Fire is a hazard that continues to claim many lives annually; it remains an untamed emergency and will affect the elderly significantly. Once a fire starts in any place the elderly may have less chance to run away from the fire or call fire emergency to respond to the fire, they are therefore more vulnerable to injury and/or death caused by the fires. People will normally die from being overcome by gasses, smokes or toxic fumes, while others will suffer from burns. Factors such as poor mobility, reduced tolerance to smoke and burns, reduced sense of smell are some that contribute to exposing the elderly to fire fatalities. Additionally most of the elderly will live alone in their homes and hence in case there is a fire they may find it difficult to move out or reach the telephone to notify the fire department. This paper focuses on the issue of fatal fires and categories of people that are at higher than average risk of being involved in fires and of being injured or killed as a result, it identifies the vulnerable elderly. Areas discussed include statistical data, fire toxicity, the social and …show more content…
The chemical composition of smoke may have very many unlimited substances and hence the composition of chemicals is informed by the molecular composition of what is burning (Alarie, 2002 p.260). If the room burning contains nitrogen from PU foam, PAN, or nylon the smoke will contain hydrogen cyanide (HCN). If the room burning has PVC i.e. chlorine then the smoke will contain hydrogen chloride, if it is fluorine, then the smoke will contain hydrogen fluoride or if it is bromine then the smoke will contain hydrogen bromide. Such toxins will cause irritation and choking to the person that is caught up in the
“Home. An attack on his home. An attack on his mother and father? And he had not been there to help.” (Paulsen #22)
Of the 142 lives the fire had claimed at least 125 of those people were woman or just mere teenagers. This fire was horrific as people from the street so women jumping from the bulding to their deaths in order to escape the fiery hell. Some bodies were so charred family members could only recognize them by the cloth threw wore and the trinkets they had. However, the owners are still to blame for this tragedy. Their lack of taking proper safety measures caused the death of 141 people.
Wayne Dziubala,68, as the man who died in an dire house fire on October 6 in Arlington Heights. No one really knows the cause of death or what even started the fire. On October 6, about 2 am. Arlington Heights Police and Fire departments reciprocity a report of a house fire at 1600 block of West Waverly Court with two, one of them being Dziubala, people stuck inside the house. I think it’s weird how the police and fire departments in Arlington Heights didn’t think of any ideas of the cause of fire.
In this tragic fire, there were many casualties, as people lost lives and others suffered lifelong injuries from the burns and other happenings
Throughout Zac Unger’s memoir Working Fire the Making of a Fireman he struggles to find a place within the fire station and among coworkers. Unlike many of the fellow recruits who spent years preparing to become a firefighter, Unger an Ivy League grad simply responded to a bus stop ad. After realizing that most recruits were either former military, tradesmen or other firefighter’s kids Unger “Mostly I just stayed quite, tried to down play my existence. I figured if I could just make it through the academy without being called out as a fraud, I’d end up a firefighter like the rest of them”(Unger, 22-23). This distinction between Unger and the rest of the recruits was seen as something to be ashamed of, something to hide away.
Josh Powell person of interest, Mr. Powell got custody of the two children, Josh's father stayed with Mr. Powell, Steven Powell was arrested on charges of voyeurism and child pornography in 2011, 2011 Susan's parents were granted custody of the boys, Josh ordered to undergo psychological testing and polygraph testing, Powell let boys in locked CPS worker out, CPS worker smelled gas. Now that I have all the notes I need I can now proceed to investigate the fire. Based on the four stages of fire I have found that incipient stage just made the duration of the fire spread more than a fraction it speed very quickly due to the product that was used. Emergent smoldering to effect very quickly make thing more combustible.
In today’s society, building regulations have made the buildings themselves better equipped for the possibility of a fire. Jonathan Fowler, a level three local firefighter volunteer in Cave City, Arkansas for the past nine years, said the fire of 1911 burned the whole building in a total of eighteen minutes. As a result, each room in a standard government building can help contain a fire for fifteen minutes and keep the flames from spreading further and causing even more destruction. Another example of a positive result from the fire is within two years of the tragedy, more than thirty laws had been passed to help prevent anything tragic that can be averted from happening again (Wignot). Another result of the fire was it made Americans realize that those women who burned were technically citizens of the United States of America, but because they were immigrants, they were discriminated against and not treated fairly (Cornell).
A fire started in a rag bin on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building in Manhattan, New York on Saturday, March 25, 1911. There were six hundred people working in the factory at the time of the fire, and almost all of them were poor, immigrant, teenage women. A total of one hundred forty-five people died as a result of the unsafe building: the fire extinguishers had hoses that were rusted shut, the doors at the bottom of the stairwell were locked, the stairwell was not fireproof, and the workers panicked and had no idea what to do because there had never been any fire drills. Fire trucks responded quickly, but their equipment was inadequate: their ladders were too short and their safety nets ripped easily. The fire was
The city also didn’t have fire alarms in almost every building, just the ones that could afford it. Even some schools didn’t have a fire alarm. The fire could have been able to be prevented by using other materials. Some buildings that weren't made out of wood, still caught fire.
The Seton Hall University fire took place in January of the year 2000. Sadly, three students were killed and dozens were injured due to a fire that had started in the common room area. At first details about the cause of the fire were a little confusing, there were many reports that said smoking was the cause and a few that had stated that some drunk students had set the fire as a prank and the fire spread more rapidly than they had anticipated as a result of the carpeting containing synthetic fibers that had acted almost like an accelerant due to its makeup (Boland Hall Fire). This was such an unfortunate happening, what started as a seemingly harmless prank turned into an extremely dangerous situation that none would soon forget. During this incident, students thought it best to ignore the sounding of the fire alarms because
On “March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the top floors of the Asch Building in the Triangle Waist Company in New York City,” and as a result of the building being engulfed, 146 employees were killed (Fire!). Most of the victims burned to death, but some chose to leap from the top floors to their death in order to spare themselves the excruciating pain of being burned alive. The “Death List Shows Few Identified” article, published by the New York Times, recounts the identified dead, unidentified dead, reported missing, and injured. All in all, the article, published on March 26, 1911 (a day after the fire), reported 32 identified dead, 35 unidentified dead (where they could actually make out of human qualities), 39 unidentified dead (where they were burned beyond recognition), 21 reported missing, and 24 injured.
The Grenfell Tower fire tragedy is presumed to have claimed 79 lives. Initially, the local council authorities were blamed for approving the construction of substandard high-rise buildings that threatened public safety (Scott p.1). On the contrary, it appears most of these assumptions were flawed, since additional revelations were exposed. For example, construction experts blamed the rapid spread of the fire on the of the 1967 archaic design standards. In addition, the failure was attributed to the external cladding that had been installed in the £10 m refurbishment.
Escape fire is defined as a fire intentionally set to provide protection against a larger uncontrolled fire (Heineman & Fromke, 2012). This documentary maintains that in order to
Background research South Africa is currently faced with a major energy crisis, whereby there have been power cuts throughout the country. People that stay in shacks are then faced with the challenge of keeping warm throughout winter. They are then forced to use paraffin lamps, gas heaters and candles. The use of these to keep shacks warm is often dangerous as they can result in terrible tragedies like a family losing their home. During these fires a bigger tragedy is that other shacks closely surrounded catch fire.