Portal:Fire
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Fire is a form of combustion, and is the most spectacular chemical phenomenon, that transforms a solid or a liquid substance into gaseous substances with simultaneous release of heat and light energy. Controlling fire for the purposes of providing heat and light was one of humankind's first great achievements. This portal contains information relating to fire and firefighting.
The Hamlet chicken processing plant fire was an industrial disaster that took place at the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, USA on September 3, 1991, after a failure in a faulty modification to a hydraulic line. Twenty-five people were killed and 54 injured in the fire as they were trapped behind locked fire doors. Due to a lack of inspectors, the plant had never received a safety inspection in 11 years of operation,[1] and it is thought that a single inspection would have easily prevented the incident.[2]
A full federal investigation was launched, which resulted in the owner receiving a 20-year prison sentence, and the company received the highest fines ever handed out in the history of North Carolina.[3] The investigation also highlighted failings in the authoritative enforcement of existing safety regulations, and resulted in a number of worker safety laws being passed. Accusations of racism were leveled at both the fire service and the city of Hamlet in the aftermath of the fire. The latter dispute, concerning a memorial service organized by the city, resulted in two separate, near-identical monuments being erected. The plant was never reopened.
The fire was North Carolina's worst industrial disaster,[4] and the third worst American industrial disaster, exceeded only by the 1947 Texas City disaster and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.[5] (Mining disasters are in a separate category. Fifty-three miners died in 1925 in North Carolina in the Coal Glen mine disaster.)
- ...that the first known American female firefighter Molly Williams took her place with the men on the dragropes during the blizzard of 1818 and pulled the pumper to the fire through the deep snow?
- ...that Lightning fires represent 35% of all fires?
- ...that every year around 34 fires are started in Yellowstone National Park from lightning?
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