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Books on natural, and man-made disasters Disaster Compendiums —
Fires —
Hurricane, Tornados, and Floods — Recommended titles
 "During the long night of December 3, 1999, a windowless, century-old storage building in downtown Worchester, Mass., was turned into a six-story stove. ... With confident, deft description, Flynn brings to life this 3,000-degree catastrophe with a crackling intensity, which, unfortunately, he never quite achieves for the people within his story. The human element doesn't quite live up to what he presented in his first award-winning Esquire magazine piece that won notice for the survivors as well as the spouses and parents of the six firemen who were killed. Likewise, Flynn minimizes the subsequent police investigation and forensics that made national headlines for weeks after the fire.... " --Publishers Weekly
"In American history books, October 8, 1871, marks the massive fire that consumed Chicago. But as Gess (Good Deeds) and Lutz (Doublespeak) document in this thorough historical narrative, it was also the night a fledgling Wisconsin mining town endured a worse fate a story often overlooked in the annals of fire. Peshtigo, with a population of nearly 2,000, was obliterated in less than an hour that night by a freakish convergence of rampant forest fires and tornado-force winds. Gess and Lutz draw on a wealth of local sources, including diaries, interviews with survivors and newspaper accounts, to enliven their story and forge a cast of main characters. While the authors go into far too much detail in describing the town's founding and its politics, they render a chilling, absorbing account of the hellish events of the night itself ... The images of the catastrophe are often as unpleasant as they are vivid, but readers will sense that they are necessary and that Gess and Lutz have done an overdue service to those who suffered." --Publishers Weekly
"This is a vivid, sometimes harrowing account of one of the worst disasters in the history of Connecticut and the history of the circus. On a hot day in July 1944, some 9000 people were attending the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford when a fire broke out. Mayhem and panic separated parents from children, some people were forced to crawl past the big cats in order to escape, and, in the end, many animals and 167 people died. Although O'Nan doesn't really solve the mystery of the origin of the fire, his attempt to identify the culprit makes a riveting side story. A novelist (e.g., A Prayer for the Dying), he provides a gripping, frightening account, filled with impressive detail, that many readers will find hard to put down. " --Library Journal, DBonnie Collier, Yale Law Lib.
"On April 16, 1947, a small fire broke out among bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the hold of the ship Grandcamp as it lay docked at Texas City, Texas. Despite immediate attempts to extinguish the fire, it rapidly intensified until the Grandcamp exploded in a blast that caused massive loss of life and property. In the ensuing chaos, no one gave much thought to the ship in the next slip, the High Flyer. It exploded sixteen hours later. The story of the Texas City explosions--America's worst industrial disaster in terms of casualties--has never been fully told until now. In this book, Hugh W. Stephens draws on official reports, newspaper and magazine articles, personal letters, and interviews with several dozen survivors to provide the first full account of the disaster at Texas City..." --book description
"On December 1, 1958, a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago killed 92 pupils, most between the ages of nine and 12, and three nuns. This deeply affecting account of that tragedy by two Illinois journalists recreates the horror that destroyed a school and parish. The causes of the tragedy were manifold: outdated fire laws that permitted an edifice built before 1908 to escape a code passed in 1949 to insure safer schools; severe overcrowding; delay in reporting the fire; nuns ordering their pupils to pray rather than try to escape. Nor did municipal and archdiocesan officials help matters, their philosophy being that the fire was best forgotten; when a former student admitted to setting the blaze, they tried to conceal his confession. One positive result of the fire were the safety improvements made in 16,500 U.S. school buildings within a year." --Publishers Weekly
"This chilling narrative provides a minute-by-minute chronicle of one of the most physically and psychologically devastating disasters of the twentieth century. On the afternoon of December 3, 1903, a capacity audience enjoyed a matinee performance of Mr. Bluebeard at the newly opened Iroquois Theatre in downtown Chicago. When a spark ignited a fire on the stage, everything that could go wrong did ... more than 600 people perished ... This superior piece of historical investigative journalism will keep readers turning the pages until the bitter end." --Booklist, Margaret Flanagan
"... The Iroquois, of course, remains the worst theater fire in American history. Hatch grew up in Chicago, and his father, a fire-insurance executive, owned a book published in 1904 to raise money for families of the victims. The pictures and testimonies in that book began Hatch's deep interest in the fire. His riveting and often infuriating narrative is an indictment of the hubris and negligence of the owners and city officials. Hatch, a former writer and reporter for CBS News, utilizes interviews and correspondence with survivors of the fire, which lends a special poignancy to the story. " --Booklist, Jay Freeman
"The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 swallowed up more than three square miles in two days, leaving thousands homeless and 300 dead. Throughout history, the fire has been attributed to Mrs. O’Leary, an immigrant Irish milkmaid, and her cow. On one level, the tale of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is merely the quintessential urban legend. But the story also represents a means by which the upper classes of Chicago could blame the fire’s chaos on a member of the working poor ..." --book description
"On Aug. 5, 1949, 16 Forest Service smoke jumpers landed at a fire in remote Mann Gulch, Mont. Within an hour, 13 were dead or irrevocably burned, caught in a "blowup"--a rare explosion of wind and flame. The late Maclean, author of the acclaimed A River Runs Through It, grew up in western Montana and worked for the Forest Service in his youth. He visited the site of the blowup; for the next quarter century, the tragedy haunted him. In 1976 he began a serious study of the fire, one that occupied the last 14 years of his life. He enlisted the aid of fire experts, survivors, friends in the Forest Service and reams of official documents. The result is an engrossing account of human fallibility and natural violence. The tragedy was a watershed in Forest Service training--knowledge and techniques have since been improving--and this work will interest Maclean's many admirers. " --Publishers Weekly
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Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America
3000 Degrees: The True Story of a Deadly Fire and the Men Who Fought It
Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History
The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy
The Texas City Disaster, 1947
To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire
By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London
Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903
Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903
The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
Young Men & Fire