A fire in St John’s street near the City. I responded to the call and I arrived at the scene around about midnight to find a very large fire. I was briefed by the fire service and by the police who were already there. They’d clearly already found a number of bodies and were already suspicious. ibid. Davis Scyasbrook, forensic scientist
11 people could die in a cinema fire which had been deliberately started by someone, and there not being a massive public outrage. ibid. rozzer
In 1982 thirteen young black British people died after a house party ended in fire. The fire and its aftermath would ignite an uprising by the black British community. Uprising, captions, BBC 2021
‘There was a lot of racism within the police force. People were fitted up with bags of drugs, people were fitted up with offensive weapons. And so often they were young black people.’ ibid. former PC Peter Bleksley
21 Held After Muggings: A 24-year-old housewife and 20 young men will appear at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court, London, today charged in connection with a series of muggings. ibid.
They were arrested after a number of raids in South East London on Monday, and followed a rooftop watch by police on shops and streets in Lewisham and Deptford. ibid.
The Metropolitan Police at five o’clock in the morning smashed the doors down of 21 houses and arrested 21 young people … A campaign for freeing of the Lewisham 21, and some of the people were little more than children. But it was what inspired the National Front to set up what they called the Anti-Mugging Branch. ibid. Sid Shelton, photographer and activist
The Battle of Lewisham: ‘The police were attacking us’. ibid.
Kids lying on stretchers burnt till they were pink, and the smell of burning flesh will go to my graves. Uprising II: Blame, survivor
She saw somebody in a white car throw something. ibid.
Then there was another firebomb at the Moonshot Youth Club. ibid.
The black people’s day of action was the most powerful expression of black political power that this country has ever seen … There were over 20,000 people marching through the streets of London on an ordinary working day. ibid. Linton Kwesi Johnson
There was a police line across the road that was stopping the march. I really don’t think they wanted us to cross the bridge. ibid. witness
A cordon of police officers in riot gear standing across the entrance to the bridge. We found that particularly disturbing because the route to the march had been agreed. ibid. Johnson
‘Kennington was a very racist area, yeah: Niggers Go Home, NF on the Wall’ … ‘Blacks Stink’ [graffiti] … Uprising III: The Front Line
‘Round and round and round antagonising people endlessly.’ ibid. ex-rozzer whistleblower
Operation Swamp: ‘One day I was stopped three times.’ ibid. old suss law victim
‘We saw the police surround a guy who had been stabbed.’ ibid.
When we got to the high street [after victim dragged to police van] it was one of the proudest moments of our lives. Hundreds of us. ibid.
There was like a cinema playing in my mind of all the indignities I had suffered with the police. ibid.
A lot of chaos. A lot of coppers getting hurt. ibid. ex-whistleblower
You know what? They were good fires. They were fires of freedom. People were breaking the chains. ibid. dude
‘The unprecedented outbreak of violence on the streets of mainland Britain.’ ibid. BBC news
It’s the Christmas shopping season in London and the rush hour is in full swing. Commuters and shoppers stream through King’s Cross, the city’s busiest rail interchange. Suddenly, a deadly wall of flame roars through the packed station. It kills 31 people. Seconds from Disaster s2e17: King’s Cross Fire, National Geographic 2006
Fires are a fact of life on the ageing infrastructure of the Tube. There have been over 400 the previous three decades. ibid.
Moments later a huge jet of fire erupts … A small blaze has suddenly erupted into a ferocious inferno. ibid.
The prime suspect for the King’s Cross fire is now a careless smoker discarding a still-burning match. ibid.
It’s 9 a.m. and Bolton steeplejack Fred Dibnah arrives at a demolition near Monton in Manchester. The chimney Fred is working on today in approximately 100 feet high and to prepare it for demolition has taken Fred a week. Fred Dibnah: Getting Steamed Up s1e2: The Great Dorset Steam Fair, BBC 2001
A bonfire of wood and rubber tires is built around the outside. ibid.
‘There’s precious little literature on the subject.’ ibid. Fred
‘You’ve got to get it burning fairly uniformly across the front of the chimney stack.’ ibid.
‘It’s about a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes.’ ibid.
On the night of the 20th June the school buildings of St Trinian’s were burnt to the ground. The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s 1960 starring Joyce Grenfell & George Cole & Cecil Parker & Eric Barker & Thorley Walters & Irene Handl & Lloyd Lamble & Nicholas Phipps & John le Mesurier & Basil Dignam & Michael Ripper & Raymond Huntley & Liz Frazer & George Benson & Sid James et al, director Frank Launder, opening scene
The Windscale fire of 1957 ... The core itself was on fire ... A cloud of smoke began to fall over the area. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield, BBC 2015
In the decades that followed there have been other more serious incidents at nuclear plants around the world. ibid.
A 25-storey building built in 1974 to house 600 residents in 120 flats. It is now 5 years since the tragic Grenfell fire. Grenfell, Jon Snow, Channel 4 2022
This play is taken entirely from excerpts of spoken evidence, given under oath, to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry between November 2017 and March 2021. ibid. caption
A devastating fire had ripped through the Queen’s castle at Windsor. Elizabeth: Our Queen VI: Crown in Crisis
Art is a fragile thing. On 23rd May 2014 the Glasgow School of Art was grievously damaged by fire. The building was the inspired creation of the Scottish artist and architect Charles Rene Mackintosh. His library, one of the most beautiful rooms ever designed, was lost to the flames, savaged, cremated, gone. Four years later, unbelievably, the fire returned. Mackintosh: Glasgow’s Neglected Genius, BBC 2018
One of the most important buildings in the world. ibid.
In the 1960s his work festered in derelict buildings. ibid.
There was something about the design madness that everyday Glasgow loved. ibid.
The Mackintosh look, the emerging Glasgow style, found favour with a rebellious group of artists on the other side of Europe – they were called the Secessionists. ibid.
An uncompromising genius – a man who could be a nightmare to work with. ibid.
Secrecy is the Word to Remember. Atomic Homefront, sign over entrance, Sky Documentaries 2022
North St Louis County, Missouri: Elevated levels of radioactivity. ibid.
In 1942 the US Government chose St Louis, Missouri, as a processing center of uranium for the first atomic bombs. Over the next 25 years, the radioactive waste from this processing was moved to sites throughout the northern suburbs of St Louis. The radioactive waste was then dumped into a landfill in Northern St Louis County. ibid. captions
It’s stinking. That’s how it is down here. ibid. resident
The Bridgeton side of the landfill contains an underground fire known as a Subsurface Smoldering Event or SSE. ibid. caption
The West Lake side of the landfill contains 47,000 tons of radioactive waste including Uranium 238, Thorium 230 and Radium 226. ibid.
In 1990 the West Lake landfill was designated as a Superfund site. ibid.
Proposed site of isolation barrier north quarry area chart. ibid.
‘We’re just mums and we’re scared.’ ibid.
Louis Gibbs founded the Lake Canal Homeowners Association to fight dioxin poisoning in the community. ibid. caption 1980
We had all of those cancers. Every single one. ibid. resident
They used to dump up there up to twelve o’clock [midnight] ibid.
In October 2015, four school districts near the West Lake landfill send letters to parents explaining their emergency action plan in case of a radioactive incident. ibid
I entered the apartment at the fire scene with a hand pump ... and noticing a pile of debris in the center of the room. I started to squirt it and was stopped immediately by other people who had preceded me into the room. It turns out it was not just debris but part of a corpse of the lady who had been burnt to death, unbeknownst to me. There was only her foot and her shoe. Nelson Aters, firefighter, re Mary Reeser 1951, later investigated by son Dr Richard Reeser