RAINBO WRECK - 1945

On May 9, 1945, Pueblo firefighter Joseph F. Robida died when a Rainbo Bread truck crashed into the rear of Engine Company 4.

Robida, 41, suffered a skull fracture.

Firefighter Joseph Ferraro, riding on the back-step with Robida, was injured. The bread truck driver was also hurt.

The collision occurred at intersection of Mesa and Lake as Engine 4 was responding to an alarm at 512 Acero Avenue, according to the Pueblo Fire Museum.

Robida -- nicknamed "Beets" -- was the son of Yugoslav immigrants. He earned his nickname for one of his many jobs, hauling beets.

Robida's son John, a schoolboy at the time of the accident, said in a 2015 interview with the Chieftain newspaper:

"I was confused, but I had a lot of uncles and they helped us. They told me ‘God needed a firefighter in heaven. God came down and took your dad.’ I thought that was an honor, and it helped me with my pain.”  

Recalling the funeral, he told the Chieftain:

"Firefighters from Denver, Colorado Springs and all over attended. It was a major event. I thought my dad was kind of a president."

FORT COLLINS CHIEF - 1965

Photos: Fort Collins Public Library, Poudre Valley Fire Authority

On June 29, 1965, Clifford Carpenter, Fort Collins fire chief, was killed by falling bricks and mortar at the State Dry Goods store fire.

Carpenter, 49, was directing hose lines at the building College and Oak streets when an exterior wall gave way, according to the Fort Collins History Connection and Poudre Valley Fire Authority.

Firefighter Jim Witchel was injured.

The cause was determined to be an electrical timer that controlled the lights in the dry goods store show window.

Newspapers published photographs of the chief, in his white helmet, in the seconds leading to his death.

According to the Poudre Fire Authority, successor of the Fort Collins Fire Department:

"At about 9:30 p.m., an electrical timer that controlled the lights in the show window of the State Dry Goods store at College Avenue and Oak Street malfunctioned and the brief shower of sparks ignited combustible material. 

"The fire quickly spread, but was not immediately noticed because the darkly painted walls of the show window made the interior of the store invisible from the sidewalk.

"The fire burned for about an hour, slowly increasing the interior pressure to the point where one of the large windows exploded, showering shards of glass across the sidewalk and into the middle of the street.

"The oxygen that was sucked inside, caused the interior to erupt into an inferno.  By the time the Fire Department arrived, the building was fully involved.

"Mutual aid was requested from the LaPorte Volunteer Fire Department, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Loveland Fire Department.  All off-duty firefighters were called in as well.

"Chief Carpenter was notified of the alarm via the telephone extension installed in his home and responded to take command.

"He noticed that the south wall had a slight bulge in the middle and decided to go around to the south side to order the men handling the lines to back off.

 "As he and Firefighter Jim Witchel took a 1 1/2 inch charged line in close to the building to check the area where the gas meters were located, the wall collapsed covering Witchel and Carpenter with bricks and stone." 

Edward Yonker was appointed to replace Carpenter as fire chief.

Store owner Bob Johnson, in an oral history documented by his daughter Diane Thornton, recalled:

"Not only was most of our merchandise and building destroyed that night in the fire, all of our accounts and debts owed to us were burned as well. We had no record of who owed us what, and we had no way to track it down. As my brother-in-law and I worked to rebuild what we had lost, a miraculous thing occurred. Every day people of our town would stop by to give us money they owed to the department store.

"That's Fort Collins. The buildings come and go. But the people, the people have made this into a great city of big dreams and even bigger integrity."

MONTANA FAIR - 1941

Three-thousand people fled a fire that destroyed the grandstands at the Western Montana Fair in Missoula on Aug. 21, 1941.

The fire also destroyed a livestock building, automobiles and "the tepee village of the Flathead Indian tribe," the United Press reported.

Horses and other livestock were cut loose and trotted away with the rest of the crowd.

PUEBLO HIGH SCHOOL - 1917

On Feb. 26, 1917, fire gutted Pueblo Central High School, toppling the western wall.

Firefighters were forced out when flames overtook the stairwells and battled the blaze from ladders set on slushy snow. The high school had open hallways and no fire stops along the roof, allowing the fire to rage. 

The Pueblo Chieftain newspaper said the fire broke out on the fourth floor along Orman Avenue and spread to a new addition, which included an auditorium.

Fire Chief Sam Christy "was obliged to use all engine streams, the pressure at the hydrants being only 40 pounds and the nearest plugs requiring not less than 500 feet of hose," according to the magazine Fire Engineering. "He used seven engine streams, having 3,100 feet of hose in use, one length bursting." 

The following apparatus attended the fire, according to the magazine:

1 Metropolitan pumping engine
1 Victor motor pumping engine
3 combination hose and chemical wagons
2 two LaFrance hose and chemical wagons
1 75-foot aerial ladder truck.

INTER-OCEAN HOTEL - 1916

On Dec. 17, 1916, a fire at the downtown Inter-Ocean Hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, killed a family of six and destroyed the building.

The father was electrocuted after falling on a power line. His wife and the couple's four sons suffocated.

Following account was published in the Casper Star-Tribune: 

ELIZABETH - 1947

Citizens formed a bucket brigade to stop a fire from destroying a swath of Elizabeth, Colorado, on March 14, 1947.

The city lacked an organized fire department.

Denver, Aurora, Littleton and Castle Rock sent crews after an appeal from the town's telephone operator.

 A faulty acetylene torch was the likely cause of the fire at Jones Motor Co., 381 Kiowa Ave., according to municipal files.

COLD CASE -1982

Colorado Bureau of Investigation Files 

On Oct. 20 1982, Timothy Dodson, 10, David Nuetzmann, 4, and Michael Nuetzmann, 1, died of smoke inhalation in an arson fire at Valley View Estates mobile home park, 1201 W 92nd Ave., Thornton. The suspect(s) have yet to be identified. Anyone with information is asked call the Thornton Police Department.

CALIFORNIA MUTUAL AID

Photo: Denver Fire Dept.

In September 2019, the Denver Fire Department sent Wildfire Engine 301 and a crew of four to southern California on a long-distance mutual aid run.

STEPPED IN A VAT - 1930

"Guy Walker, Deputy Chief of Denver, Colo., was scalded on the right side and right leg when he stepped into a vat of boiling water while the department was fighting a fire in a crate and basket plant. Lights had been turned off. Chief Walker was making his way through a dark, smoke-filled room when he stumbled into the vat used for steaming logs. He got out unassisted. and after receiving emergency treatment, was taken to the Denver General Hospital." - Fire Engineering, March 5, 1930

UNITED AIR LINES 629

Photo: FBI
Flight 626 debris in hangar

On Nov. 1, 1955, a bomb blast tore through United Air Lines Flight 629 bound for Portland  from Stapleton Airport in Denver.

The DC-6 aircraft crashed near Longmont,  killing all 44 aboard.

Eyewitness Bud Lang said it  "looked like a shooting star coming down."

There was little for rescuers to do except recover bodies.

The bomber was tried and executed within 15 months for planting the bomb to collect on a life insurance policy on his mother, a passenger on the flight.

MIDWEST REFINING - 1921

On June 17, 1921, it set ablaze the Midwest Refining Co. tank farm in Casper, Wyoming.

Flames raged for 48 hours and consumed 360,000 barrels of oil even after application of chemicals, according to the Associated Press.

Casper "was darkened by billows of smoke which spread over it," the Ogden Standard-Examiner, a Utah newspaper, reported. "The blaze continued under a downpour of rain which approached a cloudburst. ... More than one thousand men were rushed to the scene to protect other tanks."

Lightning struck again on July 2, 13 and 18,  according to a History of Natrona County, Wyoming.

JOHNSON HOTEL - 1955

UPDATED APRIL 2024

Laramie Fire Chief Blake Fanning surveys charred lobby 

A March 15, 1955 fire at the Johnson Hotel in Laramie, Wyoming, claimed seven lives - including a retired rodeo rider who performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

"The stairs were a sheet of flame," survivor Alfred Warner said. "I climbed out the window and hung onto the hotel sign."

The blaze - blamed on a cigarette - started behind the lobby on the main floor of the two-story hotel at 103 Grand St., where 26 guest were bunking for the night. The building was 55 years old, with 36 rooms and a cafe.

Six victims died at the scene, and the Associated Press reported the seventh died March 19 at Laramie's Ivinson Memorial Hospital.

The fire started at about 2:30 a.m. and the last flame was extinguished at 5:30 am., the United Press reported. The hotel register was destroyed in the fire, delaying identification of the victims, UP said.

Fire Chief Blake Fanning told the Laramie Boomerang newspaper:

"When we arrived smokes was pouring out all the front windows of the building and men were leaning from the windows, hanging from the two signs at the front and shouting from the roof of the adjoining building.

"The heat was so terrific we couldn't get in the upstairs and we couldn't reach the inside rooms where we could hear men yelling."

Among the dead was retired rodeo rider Ed "Boots" Smith, who toured Europe in the early 1900s as a member of the Buffalo Bill Cody and Gandy Brothers Wild West shows, according to a wire service report.

DON HOGAN - 1927

Don Hogan

On Aug. 8, 1927, a three-alarm arson fire gutted an auto dealership owned by football star and aviator Don Hogan at 1227 Broadway in Denver - and Hogan plead guilty to the crime before the year was out.

Prosecutors accused Hogan of intending to defraud the Mercantile Insurance Company of America, which insured the property. Two of his employees, Rex Conley and Joe Crenshaw, were also arrested.  Twenty-five cars and the entire stock of parts were destroyed.

The three alarms brought 200 Denver firefighters and 27 pieces of apparatus to the scene - a major response . Truck driver Paul Dretzler, of 4601 Williams St., Denver, spotted the fire at about 2 a.m., and told police two men tried to stop him from turning in the alarm from a fire box.

Immediately after the blaze, Hogan declared it was arson, citing charred bunting between cars stored in the basement and charred paper between steps leading to the basement, The Rocky Mountain News said. Hogan also insisted he was at a loss to say who started the blaze.

After pleading guilty on Oct 29, Hogan "left in his own car immediately for Canyon City in custody of a deputy sheriff" to serve his prison sentence, according to a United Press dispatch.

Flames from Hogan's building damaged the neighboring Permo Washing Co. and Stephens Miller, Inc., the News said. Five firefighters suffered minor injuries.

Hogan's dealership sold Rickenbacker and Kissel automobiles. These weren't popular. Rickenbacker halted production in 1927 and Kissel filed bankruptcy in 1931, according to Wikipedia.

HOSPITAL FIRES

On Feb. 14, 1906, fire burned through the ceiling of the laundry at the Denver city and county hospital, the Aspen Daily Times reported. On March 8, 1920, fire ignited by sparks from a power plant smokestack destroyed the men's building housing 40 patients at the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society, the Oak Creek Times said.