TL;DR: An absolute moron fired some flares indoor, toward a highly-flammable ceiling, got 100 of his relatives killed in the ensuing fire.
Whoever it was may be a moron, but fire code is designed to protect us from morons. A moron with a flare gun should not be able to accidently murder 100 people. That’s a failure on many levels.
Indeed. It’s likely that insufficient fire code made this much worse, given what the article says.
Civil defense officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall’s exterior as decorated with a highly flammable type of “sandwich panel” cladding that is illegal in the country.
There’s probably always be a fire if someone fire flares indoor. But following the fire code can go a long way toward saving time, avoiding deaths. Multiple things went wrong to get such a disaster.
Latest information is often of the highest quality on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaraqosh_wedding_fire
114 deaths reported so far.
As soon as I heard about the source of ignition I thought about a similar catastrophe that happened in the USA about twenty years ago. This is terrible, but it is probably good to share it widely and in as many languages as possible. I am not sure of the best words, but it would be good to help this tragedy save others.
This has been happening since the invention of fire. People will cut corners and use cheaper flammable material where they shouldn’t (e.g. Grenfell 2017) or some stupid with a flare gun will set it off inside (e.g. Montreux 1971).
Fire codes and building standards improve with time, but human stupidity is forever.
I wouldn’t be optimistic: between the chances of some venue ignoring safety codes, and the chance of 1 in 250 people igniting some fireworks at a celebration… I’d expect this kind of stuff to keep repeating over and over.
I agree entirely, and that is basically the angle I am going for. I feel like spreading this around as much as possible will serve not as a deterrent, but as an informational event that perhaps folks will remember when they see the fire displays come out. We become complacent so easily tho.
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A raging fire seemingly caused by fireworks set off to celebrate a Christian wedding consumed a hall packed with guests in northern Iraq, killing around 100 people and injuring 150 others as authorities warned Wednesday the death toll could still rise.
There was no official word on the cause of the blaze, but the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw aired footage showing fireworks shooting up from the floor of the event and setting a chandelier aflame.
A Health Ministry official, speaking to The Associated Press at midday Wednesday on condition of anonymity as he did not have authorization to talk to journalists, put the death toll at 92, with 101 people still receiving medical treatment.
Other footage shown on other local television networks appeared to show the bride and groom on the dance floor when the fire began Tuesday night, stunned by the sight of the burning debris.
Civil defense officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall’s exterior as decorated with a highly flammable type of “sandwich panel” cladding that is illegal in the country.
While some types of cladding can be made with fire-resistant material, experts say those that have caught fire at the wedding hall and elsewhere weren’t designed to meet stricter safety standards and often were put onto buildings without any breaks to slow or halt a possible blaze.
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