Introduction It is important for people to reflect on the past to plan for the future. The lessons learned from the past could hold the key to solving future problems. The efforts of fire prevention that were recorded earliest are in ancient Rome. A major fire disaster made Rome form a response team that we now term as a fire department. Ever since then, some of the greatest progresses have taken place after towns were devastated and many lives lost (Collins, 2000). In the early morning of March 25 1990, an arson fire killed 87 people in a social club Happy Land, New York City at Bronx. The victims inside the club were mainly Hondurans celebrating Carnival. On the evening of the fire, the arsonist had argued with his girlfriend, a coat check …show more content…
After the gasoline was ignited, a person opened the door and run out; probably spreading fire in the building.The building had no fire exits. They had been blocked to prevent people who had not paid from entering (Cote, 2003). A few days after the fire, the New York City fire department approached Center for Fire Research (CFR) for assistance on understanding the factors that led to loss of lives and to come up with a strategy that might help reduce occurrence of similar incidences within the …show more content…
Addition of an automatic alarm system for notification would have even made it more efficient. Conclusions Based on the possible mitigations to the fire disaster on Happy Land club in Bronx, a lot of lessons that might have changed firefighting industry for the better have been learned. Fire prevention measures are a sure way and possibly the best form of combating the fire disasters (Campbell, 2008). From this incident, the use of noncombustible interior finish is possibly the least costly strategy that could have limited the loss of life. The impact of fire on the occupants would have been minimized by limiting the fuel available to the initial gasoline spill. This, however, does not guarantee complete safety if the materials in the bar would have caught fire. A second means of exit door would have definitely reduced the death toll. This would have depended on the width of the stairs and the speed of recognition of