Any Dopers remember the Isle of Man Summerland complex Fire?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It was in 1973 so before I was born. I know two people who were able to tell me about it. One of those people has died now.

http://www.iomfire.com/main/Summerland.htm

It mentions that there are people all over the world who were there - so it occured to me to ask on the SDMB.

Were you there? If not do you remember the story on the News? Did it make it to international TV news?

2

:: crickets chirping ::

Sorry, hon. :smiley:

3

Oh well. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

4

I certainly remember the incident reported on the news, very big event and yet other incidents seem to get more attention as the years pass.

IIRC there weren’t any sprinklers, and the evacuation took a while to get started.

This link has further links to a pretty comprehensive analysis of the incident, especially chapter 6 - the inquiry.

I notice there isn’t any mention of sprinklers either, I am pretty sure there weren’t any.
http://www.gees.bham.ac.uk/people/index.asp?ID=156

5

Thanks for the gees link. Passed many hours at work reading those .doc files.

I can’t really put into words the feeling of sadness I get when I think of the people that died. Trapped in a burning building is possibly down amongst the worst ways to spend the last moments of your life… and there were kids too.

I was particularly surprised to read one survivor’s account of seeing a man with his hair on fire carrying a child.

6

I wish I’d know what had happened there earlier than I did. I’ve been to the post-fire summerland many many times. If I had been told what had happened there beforehand and had looked into it further I would have appreciated the significance of it while there, and I would have looked around and wondered what it must have been like before. I would have been able to ask question after question to the first guy that did tell me about it - my stepdad - because he worked at summerland as a kid back then. And I think he said he’d worked there the same year that it burned down - (before - obviously)

He died in Nov 2006. Died of a brain heamorage - which I think is a far better way to die than trapped in a burning building.