Anyone who knows me can tell you that two of several things that I'm passionate about are history and the fire service.. Sooo, maybe inevitably in this technology-driven world, I decided to blog about them.

That's one of those things that becomes a shade more complicated when you go from from 'Idea' to 'Reality' Back when the idea 'Write a History Blog' popped up my initial idea was to put everything in one blog., be it military history, technological history, disasters, what have you. Then, when I kicked it off with the story of The Monitor and The Virginia (AKA Merrimack) and realized how many directions that single subject would branch off in. I realized how confusing that could...and would...end up being. So I decided to split them up into at least two blogs. Throwing a blog post about 'The Titanic or the development of electricity in the home into the the middle of a multi-post blog article about a battle in The civil War just didn't seem to be the best idea.

So with that thought in mind, I'm kicking off the second of my blogs...Disastrous History.

Just about everyone is fascinated by other peoples disasters. If this wasn't true, Law Enforcement wouldn’t have to set up a perimeter at a simple room and contents house fire. Let a fire rig or two turn into a neighborhood, air horns blaring, siren yowling, and red lights winking, spinning, and strobing, and you have a crowd forming to follow them to the scene. Books about famous (And sometimes not so famous) disasters and calamities always seem to sell well. Everyone's ready to second, third and forth guess how any incident is handled.

Back when I was really active as a fire ground photographer, friends and acquaintances would ask me if I made it to any incident of note within a few hundred miles...and this actually still happens occasionally. People are just fascinated with disasters...whether they like to admit it or not.

Thing is, there are so many facts, both trivial, and not-so-trivial, about the subject of disasters that it's unreal. When I started doing research to kick this blog off, I found out about dozens of incidents that I didn't know about...and I'm not talking about small incidents, either. And I liked to think I was at least a little bit knowledgeable about anything having to do with the fire service, who tend to get involved with mitigating said disasters. So if I didn't know about 'em, it's a fair bet that lots of people didn't...and that they may want to read about them (Ok, my ego may be showing a little bit there, lol)

So, without further ado, lets go check out a few disasters.