Although, the cause of the fire was unknown as I have marked that in italics.. they are saying that the warehouse did not have a sprinkler system. I marked that passage in bold . So that could have been the ultimate cause of the fire. It is amazing in this day and age that commercial real estate does not have these protective devices on the property. They're saying, with sprinklers, that the number of fatalites in this accident would have been drastically reduced to possibly to maybe two or three.The New York Times, and the Associated Press wrote: The early reports were bad enough: four firemen had died when a furniture warehouse fire turned into an inferno of exploding windows and steel beams twisted by 1000-degree heat.
But just before dawn the real death toll emerged as the last of nine bodies was carried from the wreckage. All were firemen. Excluding the 9/11 attacks on New York in 2001, the fire was the nation's deadliest for firefighters in 30 years.
The fire began about 6.15pm at a Sofa Super Store warehouse and showroom in Charleston, South Carolina. Firefighters rescued employees, pulling one out through a hole in the wall. The flames spread quickly.
The firefighters were spread throughout the building when the roof collapsed, officials said.
Witnesses described plumes of black smoke, swirling towers of flame, fumes of burnt plastic and whooshing backdrafts.
The cause of the fire is being investigated by state and federal authorities, Charleston Fire Chief Rusty Thomas said.
Questions were raised about sending so many firefighters into the building, but Mr Thomas defended the department's actions. "They did exactly what they were trained to do," he said.
"I can't say enough for these nine guys. These nine guys were my friends. I lost nine of my best friends." Mr Thomas choked back tears. "To the families, you gave them to us, and we protected them as best as we could."
The Sofa Super Store did not have a sprinkler system. Michael Parrotta, president of the South Carolina Professional Firefighters Association, said a bill that would have required older buildings to install sprinkler systems failed to pass into law two years ago.
The cause of the fire and how the men died is not known, but officials said that arson was not suspected.
One fire captain said the men might have fallen victim to a flashover, in which super-hot gases heat a building and its contents so intensely that they literally burst into flames.
Buildings that contain a lot of furniture are especially vulnerable because of the wood lacquer, polyurethane foam and other combustible materials that can reach flashover at a relatively low temperature — sometimes within minutes of a fire's onset.
Your thoughts about this tragedy....
