Can we have a historical disasters thread...

Wow, I've never even heard of this shit. Sad

It gets surprisingly little coverage, despite being one of the first disasters (if not the first?) to be extensively photographed. And for being shocking due to the fact that it all happened in 20 feet of water, while the ship was still tied to the wharf, and within arm's reach of rescuers. There's even video of the body recovery efforts, which was discovered a few years ago: youtube.com/watch?v=r6pMlk0_P3s

I'm fascinated by disasters, usually fires, crushes, or nuclear/radiation accidents. How people react in these sorts of situations, how human engineering fucks them over in ways that we only really learn about from such disasters (need for outward opening doors, need for fire exits, not locking people inside, obvious shit you'd think would be readily apparent to architects), the lasting effects on the minds and bodies of those who are involved in such disasters, and so on.
The Summerland fire (pictured) stands out as pretty interesting for some reason... you can find a whole book about it here in PDF form by Ian Phillips at the University of Birmingham on his webpage with the University, just google him.
Otherwise I've been interested in the Chernobyl disaster for the past 16 years or so, there are plenty of books about that (but Voices from Chernobyl is one of my favourites).
Plenty of others interest me as well.

Before the fire. I figure a lot of people would think this building is ugly, but I love it for some reason.

We still haven't learned our lessons about fire safety concerning building materials and the chimney effect, unfortunately.
Grenfell Tower.

The Halifax Explosion has interested me since I read one of those Dear Canada books about it. I didn't know much about it and it's one of the few Dear (Canada/America/etc) Scholastic books that did not sugar coat much.

Children either killed or horrifically blinded on their way to school. Men and women blinded in the same way--nails, glass, metal, all stuck in their eyes--most of them blinded permanently. People burnt alive when their upended stoves caught fire after their homes were demolished in the explosion. Men, women and children horrifically burned with molten bits raining from the sky. People's charred corpses hanging from windows. People spotting entire bodies or sometimes just parts of them hanging from wires. Or surviving the explosion and initial fires only to be electrocuted in the street. Children who were lucky enough to have survived the explosion but froze to death that night when there was a mini-blizzard and rescue efforts were hindered. The next morning, rescuers found many bundles of children huddled together in the snow.

Humans have, brits on the other hand...

Americans have done some pretty stupid shit too when it comes to design and fire safety. The Station nightclub fire (video of this on youtube--pretty interesting if you haven't already seen it) comes to mind, and I'm sure there are plenty of buildings in the States that aren't up to code.
Other countries constantly have building collapses and fires with massive loss of life, especially in places where many buildings are added to by rogue builders or ignored by any central governing body.

wow that guy's eyes
I'm probably mildly autistic at recognizing emotions but geeze, you can just see the absolute horror, pain, agony there

The Station club was confusingly designed and had a narrow entry hallway and single door exit at the front. In a panic situation, people will commonly follow the path they used to enter a place in order to leave it, rather than searching out alternative exits (going towards a known exit rather than an unknown exit) and this caused a crush in the hallway and a large loss of life due to smoke inhalation and the crush itself not unlike the disaster of OP's pic (although the Cocoanut Grove was worse--the emergency exits of that building were locked, and the only exit wasn't just an outward opening normal door, it was a single revolving door).
Imagine being trapped in a narrow hallway filling with smoke while tens, or even hundreds of people rush the exit door, screaming in fear and panic, putting pressure on those in front of them as those in front struggle to fit through the doorway. Terrible way to go. Not one of the worst certainly, but pretty fucking awful.
Pic is locations of deaths in the Station Nightclub fire.

The Station Nightclub footage:
youtube.com/watch?v=xY59mR44TLs
Another cause of this fire was the flammable bullshit they had around the stage for sound muffling, and the foolish decision to let off pyrotechnics meant for outdoor use indoors.

There is video footage of this whole incident and it is terrifying.

Another pretty interesting thing to mention is the Byford Dolphin accident. That was an explosive decompression accident in which five people died, and there wasn't much left of them after it happened. They went from nine atmospheres to one atmosphere, and were violently dismembered, not a pretty sight.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin

entire blocks of the city getting leveled in the morning + one of the worst blizzards in the city's history that night is a hell of a combo

Technically not 25 years but it will be 15 years this year. How time flies. I guess that can be allowed considering how many were killed at that fire.

you could easily make a career out of that

>pretty interesting

Interesting but note that you're basically watching people struggle in their last minutes of life, if that's not something you want to watch.

I can handle a lot of shit and I have been morbidly, I might add desensitized to this type of stuff but I couldn't finish watching that video of the Station club fire. It's too disturbing.

my birth.

I'm from Wisconsin so in terms of a deadly historical disaster, I immediately think of the Peshtigo Fire of 1871 which killed 2,500 people in the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history. This occurred on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 on the 8th of October.

What about the Lisbon Tsunami that forever prevented Portugal from ever becoming relevant?

Let's go way back for this one:.

May of 1770 was a time of hope and promise for Parisians, who were celebrating the marriage of the dauphin Louis-Auguste (future Louis XVI) to Marie Antoinette. An elaborate fireworks display was organized for the end of the month by the men responsible for organizing all fireworks for royal celebrations.

The Place de Louis XV was crammed with spectators for the display. All but one side of the plaza was officially blocked by specially constructed platforms and fountain-like sculptures, which were part of the fireworks show. The side that wasn't blocked by sculptures was blocked with carriages.

During the show, a gust of wind blew some of the lit rockets into the crowd, sending fire and hot plaster into the crowd, burning and maiming many. One of the platforms caught fire, which spread quickly to the others.

Thousands of people began desperately trying to leave the plaza. The horses attached the carriages blocking the plaza also began to panic. People were trampled in the crowd and the panicked horses. The people who made it out of the plaza found themselves on a narrow stretch of road which was next to the river bank. The intense crowd caused some people to fall or be pushed into the river, and they drowned.

1/2

2/2
The "official" government death toll was 132... but this was the same government that supported the release of engravings of this event as a normal celebration and would not officially acknowledge the disaster. Louis XV may have been eager to avoid acknowledging the magnitude because the fireworks was organized by his personal pyrotechnic experts and because government officials were held responsible for the dangerous set-up and lack of safety precautions.

A death toll taken by contemporary sources estimates it was closer to 600-700 people, and possibly even higher.

From one contemporary journal

>I know many persons who thirty months after these frightful scenes still bore the marks of objects which had been crushed into them. Some lingered on for ten years and then died. I may say without exaggeration that in the general panic and crush more than twelve hundred unfortunate persons lost their lives. One entire family disappeared; and there was scarcely a household which had not to lament the death of a relative or friend.

Louis-Auguste and Marie Antoinette were horrified by the disaster. Marie Antoinette had been on her way to Paris to greet the people when the disaster struck, and riders came to inform her so that her carriage would be turned around. Louis-Auguste donated the rest of his personal income to hospitals and charities set up for the injured and families of the victims, Marie Antoinette did the same. Marie Antoinette also visited the hospitals and homes of the victims and provided monetary relief to many families for years.

I finished watching it but regretted it. Morbid curiosity can bite you in the ass sometimes.

are you over 25

I feel that it is interesting from the viewpoint of learning just how quickly a fire like that can spread, and how quickly the situation descends into complete chaos. It's also incredibly important from a legal viewpoint--imagine if footage of had been made public. Nobody would have been able to deny that it occurred.
But yes, it definitely is horrifying to watch. It's one of those things I've watched on the internet that has stuck with me since the first time I watched it, and personally I think that's important, regardless of whether or not the knowledge I have would help me if I were in a similar situation.

>be den of vice and sin
>get Richter'd
>thousands are killed and 80% of the city is burnt to the ground
>be reborn from the destruction, hosting the Panama–Pacific International Exposition less than a decade later
>remain one of the great American metropolises well into the 1960s when the queers and hippies started showing up

SAN ANDREAS DO IT AGAIN

Oh, for sure it has worth in terms of education and from a legal standpoin! After watching it I now am extremely conscious of looking for exit paths, both official and otherwise, when I'm in a large crowd. I just wanted to add that note in case people don't realize what the video is in case they'd rather watch.

Massacre of Thessalonica

Basically people of Thessalonica loved chariot racing. but then a gothic commander of the local garison imprisoned a famous cahriot racer on accusations of gay rape. The greeks hated goths, loved their chariot racers and were ok with gays so they got like really mad. They ended up killing the local garison and the Gothic commander who was a friend of Theodosius. When Theodosius heard of this he too got mad and ordered the town to be massacred. Later he realized that it was too harsh so he sent an order to cancel the massacre. It was too late though, the gates to the arena were locked and the citizens were butchered.

Saint Ambrose, who was the bishop of Milan back then was disgusted with the emperors behavior and prevented him from going to mass until he repents. Theodosius was a beta cuck, and instead of executing Ambrose, he repented. This set precedent to future relations between the Church and state effectively giving church a lot of power that it did not have before.

>It was too late though, the gates to the arena were locked and the citizens were butchered.

On the plus side, didn't this incident cause him to instate a law requiring a certain length of time had to pass after giving an execution order before it was carried out?

Holy shit.
>deadliest building fire in U.S. history
>602 dead
>Lack of fire safety autism

From one of the actors that night, who ran out on stage to try to calm down the crowd

>It struck me as I looked out over the crowd during the first act that I had never before seen so many women and children in the audience. Even the gallery was full of mothers and children.

and some horrific details from Wikipedia:

>Someone else opened the massive double freight doors in the north wall, normally used for scenery, allowing "a cyclonic blast" of cold air to rush into the building and create an enormous fireball. As the vents above the stage were nailed or wired shut, the fireball instead traveled outwards, ducking under the stuck asbestos curtain and streaking toward the vents behind the dress circle and gallery 50 feet (15 m) away. The hot gases and flames passed over the heads of those in the orchestra seats and incinerated everything flammable in the gallery and dress circle levels, including patrons still trapped in those areas.

>Those in the orchestra section exited into the foyer and out of the front door, but those in the dress circle and gallery who escaped the fireball could not reach the foyer because the iron grates that barred the stairways were still in place. The largest death toll was at the base of these stairways, where hundreds of people were trampled, crushed, or asphyxiated.

>Patrons who were able to escape via the emergency exits on the north side found themselves on the unfinished fire escapes. Many jumped or fell from the icy, narrow fire escapes to their deaths; the bodies of the first jumpers broke the falls of those who followed them.

>There were several ornamental "doors" that looked like exits, but were not. Two hundred people died in one passageway that was not an exit.

From a contemporary book about the fire and the aftermath, compiled from the testimony of survivors and rescuers:

>The smoke was so heavy the firemen worked with difficulty, but finally it cleared and workmen who were hastily sent by the Edison company equipped forty arc lights, which shone bravely through the smoke. With this help the firemen searched to better effect, and found bodies that in the blackness they had missed.

>"Give that girl to some one else and get back there," shouted Chief Musham to a fireman. The fireman never answered but kept on with his burden.

>"Hand that girl to some one else," shouted the battalion chief.

>The fireman looked up. Even in the flickering light of the lantern the chief carried one could see the tears coming from the red eyes and falling down the man's blackened cheeks.

>"Chief," said the fireman, "I've got a girl like this at home. I want to carry this one out."

>"Go ahead," said the chief. The little group working at the head of the stairs broke apart while the fireman, holding the body tightly, made his way slowly down the stairs.

>One child after another was taken from the heap and passed out to be carried downstairs. Some were little boys in new suits, sadly torn, and with their poor little faces wreathed in agony. On their foreheads was the seal of death.

>A big fireman came crawling from the heavy smoke of the inner balcony. He carried a girl of 10 years in his arms. Her long, flaxen hair half covered the pure white face.

>A gray haired man with a gash on his head apparently had fallen down the stairs. A woman's face bore the mark of a boot heel. A woman with a little boy clasped tight in her[Pg 57] arms was wedged into a corner. Her clothes were almost torn from her, and her face was bruised. The child was unmarked, as she had thrown her own body over his to protect him.

>Out of the mass of bodies when the police began their work protruded one slender little white hand, clinching a pair of pearl opera glasses, which the little owner had tried to save, in spite of the fact that her own life was being crushed out of her. Watches, pocketbooks and chatelaine bags were scattered all through the pile.

quote from a bishop who joined the rescue teams helping to carry out the dead and look for survivors

>The sight when I reached the balconies was pitiful beyond description. It grew in horror as I looked over the seats. The bodies were in piles. Women had their hands over their faces as if to shield off a blow. Children lay crushed beneath their parents, as if they had been hurled to the marble floors.

>I saw the great battlefields of the civil war, but they were as nothing to this. When we began to take out the bodies we found that many of the audience had been unable to get even near the exits. Women were bent over the seats, their fingers clinched on the iron sides so strongly that they were torn and bleeding. Their faces and clothes were burned, and they must have suffered intensely.

Ettie and Natalie Eisendrath, both killed in the fire. Their bodies were found locked in each other's arms.

>Many patrons attempted to exit through the main entrance, the same way they had entered. The building's main entrance was a single revolving door, which was rendered useless as the crowd stampeded in panic. Bodies piled up behind both sides of the revolving door, jamming it until it broke. But then the oxygen-hungry fire leaped through the breach, incinerating whoever was left alive in the pile. Firemen had to douse the flames to approach the door. Later, after fire laws had tightened, it would become illegal to have only one revolving door as a main entrance without being flanked by outward opening doors with panic bar openers attached, or have the revolving doors set up so that the doors could fold against themselves in emergency situations.

>Other avenues of escape were similarly useless; side doors had been bolted shut to prevent people from leaving without paying. A plate glass window, which could have been smashed for escape, was boarded up and unusable as an emergency exit. Other unlocked doors, like the ones in the Broadway Lounge, opened inwards, rendering them useless against the crush of people trying to escape. Fire officials would later testify that had the doors swung outwards, at least 300 lives could have been spared.

Slocum disaster always gave me a twitch. It was New York's biggest tragedy before 9/11

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum

>General Slocumworked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 bySt. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Churchin theLittle Germanydistrict ofManhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years, a period when German settlers moved out of Little Germany for the Upper East and West Sides. Over 1,400[notes 2]passengers, mostly women and children, boardedGeneral Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then eastward across theLong Island Soundto Locust Grove, a picnic site inEatons Neck,Long Island.

>The ship got underway at 9:30am. As it was passing East 90th Street, a fire started in the Lamp Room[8]in the forward section, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette or match. It was fueled by the straw, oily rags, and lamp oil strewn around the room.[9]The first notice of a fire was at 10:00am; eyewitnesses claimed the initial blaze began in various locations, including a paint locker filled with flammable liquids and a cabin filled with gasoline. Captain Van Schaick was not notified until 10 minutes after the fire was discovered. A 12-year-old boy had tried to warn him earlier, but was not believed.

>Although the captain was ultimately responsible for the safety of passengers, the owners had made no effort to maintain or replace the ship's safety equipment. The fire hoses had been allowed to rot, and fell apart when the crew tried to put out the fire. The crew had never practiced a fire drill, and thelifeboatswere tied up and inaccessible. (Some claim they were wired and painted in place.)[10]Survivors reported that thelife preserverswere useless and fell apart in their hands. Desperate mothers placedlife jacketson their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.[10]

Captain Van Schaick decided to continue his course rather than run the ship aground or stop at a nearby landing. By going into headwinds and failing to immediately ground the ship, he fanned the fire. Van Schaick later argued he was trying to avoid having the fire spread to riverside buildings and oil tanks. Flammable paint also helped the fire spread out of control.

Some passengers jumped into the river to escape the fire, but the heavy women's clothing of the day made swimming almost impossible and dragged them underwater to drown. Many died when the floors of the overloaded boat collapsed; others were battered by the still-turning paddles as they tried to escape into the water or over the sides.[12]

By the timeGeneral Slocumsank in shallow water atNorth Brother Island, just off theBronxshore, an estimated 1,021 people had either burned to death or drowned. There were 321 survivors. Five of the 40 crew members died.

There was an user several years who claimed that his uncle lit the Cocoanut Grove fire.

I don't know why, but I believed him, and I still do.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire

My mother walked past this place every day in the 80s, and always thought "what a stupid fire trap"

Then some guy got pissed at his girlfriend, emptied a can of lighter fluid at the only entrance/exit, and then lit it.

>My mother walked past this place every day in the 80s, and always thought "what a stupid fire trap"

DominicANO

>mfw /lat/ follows me back from /int/

>tfw not even spic and can reasonably guess as to which burgerposters are spics or not

I'm a WASP though

>I'm a WASP though

t. Pentecostal Puerto Rican

>the three that died taking a shit
>the three that died drinking
>the guy who got too lit on the dance floor

>doesn't even have to involve any deaths
How about the Lake Peigneur disaster? I remember watching a Modern Marvels episode on various disasters and that one caught my eye at over how bizarre the whole event was.
youtube.com/watch?v=ddlrGkeOzsI

>that guy that died on the dance floor

F

Why are nightclubs so prone to fires?

>The Lake Nyos disaster occurred on 21 August 1986, when a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos, in northwestern Cameroon, produced a large cloud of carbon dioxide (CO2), which descended onto nearby villages, killing 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.

>Carbon dioxide, being about 1.5 times as dense as air, caused the cloud to "hug" the ground and move down the valleys, where there were various villages. The mass was about 50 meters (160 ft) thick, and travelled downward at 20–50 kilometres per hour (12–31 mph). For roughly 23 kilometres (14 mi), the gas cloud was concentrated enough to suffocate many people in their sleep in the villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum.[3]

It's like something out of a B-grade horror movie

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster

So what, they're black people. They can just make more babies and replace them. It's a shithole country anyway.

Always thought the Windscale fire was interesting.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

>No one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but there was a worry that milk might be dangerously contaminated. Milk from about 500 km2 of nearby countryside was diluted and destroyed for about a month.

...

It's more likely they ran in a panic through whatever door they could, disoriented in the chaos, and ended up overcome by smoke/fumes and trapped in the washroom with no conceivable way out. Or they may have sheltered there in the mistaken belief that they would survive, that a sprinkler system would kick in, etc.

I remember watching Nat-Geo's Seconds from Disaster on this particular tragedy that killed around 160 people and the cause of the fire remained disputed despite Norwegian authorities stating that it was an act of arson. On the 7th of April, 1990, a fire was reported breaking out at 2:00 AM from a passenger to a ship receptionist. The fire spread quickly because of the materials that were used on board the ship. Even though the alarms were sounded, many could not hear the alarms because of the noise of the ship's mechanical systems. The materials used on the ship produced hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide which caused rapid unconsciousness and death. There was a bunch of Portuguese crew member on board that didn't speak English, Danish or Norwegian, so a combination of language barriers, the ineffective alarm system on the ship, the use of very flammable materials mixed with the fact that these materials would produce noxious gases that were deadly to people who had the unfortunate of being trapped on the burning ship, and you have 159 people killed in the accident.

The bombing of Bologna's train station in 1980. At first said to be the work of the Brigate Rosse later proven to actually have been the work of right wing terrorists working fot the Italian military secret service. These again were in line with Gladio activities in Germany, who not only were a Werwolf like military structure of the NATO but also actively influenced domestic politics by making sure no left wing administration would come to power.

Well before the "disaster" that was the Jewish Revolts under Nero and Vespasian, there was a buildup of events including one unfortunate circumstance:
>Mid 60's A.D. Jerusalem, holiest city of Jews
>During Passover, the holiest time for the Jews of Antiquity
>During a Seder, the holiest moment of the holiest day
>Jerusalem is absolutely swollen with migrants and pilgrims who come to worship
>During the seder, a Roman legionary or auxiliary thinks of something funny
>Roman pulls his tunic up, bends over and farts in the middle of the ceremony
>Jews immediately become enraged, they start rioting and throwing stones at the roman governor (who will not let the Jews punish the offender)
>Cohort called in, begin to quell the riot by killing offenders
>A panic ensues, and several thousands of jews get crushed to death in a stampede
>Approximate death toll according to Josephus: 10,000 jewish civilians
>All over a fart.

I'm glad that eyesore burned down desu.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_New_Zealand_Flight_901

>Initially, there was very little water at the site and we had only one bowl between all of us to wash our hands in before eating. The water was black. In the first days on site we did not wash plates and utensils after eating but handed them on to the next shift because we were unable to wash them. I could not eat my first meal on site because it was a meat stew. Our polar clothing became covered in black human grease (a result of burns on the bodies).
>We felt relieved when the first resupply of woollen gloves arrived because ours had become saturated in human grease, however, we needed the finger movement that wool gloves afforded, i.e., writing down the details of what we saw and assigning body and grid numbers to all body parts and labelling them. All bodies and body parts were photographed in situ by U.S. Navy photographers who worked with us. Also, U.S. Navy personnel helped us to lift and pack bodies into body bags which was very exhausting work.
>Later, the Skua gulls were eating the bodies in front of us, causing us much mental anguish as well as destroying the chances of identifying the corpses. We tried to shoo them away but to no avail, we then threw flares, also to no avail. Because of this we had to pick up all the bodies/parts that had been bagged and create 11 large piles of human remains around the crash site in order to bury them under snow to keep the birds off. To do this we had to scoop up the top layer of snow over the crash site and bury them, only later to uncover them when the weather cleared and the helos were able to get back on the site. It was immensely exhausting work.

I'm really glad that I've never had to deal with a plane crash in fucking Antarctica.

>Literally where Small-Town Disasters.
>Historical.
Ok?

Anyway, here's my contribution. The 1976 Tangshan Earthquake,
>3rd Deadliest in history. Almost Lisbon tier in political ramifications.
>Occured right after Zhou Enlai died.
>So scared Chinese that their traditional thoughts regarding the Mandate of Heaven kicked in after decades of Communism, that Heaven was displeased with the rule of Communists.
>A few months later, Mao Zedong died. Superstition intensifies.
>Contributed to the immediate halt of the Cultural Revolution and Red Guards.
>Gang of Four politically shot themselves in the foot when instead of focusing National Mourning on earthquake victims, they continued shitposting about how Deng Xiaopeng's return to politics was worse than the earthquake.

What was the alleged motive? A false flag, intended to implicate the Left?

bumped for interest

Yes. And so swing the vote to the right. Wrote germany above, meant Europe. Those Stay behind units were everywhere in Europe, including Switzerland, even though they weren't even a NATO country.
Gladio is a really interesting topic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

We all came out to The Station
In West Warwick, Rhode Island
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Jack Russell and the Great White
Were at the best place around
But some stupids with flare gerbs
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky
Smoke on the water

They're crowded, full of drunks, and often designed in such a way that entry and exit are slow. During normal operation, having multiple or large entrances would mean they'd need more bouncers.

Run by scumbags, usually avoid/coopt any representative of the government, typically cheaply made out of some other converted structure.

> 1,746 people literally killed by the geological equivalent of a fart

You know that historical doesn't men 'EPICCCC' but instead something that takes place in a historical time period. yeah?

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire 1911
Because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits – a then-common practice to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft[7] – many of the workers who could not escape from the burning building simply jumped from the high windows. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.

youtube.com/watch?v=9e_19dUezCQ
watch this video
listen to the screams after the camera man leaves the building
its horrific
This video is one of the worst things I've ever seen, gore threads on Veeky Forums don't even come close

From an eyewitness

>I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.

>Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead. Sixty-two thud-deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.

>The first ten thud-deads shocked me. I looked up-saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that they, too, must come down, and something within me-something that I didn't know was there-steeled me.

>I even watched one girl falling. Waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk, she was trying to balance herself. Then came the thud--then a silent, unmoving pile of clothing and twisted, broken limbs.

1919 baseball scandal

Same person

>As I looked up I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror. A young man helped a girl to the window sill. Then he held her out, deliberately away from the building and let her drop. He seemed cool and calculating. He held out a second girl the same way and let her drop. Then he held out a third girl who did not resist. I noticed that. They were as unresisting as if he were helping them onto a streetcar instead of into eternity. Undoubtedly he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames, and his was only a terrible chivalry.

Wow, i never realized everyone else thought this was as bad as I did. Like some have mentioned, im pretty desensitized. Pictures of murders children cut into pieces are one thing, but the screams in that video are horrifying. You don't even really see that many people actually die in the video, its just so jarring though.

>I heard screams around the corner and hurried there. What I had seen before was not so terrible as what had followed. Up in the [ninth] floor girls were burning to death before our very eyes. They were jammed in the windows. No one was lucky enough to be able to jump, it seemed. But, one by one, the jams broke. Down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking-flaming bodies, with disheveled hair trailing upward. They had fought each other to die by jumping instead of by fire.

>The whole, sound, unharmed girls who had jumped on the other side of the building had tried to fall feet down. But these fire torches, suffering ones, fell inertly, only intent that death should come to them on the sidewalk instead of in the furnace behind them.

>The floods of water from the firemen's hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer.

I think I'm more affected by the sounds of death and raw terror than images, although I don't really seek out gore or anything. I accidentally watched a video of the 911 call from a man in the top floors of the WTC. I had watched a documentary on it the day before, and I didn't realize they had edited the call to cut out his last moments. In the unedited audio you can hear him scream out this primal "oh god, oh!" and yell as the tower falls down. I can still hear that shit, 10 years later.

>ywn have the chance to toss multiple women from a high ledge and be called heroically chivalrous for it.

Why even...

>factory owners were fined 45$ per person who died
>and recieved 200$ per dead person in insurance payouts

Behold the might of capitalism

Well, you'd die afterwards.

>Then came the love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw her put her arms about him and kiss him. Then he held her out into space and dropped her. But quick as a flash he was on the window sill himself. His coat fluttered upward-the air filled his trouser legs. I could see that he wore tan shoes and hose. His hat remained on his head.

>Thud-dead, thud-dead-together they went into eternity. I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man. He had done his best.

...

This isn't 25 years but there is another disaster featured on Nat-Geo's Seconds From Disaster that I thought was pretty horrendous.
Was it autism?
youtube.com/watch?v=2KpLEbxegKE
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaprun_disaster

I liked it because of that one guy who was a firefighter, and was the only one to realize that smoke goes up, so the people in his car were the only survivors.

>This video is one of the worst things I've ever seen, gore threads on Veeky Forums don't even come close
I can agree to that. I remember sitting outside on my stairs, shaking, just having a cigarette after I saw it.

I've seen alot of gruesome shit on Veeky Forums, but that was the only time I was genuinly shocked from what I saw.
I guess 15 year old edgelords would say otherwise.

Pompei. The existence of the casts is still one of the strangest things to me.

Iroquois Theatre fire, Chicago, 1903.

602+ deaths.

>During the matinee performance of December 30, while a full house was watching Eddie Foy star in Mr. Bluebeard, 27 of the theater’s 30 exits were locked. In addition, stage manager Bill Carlton went out front to watch the show with the 2,000 patrons while the other stage hands left the theater and went out for a drink. It was a spotlight operator who first noticed that one of the calcium lights seemed to have sparked a fire backstage. The cluttered area was full of fire fuel–wooden stage props and oily rags.

>When the actors became aware of the fire, they scattered backstage; Foy later returned and tried to calm the audience, telling them to stay seated. An asbestos curtain was to be lowered that would confine the fire but when it wouldn’t come fully down, a panic began. It later turned out to be made of paper so it wouldn’t have helped in any case. Soon, all the lights inside the theater went out and there were stampedes near the open exits. When the back door was opened, the shift of air caused a fireball to roar through the backstage area.

>The teenage ushers working the theater fled immediately, forgetting to open the locked emergency exit doors. The few doors that were able to be forced open were four feet above the sidewalk, which slowed down the exiting process. Most of the 591 people who died were seated in the balconies. There were no fire escapes or ladders to assist them and some took their chances and jumped. The bodies were piled six deep near the narrow balcony exits. In fact, some people were knocked down by the falling bodies and were eventually pulled out alive from under burned victims.

forgot the image

someone posted some firsthand accounts too