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Freakonomics Radio

27. Death by Fire? Probably Not

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.632K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2011

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fire deaths in the U.S. have fallen 90 percent over the past 100 years, a great and greatly underappreciated gain. How did it happen -- and could we ever get to zero?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

So imagine it's a Thursday night and you just got off from work and you're meeting some

0:07.8

friends at a club when your favorite bands is playing.

0:11.1

And you get there, you get a beer, friends are in a good mood, when you just got a promotion.

0:16.8

The opening act isn't bad.

0:19.1

Then the headliner comes on and as they bang out the first few chords, you see this shower

0:23.9

of sparks up near the stage.

0:26.1

And first you think, hey cool, good old fashioned rock and roll pirate technique show.

0:32.0

But something goes wrong.

0:33.5

And the sparks catch the wall and fire.

0:36.8

Next thing you know, flames are shooting out from the stage right toward you.

0:41.1

And now flames rolling, the ceiling over the dance floor.

0:44.2

And the hot gases and the smoke, the toxic smoke, start coming down from the ceiling, which

0:49.0

is about 12 feet tall or so.

0:51.0

And was down to within 18 inches of the floor in less than 90 seconds after ignition.

0:56.4

So you can imagine just people trying to get out of there.

1:00.0

In this particular case, a lot of bodies ended up pushing and trying to get out and they

1:04.8

ended up stacked on each other in the doorway.

1:08.3

There were other collections of bodies throughout the nightclub that were found dead.

1:14.1

Really, really a tragedy.

1:15.6

So about 25% of the people that were in the nightclub that night died.

1:19.6

And about 50% of the people that were in the nightclub that night were seriously injured.

1:24.9

Many of them having to get multiple surgeries.

...

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