalators in the main area of the station, but then a small flame had already appeared. Half an hour later, a larger group of firefighters arrived, but they were not wearing protective masks because of the presumably low risk. Some firefighters soon went to get their protective apparatus and fire hoses, but by then the whole main area of the station was on fire.
They assume that the fire reached the main room from the escalators, and then the heat turned the paint on the walls into a gas bubble that exploded like a fireball. Thick smoke filled the whole station and the exits could no longer be seen. The power failure caused the lights to go out and darkness to fall like a horn. People wandered around the smoke-filled room looking for exits. Instinctively, they tried to get out by taking the stairs, but for many this meant death as the smoke and heat spread mainly upwards. Below, trains were still arriving at the station with trapped passengers. Some tried to save themselves by returning to the subway carriages, others were led straight into a fiery inferno by escalators. 150 firefighters battled the blaze and only managed to put it out after three hours. Help arrived too late for 30 passengers and one firefighter.
After the disaster, an avalanche of accusations was levelled at the railway administration, claiming that the stations of the metro, which has been in operation since 1863, were completely outdated and made of flammable materials. There were also allegedly insufficient safety devices and emergency exits. Experts found that a mixture of dirt and lubricant had probably ignited inside the wooden panelling of the escalators. It is also possible that a match or a smouldering cigarette was thrown on the stairs.
Hell on an artificial island
“The price of North Sea oil and gas is paid in blood”, declared one newspaper just one day after the Piper Alpha drilling rig was blown up by a terrible explosion on 6 July 1988, killing 167 people. The Piper Alpha was the largest, oldest and most dangerous drilling rig in the North Sea at the time, so the disaster did not come completely unexpectedly. It had been in operation since December 1976 and was being built 190 kilometres off the Scottish coast near Aberdeen. It was linked to four other platforms, which then sent a mixture of seawater, oil and gas to the Orkney Islands via a common pipeline. The platform pumped 167,000 barrels of oil and 644,000 cubic metres of gas every day. It was operated by the American company Petroleum Occidental, making huge profits and paying little attention to safety precautions.
“It’s a big rusty bomb,” is how one employee who quit his job on the platform six months before the disaster described it. Three weeks before that, the sea beneath the rig had been on fire because someone had set fire to gas coming from the sea with a welding machine. Otherwise, the workers were afraid to work with welding machines because they knew how dangerous it was.
Most of the 321 workers were still asleep when the sound of escaping gas was heard. Soon after, more explosions were heard and within minutes, the fire that engulfed the entire platform made it as bright as day. The explosions were so powerful that the 34,000-tonne rig was split in two. There was no time to launch lifeboats, so many workers jumped into the 30-metre-deep sea, which was only 14 degrees Celsius at the time. Many suffered serious fractures or drowned in the middle of the burning sea. Others remained on the platform, gathering around the helicopter pad, hoping for help.
Just a mile from the burning platform, the largest fire-fighting ship at sea at the time was anchored. It arrived to help immediately after receiving SOS calls, but was unable to get close enough because of the fire. Firefighters watched numbly as the men on the helipad burned alive. Only 64 workers, who were swimming hundreds of metres away from the burning platform, were rescued and picked up by rescuers. The rig burned for 23 days and no one was able to extinguish the fire. Only Texas oilfield firefighting specialists managed to do so.
Burning oil fields
“We will burn everything, including the oil fields”, threatened Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in September 1990. If defeated in Kuwait, which he tried to conquer, he threatened a world conflagration that would “put out the light of the world for a dozen years”. And indeed, the oil fields that were burned turned Kuwait into a lunar landscape. The ecological consequences of the catastrophe could never be assessed. By occupying Kuwait, the dictator would have gained seven per cent of world oil production and 21 per cent of oil reserves.
The Americans reacted, amassed enough troops and state-of-the-art weapons, and on 17 January 1990 launched a military action that has gone down in history as Desert Storm. By 27 February, Kuwait had been liberated and the dictator forced to retreat, but he had left behind a “scorched earth”. That he is serious was already evident in mid-January, when he released one lake of oil into the Persian Gulf. But his latest retaliation has taken the world by surprise. He mined the whole of Kuwait’s territory and set off explosions in 590 oil wells before withdrawing.
Black oily clouds covered the land and blotted out the sun. The result was almost total darkness and a cold unlike any other in these parts. The flaming oil flares turned the sea orange. Wet ash, oil droplets and soot rained down on Kuwait’s white sands and beaches. But it was the people of Kuwait’s capital city who were hardest hit. The largest oil field, Burkan, is only 30 kilometres away. But 300 fires have been burning there, destroying 220,000 tonnes of crude oil every day. Ash and soot covered fields and mountains up to 1 000 kilometres from the centre of the fire.
People walked home with only handkerchiefs over their mouths, and thousands of people, especially children, got bronchitis and asthma. Skin diseases, especially eczema, became rampant and people started losing their hair. Doctors feared, above all, a rise in cancers and changes in hereditary patterns. Foreign experts went one step further, predicting a global catastrophe and climate change if the atmosphere was polluted for too long. Fortunately, this has not happened.
The Kuwaitis had only one thing on their minds – how to put out the fires. They called on the help of “Red” Paul Adair, a world-renowned firefighting expert. He believed that it would be five years before they would be able to put out all the fires. However, he felt that the method they were using was too slow and that in the end there would be nothing left to put out, as much of the oil would have burned in the meantime. He suggested that the way to extinguish the fire would be to set off large quantities of dynamite in the burning wells. The resulting air pressure would break the supply of burning gas in the wells and the fire would be extinguished.
However, faster and more efficient methods of extinguishing large fires were already known around the world, developed by the Hungarians, the Chinese and the Germans. The German method was particularly interesting, as it involved placing two suitably spaced concentric circles of dynamite around a spring. The planned detonation was indeed carried out, the boiler was instantly showered with 20 000 tonnes of sand and the fire was extinguished.
The final success came only from the “great wind” of Hungary, a method that envious Americans called “the goulash thrower”. A suitably modified Russian tank with two moving “rocket” nozzles simultaneously fired a stream of foam and water into the fire, successfully extinguishing the blaze. As early as October 1991, the fire brigade proudly announced that it had extinguished 450 fires, and by the beginning of November the firefighting was complete.
Castle and palace in flames
Windsor, the family castle of the Kings of England, has stood for 900 years. It was chosen by William the Conqueror as his home and has been inhabited ever since. Until that fateful day on 20 November 1992, when it caught fire. The fire broke out on the 45th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
The cause of the fire was simple. A lamp was too close to the curtain and it caught fire at half past 12 in the morning. The fire immediately engulfed the Queen’s private chapel and then spread rapidly to other rooms. Firefighters were at the scene within seven minutes, having been called on a special telephone number. By then, thick black smoke was billowing from the roof of the castle. The castle was not built of good materials, so the flames could spread quickly even through small cracks in the walls.
Windsor is not just a residential building. It also contains a number of historically significant rooms. There’s the hall that used to house the court, as well as the famous ‘Waterloo Room’, built specifically to celebrate the victory over Napoleon in 1815. The fire destroyed nine large halls and 100 rooms, or one fifth of the building. Among other things, the ceremonial hall, where the Queen received state visits, was destroyed. The castle also housed a priceless collection of art, from paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and van Dyck to others. The collection of English and French porcelain was particularly famous.
All those who came to help the firefighters frantically carried the priceless castle artworks out into the open and away from the fire. Near the castle, St George’s Chapel, where ten English kings had found rest, was also under threat. Built by Edward IV in 1475, it is considered a unique example of English medieval architecture.
Several fire brigades with a total of 250 firefighters helped to extinguish the fire, using seven million litres of water. Not much, actually, considering that so much of it is poured over Niagara Falls in two and a half seconds. The fire was extinguished after fifteen hours, with a seething and terrified Queen Elizabeth looking on. Immediately after the fire, rebuilding work began, but it was not completed until 1997 at a cost of 59 million dollars.
Only seven days after the Windsor fire, another famous building, the Hofburg in Vienna, caught fire on 27 November 1992. This building had been the seat of the Austrian Emperors since 1289. From the 15th century until 1806, it was home to both the Roman Emperor and the German King, and until 1918 to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. The huge complex of buildings houses the former royal apartments, various museums, a church, a chapel and a winter riding school, as well as the offices of the Federal Chancellor since Austria became a republic.
The fire was first reported by the night watchman at half past two in the morning. Something was wrong with the alarm system, which only sounded when the flames appeared on the roof of the redoubt hall in the west wing of the Hofburg. At first glance, it looks like a hodgepodge of different styles, with each ruler leaving his own mark on it. The Redoubt, where the fire started, dates back to the 16th century and has a chequered history. At the time of the Congress of Vienna, rulers gathered here to negotiate and sign agreements in the various halls. The name derives from the term redut, a masked dance, which was introduced as early as Maria Theresia. Mozart played music here and Beethoven premiered his works.
The fire quickly reached the roof of the redoubt, but the strong winds also ignited neighbouring roofs and forced many residents in the surrounding area to move out. Sixty-nine Lipizzaners, who live near the burning tract during the winter months, had to be released due to the heavy smoke. They galloped through the streets of Vienna in the dark until they were picked up by taxi drivers or night walkers and taken to a nearby park.
Seven fire engines arrived at the scene of the fire, and around 200 police officers formed a human chain near the redoubt, where the National Library was located, with 192,000 books, passing them from hand to hand to save them from the imminent danger. But the roof of the redoubt could not be saved, nor could the two halls on the first floor. The next morning it was found that the redoubt could be rebuilt according to the old plans. The most probable cause of the fire was a short circuit in the cable.
The Sect of Perdition
The drama began on 28 February 1993, when members of the Tribe of David sect barricaded themselves on their Mount Carmel estate near Waco, Texas. The FBI decided to investigate. This was easier said than done, however, as the property, with its watchtowers and chain-link fence, was more like a fortress than a cattle farm. The Tribe of David sect was formed from the Adventist community, from which it split in 1934. Like the Adventists, its members were waiting for the Messiah and the coming apocalypse.
Thirty-three-year-old David Koresh, who has led the sect since 1987, called himself the eldest son of God and demanded sexual abstinence from sect members, while retaining the right to polygamy for himself. He married the 14-year-old daughter of a sect member and fathered a total of 18 children with other members of the community.
The FBI planned the investigation to the hilt, but someone had to inform Koresh about it. So a hail of bullets greeted the 100 FBI investigators. Four police officers and an unknown number of sect members were killed in the first confrontation. The police then retreated and took up positions around the farm. They did not dare to risk a new confrontation, as the collective suicide of the Temple sect members was too well remembered. At that time, in 1978, several hundred members of the sect decided to commit collective suicide in Jamestown in the Guyana jungle.
Indeed, Koresh soon released 16 children and two old men and declared that he was ready to surrender. But then he changed his mind and said he was waiting for a divine command, and on 8 March he declared himself ready to fight.
At that time, 600 police officers were already surrounding the farm. At night, they shone their headlights on the farm to prevent any escape. Finally, Koresh declared that he would surrender when he had finished his book on the imminent end of the world. But after seven weeks, still nothing new had happened and even Justice Minister Janet Reno did not know what to do. Then, on the 51st day of the siege, she issued the order to take the farm. The attack began with armoured vehicles and tear gas. After several powerful explosions, the farm was suddenly engulfed in flames. The fire killed 80 members of the sect, including 20 children.
Koresh was among the dead. Only nine members of the sect escaped. The police were blamed for the fire, but the police claimed that the besiegers had set it themselves. Criticism was also levelled at the Justice Secretary and at President Clinton himself, who had been in the White House for barely 100 days. The press wondered whether the police could not have arrested Koresh during his visits to Waco, since he was already being accused of illegal possession of weapons and child abuse. However, there was no real answer to these questions.
The jungle is burning
The Indonesian authorities claimed that the September 1997 crash of an Indonesian Garuda Airbus A-300 over the island of Sumatra was caused by very poor visibility as a result of smog that had been hovering over South-East Asia for several weeks. The wreckage of the plane killed 234 passengers. In those early days of September, a natural disaster struck the lands of South-East Asia, but it was a natural disaster that was perpetrated by human beings. The massive deforestation of the jungle by burning vegetation ultimately resulted in smog and uncontrolled fires that spread from Indonesia to Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.
Burning forests for productive land is officially banned everywhere, but local authorities sometimes turn a blind eye. Especially when big landowners or big companies are clearing forests in this way. This is because it is important to remember that the ash is usable as fertiliser. It started when the authorities suddenly realised that 300 000 hectares of forest were burning on the islands of Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi. From there, the fires spread, thanks to favourable winds. The authorities managed to mobilise 10,000 firefighters to extinguish the fires. People in the areas at risk ventured outdoors with only their face masks on, and pollution indicators reached record highs. One hundred points is already considered unhealthy air, and on Borneo, the closest island to the centre of the fires, pollution reached a world record of 839 points.
In total, 800,000 hectares of forest burned, as fires also broke out in Thailand and the Philippines. People in these areas did not see clear skies for weeks. No one thought of evacuating people, because it was no better elsewhere. Forest burning is a common practice in these places. Such fires are usually extinguished by the monsoon, but the rains were late that year. The delay in the rainy season was probably due to a climatic phenomenon known as El Nino, an unusual atmospheric warming of the Pacific Ocean. The first heavy rain did not fall until November, bringing relief to the population.
You would expect people to have learned from their mistakes, but unfortunately this has not happened. In March 1998, the jungles of Borneo were on fire again, and this time there was no rain for several weeks.
