The Dusseldorf Airport Disaster of 1996 | Episode 82

Do you like fire but hate airports? Have we got the episode for you.

On today’s episode:  we’ll be pulling off the front of our skulls and spending some time fingering our limbic systems; we’ll learn why not all fire rescue services are created equal; and we’ll find out how hot it needs to be for your skin to melt off.

And if you had beenlistening to this as a Patreon supporter, you get to enjoy an additional 8 minutes where we discuss: why calling Germans stoic clock-watching robots is considered so flattering; you’d find out if you’d be considered an idiot, moron or imbecile back in the day; and you’d learn how Dusseldorf compares to Hiroshima.

I will also point out that at the end of the episode, there is a very special Book Giveaway contest! That’s right. I’m giving away the very first book/piece of research I ever used in the creation of the show. William McKeown’s "Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident" using a once-in-a-lifetime Name That Tune style contest. You’ll just have to see for yourselves.

I'll be doing a few listener shout-outs at the end of the episode, and also thanking you all for your kind encouragement during a time when I wanted to punch my own face off. I don't have a safety segment against that kind of thing, so your gentle intervention was appreciated. We ended last year with a bang and start the new year with a whoosh! I hope you all at least began 2025 in a better space, but even if you didn’t, we’re burning down an airport together, so forget about your worries for an hour or so.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/doomsday-history-s-most-dangerous-podcast--4866335/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Do like fire but hate airports, Well, have we got
the episode for you. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday, History's

(00:25):
most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some
of the most dramatic, bizarre, and onspiring but largely unheard
of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around
the world. On today's episode, we'll be pulling off the
front of our skulls and spending some time fingering our
limbic systems. We'll learn why not all fire rescue services

(00:48):
are created equal, and we will find out how hot
it needs to be for your skin to melt off.
And if you were listening to this on Patreon, you'd
hear why calling German stoic clock watching robots is considered
so flattering. You'd find out if you would be considered
an idiot, a moron, or an imbecile back in the day,
and you would learn how Dusseldorf compares to Hiroshima. This

(01:10):
is not the show you play around kids, sor while
eating or even in mixed company. But as long as
you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn
something that could potentially save your life, our work is done.
So with all that said, shoot the kids out of
the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and
let's begin. What's the last thing you want to see

(01:34):
at an airport a three and a half kilometer parade
of screaming kids and bickering families. Maybe your pilot head
down on the bar asleep while the destination board keeps
flipping to delay the drug sniffing dog that runs right
up to you on its hind legs and puts its
paws on your shoulders. There are a lot of things

(01:54):
not to enjoy about the airport. It's the reason seasoned
travelers always look a little salty, and I myself once
had to run the entire boarding pass to security gauntlet
twice because they did not realize that brad is short
for Bradley. Now for a brand new traveler spreading their
wings for the first time and boldly journeying forth to
see the larger world. Yeah, the airport sucks. Getting mugged

(02:18):
at knife point at your final destination won't be any
fun either, But it's your time spent at the airport
that's really going to stick in your craw And speaking
of airports, pack your stretchest later hosen for all the alt,
beer and sausage at every turn, a pair of your
best walking shoes for all that medieval cobblestone. Oh, and
a good watch. See we are heading to Germany, where

(02:43):
five minutes early is on time, on time is late,
and five minutes late is verboten. If you use all
the imagination you have, Germany kind of looks like a
human head facing west. It's been called the most west
looking head shaped country of all time. It's also been
compared to a Mayan glyph. But for the purposes of

(03:05):
situating ourselves today, we will be spending our time in
the North Rhine Westphalia area of Germany. There are sixteen
states across Germany, and this is the one tucked up
in the northwest, ordering Belgium and the Netherlands. To be
more specific, we are going to be spending our time
in Dusseldorf, a vibrant city in western Germany, world renowned

(03:29):
for its blend of modern amenities and rich cultural history
stretching all the way back to medieval times. Whether you
prefer a vibrant art scene or historical sites, or festive
techno and non techno music related celebrations, you can find
it all if you leave the airport, that is which

(03:49):
we will not be doing today, So all of that
is moot. Welcome to flugoffin Dusseldorf or Dusololf Airport for
all of those non dual Lingo users. We are here
on a bustling Thursday morning and the building is humming
with the mostly orchestrated chaos of humanity streaming through its

(04:11):
sleek and modern terminals. If you ever wondered why they
make these buildings so sleek and modern looking, it's not
entirely for that positive first impression. There's this whole science
behind it. Easy to navigate, open layouts, reduce congestion. It's
called people flow, and it helps people hal ass through security,
baggage claim and the boarding area is quicker. And today

(04:34):
there are thousands of families, business people, backpackers all lining up,
filling up every check encounter, while others find themselves rushing
from gate to gate looking to catch their next flight.
Like all things in Germany, it's quite orderly and efficient.
And while all this happens in the terminal, behind the scenes,

(04:54):
in the back rooms and the guts of the building,
cargo handlers handle everything from mail to the human remains.
You think this is just where your suitcase goes before
it gets drop kicked into an early African departure. But
it's all quite organized and on the level. I mean,
global supply chains depend on this. But for the most part,

(05:16):
to the average shoe or auto normal Verbrauer, to the
German ear, all that they care about today is air
traffic control. I mean, getting wanded inappropriately is up there.
But for the most part, getting to where you need
to be is all anyone cares about. And those people
in the towers are the ones responsible for keeping things moving.

(05:37):
They are the conductors of the sky. And every ten
minutes a plane lifts into the air while another arrives
to replace it, and all of it under the watchful
eye of the controllers in the tower. Did you know
they actually have a motto, It's we guide you home.
Kind of nice and really, air traffic controllers are more

(05:57):
like choreographers, in this case, keeping Germany connected to over
two hundred ports a call across Europe, Asia, the Middle
East and North America. In fact, Dusseldorf Airport is one
of the twenty largest airports in all of Europe. It
handles about twenty five million passengers a year. That's like
seventy thousand people a day or ten thousand seven passenger

(06:21):
three row Dodge caravans with or without the stowaway seating.
That is some good look and traffic right there now
as a nube. If you were having two arrivals, that's
on the ground level, And if you were heading to departures,
you just need to head to the elevated roadway upstairs,
or the escalators, or the elevators, or just even the stairs.

(06:43):
It all connects pretty seamlessly. Now, I don't mind telling
you if you're not familiar with air travel, arrivals is
an area of heightened joy and emotionality. Everyone there is
ready to reunite with family and friends, or maybe just
a stranger with your name misspelled on a handwritten card.
This is an area where personal connections are made and rekindled.

(07:07):
You may almost say we're two hearts become one. The
worst thing that happens at arrivals is maybe the occasional
missing bank, or some light traffic, or maybe a pigeon
plops on you at kurbside. But you'll notice the subtle
shift in the atmosphere as you move from the relatively
calm welcoming a rivals hall to the more vibrant, nervous

(07:29):
energy of the departure area. Now, airports are kind of
infamously big. There are like eighteen thousand people working there
right now, which sounds insane, but you have no idea
how many jobs happen behind the scenes at an airport.
You've got meteorologists, wildlife management, the chaplain, the guy who
works the flight information display system, mechanics, ground support, the

(07:54):
lady at the duty free shop, caterers, safety officers, the
jet bridge operators. They even have people pulling rubber and
debris from the runways. Hundreds of random, seemingly disconnected jobs,
but all very important to operations. And one of those jobs,
the one making us do a little dosey dough on
the road to Terminal A, is road maintenance. You ever

(08:17):
live on a street where they put down a traffic counter,
you know, little black box on the side of the
road with some wire sticking out of it, and then
you drive over it to see how much maintenance money
your street deserves. If you put one of those on
the road leading to Terminal A, well, it's gonna explode.
The amount of traffic on approaching lanes and ramps is
pretty constant, and as such results in constant wear and tear.

(08:41):
So roadwork becomes a constant priority at an airport. You
never really think about it, but vehicle traffic creates vibrations
and pressure and all that weakens the pavement, and then
it rains and the water seeps into cracks, and then
it expands when it gets cold, and then it softens
and deforms when it can swarm. Run enough cars over

(09:02):
that and you get maintenance expenses or maybe even a
sinkhole episode. You know what an expansion joint is, Well,
I'll explain it in a way that makes you all
like h. Of course, an expansion joint A lot of
times you'll see them on roads connecting to bridges, and
they kind of look like a toothless zipper that connects
the two sections of roadway. They put them on roads

(09:24):
and bridges where concrete expands and contracts from warming and cooling.
Like we said, well, expansion joints are there to absorb
all that extra little movement so that roads can last longer. Anyway,
that was just a long way of saying that there
was roadwork going on fixing one of the expansion joints
on the elevated access road leading to Terminal A. It

(09:46):
was the first item on the repair crewise to do
list after lunch. Little hammering here, little welding there. It's
like I said, there's a constant choreography of activity at
the airport. Story takes place April the eleventh, nineteen ninety six.
Now on this day, parked outside arrivals at Terminal A

(10:08):
sat a taxi driver just waiting outside the crowded arrivals
area like a predator waiting to swoop. And I don't
mean like the free candy in van kind of way.
And I don't mean like in that movie where all
those soldiers went into the jungle and then almost nobody
made it back to the chopper in the end. No,
I mean cappies live hand the mouth, so of everyone there,

(10:29):
they are probably the most on guard, just continuously scanning
their environment for any potential sign of affair. You sit
and stare at the same scene day after day, and
you're probably going to notice anything out of the ordinary.
And this cab driver was in fact the first to
notice something out of the ordinary. Something seemed to be
dripping from the overhead ramp into the arrivals area. It

(10:53):
seemed almost wet, but it wasn't water, and it also
maybe kind of glowed. He wasn't sure what he was seeing,
but he thought it might be sparks, so he told someone. Now,
there's no one single story or point of view at
an airport. There are thousands of them. And around the
same time, some of those points of view began pointing
towards something being off. And before I tell you what

(11:17):
that was, I would like you to remove the front
of your skull. Now, the limbic system, also known as
the palaeomammalian cortex, sits deep inside your brain, so you're
gonna have to push some stuff aside to get at it.
I shouldn't have to tell you to wash your hands
before handling your own brain. Oh and also you're going

(11:38):
to need a mirror. Now everything you see is going
to be reversed, which is kind of hard to process.
I mean, you ever tried cutting your own hair in
a mirror before. We are looking for a part of
the brain immediately beneath the medial temporal lobe of the cerebellum,
primarily in the forebrain. And why are we going to
all this trouble because different parts of the brain do

(12:01):
different jobs, and this delicious mess that we're handling is
responsible for our sense of smell and memory and emotions,
and smell is the strongest or the most emotionally powerful
sense that we have, and it lives in the limbic system.
A single whiff can transport you back to a specific
moment or place with a kind of vivid clarity that

(12:23):
you don't get from any of your other senses. Smell
can connect us to the past, to people, places, and
sometimes to danger. Smoke is one of those things that
your body realizes before your brain even does, and it's
impossible to ignore. You have a real primal reaction, so
your brain goes an autopilot and it searches for context.

(12:43):
And in this case, what started for the people in
Terminal A as a simple whiff in the air became
a sharp and unmistakable recognition and a moment of urgent
shock to the senses. A wisp of smoke was seen
pouring from an air duct over a gallery of duty
free shite at the east end of the first floor,
over a flower shop, to be specific. In fact, some

(13:06):
people standing at the Luftanza counter asked about it, thinking
maybe there was a fire, but the staff of Liutanza
saw the smoke kind of gave it a moment's thought
and then just figured it was probably a prank. They
thought maybe somebody was setting off a smoke bomb, because
as we all know, before nine to eleven, you could
still just set off smoke bombs at airports. Well, whatever

(13:27):
the source, smoke was on the menu, and quickly it
was seen crawling along the ceiling building into clouds. A
man at the air France check in asked them to
radio the fire department to come and check it out,
but they used Waki talkies there and their Waki talkies
did not connect to the emergency system. I'll tell you
that nine to one one in Germany is one one

(13:48):
two for fire in medical or one one zero for police,
and both of those numbers can be freely dialed from
any phone. Even a cell phone without an active simcard
will'll make that call, but not walkie talkies. So by
now it's about three point thirty in the afternoon when
members of the airport fire department begin arriving at the scene,

(14:09):
and the first thing they noticed was, yeah, the smell
was this particular odor in the air, but they couldn't
quite figure out what was creating it. You have a
smell burning wires, well, it was kind of a mechanical
smell like that. So their first thought was it was
probably coming from the motors on the automatic doors to
the building, because this kind of thing had actually happened before,
So they just told the staff to call for an electrician.

(14:32):
But that wasn't it. Within a few minutes, a saleswoman
from that flower shop we mentioned who was all, I
don't want to tell you how to do your job. Well,
she pointed out that smoke was now visibly pouring from
the air conditioning and the ductwork above her shop, and
not just that, but sparks appeared to be falling from
the ceiling. And that's it. If you're familiar with the

(14:53):
nineteen eighty six hit movie Aliens, there is a point
in the film where the cast are trying to locate
Aliens when it occurred to them that they should probably
check the drop ceiling, and as if on que, the
ceiling above Terminal A began to glow, and at three
point fifty eight PM, the entire ceiling of the terminal
burst into sheets of bright, rolling flames, and with it

(15:16):
came a dense cloud of black, choking smoke. Burning embers
started raining down, igniting everything, and the fire expanded dramatically.
The seriousness of this situation was immediate and obvious, and
pants throughout the terminal engaged with peces as would be
passengers start that wet pant trot away from the flames,

(15:37):
and the fire crew on the scene immediately called for backup.
You know when you hear about a two alarm fire
on the news, Well, that's what that means when first
responders call for backup. When I was young, I thought
that meant how many people had called nine one one,
like it's an eleven alarm fire, because eleven people called
nine one one. To recap, We're ten minutes into this thing.

(15:59):
All the airport fire staff and equipment are on the scene.
People have already panicked their way out of the building,
but no alarms are going off, and the general announcements
are still arguing about whether you should be parking in
the red or the white zones. There's nothing about the fire,
at least not at first, and I strongly believe that
I am not adequately describing the chaos at four six Finally,

(16:22):
a general call for evacuation came overhead, which then fought
to be heard over the roar of the fire and
the screaming of the people. The announcements were in German,
French and English, which was helpful. The thing is, and
this is a minor point, the message was directing people
directly towards the fire, which was less so. Just imagine

(16:44):
hearing that firefighters were forced to use megaphones to shout
people away from the fire in spite of the message.
By the time they had evacuated the first floor of
Terminal A, there were still more than two thousand people
on levels two through five and in the connected parking garage.
The terminal complex at Dusseldorf Airport houses three terminals A,

(17:04):
B and C, three concourses, all contained in a single
gigantic building. The terminal building had one hundred and forty
two check encounters for crying out loud. You could have
fit almost three thousand dodged carabins in this thing, and
that is not even including all of the attached parking
and auxiliary buildings like hotels and the corporate airline offices.

(17:26):
It even had two skytrain stations in it. My point
is it's big. So when I tell you that until
those announcements, with no fire alarm going off, there were
plenty of people in parts of the airport had no
idea what was going down, you have to take my
word for it. However, slowly word was starting to spread

(17:47):
and AH started turning more into AH. The problem is
fire works faster than people, and within minutes this fire
had engulfed huge sections of the terminal. Turns out there's
a lot of flammable stuff at an airport, and now
you are going to learn something about fire services. Do

(18:07):
you ever wonder why they call it that services instead
of department, Well, it's because there's lots of them. And
this is going to sound crazy, but even with a
terminal full of firefighters arriving by the minute, no one
knew how to handle the fire. These were airport firefighters.
They weren't trained for this kind of thing. And I
was going to make a joke about how it's a

(18:28):
little like when someone asks for a doctor midflight and
an ornithologist pipes up. But I don't want a joke
about firefighters. I'm not knocking any branch of fire services.
I thank them very much for what they do. But
these guys right now had been trained and equipped to
put out planes gushing thousands of gallons of fuel while
blaming passengers run in every direction, only making things worse.

(18:51):
See in a house fire, you say, eek, look there's fire,
we should go. But a plane fire experience is so different.
It's going to feel like you're in your house and
then your house gets thrown around by wind or mechanical failure,
and then it gets slapped against the ground, and then
sometimes it rolls over before it finally explodes into flames.
I mean, you see what I mean. People tend to

(19:12):
dismiss or play down airport fire surfaces because they get
called on so rarely, but when they do. Wow, you
think any fire services on an oil rig wants to
tackle a plane fire. I mean, you think anyone on
a fire truck in Germany wants to tackle an oil
rig fire. No, fire is a specialty and services are

(19:32):
trained to handle their specific areas of need. Airport fire
services weren't even trained to handle indoor fires. That's why
they called for backup, and by the time the Dusldorf
City Fire Brigade pulled up not even ten minutes later,
fire and smoke was already visible from the doors, and
officers were already calling for even more help. No one

(19:53):
had had to tackle anything this big in a long time.
I forgot to mention it was hard to see all
the smoke and confusion, but by this point, very early on,
the fire had taken an interest in Terminal B. Yeah,
two fire engines, a ladder truck, a water tanker, and
a command vehicle were not going to cut it, especially since,

(20:14):
as you may have noticed, I have not mentioned any
kind of automatic sprinkler system. And you know those standpipes
that you see on large buildings, they're like two headed
hydrants sticking out of the wall for fire departments to
hook up to. You probably never gave them much thought.
Most people have just always called them Siamese connections, but
especially since it or maybe racist, so people started calling
them why connectors. Anyways, who cares what you call them.

(20:37):
The point is that they were there, but they just
kind of made a sad party whistle sound. They'd never
been used, they'd never been tested, and they weren't even
connected to the city's water supply, so they might as
well have just not been there. By four thirty six,
the smoke pouring out of the scene was unmistakable, and
flights were being canceled and diverted, which caused insane chaos

(20:59):
at neighboring airports. And watching the smoke had been a
group of people on the roof of the parking lot garage.
They'd just been hanging out watching planes take off, you know,
as you do. That was until they saw the smoke
pouring out of the terminal, so they skid daddled by elevator.
And what do I always tell you about elevators and fires, Well,
here's an example of why. Sadly, when the elevators opened,

(21:22):
they opened directly into the fire area of the first level.
And I say sadly because the elevators immediately filled with
a thick, toxic, acrid black smoke that obstructed the optical
door sensors, meaning that doors just stayed open until everybody
was dead. They had all suffocated. The smoke was blinding,
it was impenetrable, and it filled every available space. Because

(21:46):
it's a lot like fire, you know, fire wants to eat,
and this fire spread its hunger far and wide. The
smoke and flames tore throughout the entire first level before
starting to eat its way upstairs through the unprotected open
stairwells and escalaters and air ducks in the ceiling to
the mezzanine level. The mezzanine level overlooked the first level
and was basically filled with carrier lounges. They're kind of

(22:09):
like a self service salon. You get yourself some special
VIP access and now you got yourself a place to
grab some food, charge some appliances, maybe catch some TV.
And passengers had been happily lazing about the Air France
lounge waiting for word of a flight, not of a fire,
and they didn't get either because a the fire and
b the public addresses were turned down or off in

(22:32):
the lounges. These are the kinds of places so you
can picture with lots of comfortable leather chairs and high
top tables, you know, the kind of stylish and ergonomic
furniture that people call contemporary chic. Well, once the smoke
began entering through the air conditioning system into the lounge,
they became trippables. Nine people found themselves trapped inside the

(22:53):
Air France lounge. They just they couldn't find the exits.
And it is at this point that I would like
to make a radical suggestion for the future of indoor
fire safety. You know those red glowing exit signs they
put above doors, you know, near the ceiling where the
smoke goes. I am suggesting putting another set at ground
level for people on their bellies who cannot see the

(23:14):
top signs anymore. I had this dick of a cat
named Gary, and one day Gary ran away from home.
So I made signs saying Gary come home with this picture,
and I hung them all around my neighborhood at the
eye level of a cat. And Gary came home. That's
all I'm saying. So, while firemen bravely fought this inferno

(23:35):
that had completely engulfed the first level, a second team
of firemen were trying to save people from the lounges
on the second floor. The thick smoke and high temperatures
made it difficult, obviously to find people or the lounge
for that matter. They didn't know where the lounge was.
They didn't even have a map of the airport, just
wasn't available. At one point a local cartographer offered to

(23:56):
create one for them, but they told them to kick rocks.
Numerous and hasty panicked phone calls were made from inside
the lounge. The last one was at four nineteen. All
but one of the people in the lounge suffocated. The
safety exit was less than twenty five feet away from
the lounge exit, but no one could find either, except

(24:18):
for one French businessman who couldn't find it either. But
he wasn't having it. He was able to bash out
a window with a chair and he dropped about two
and a half times his body height to the sweet,
horrible freedom below, and you would think, oh, his poor legs,
But no, he had been found with serious head injuries,

(24:38):
meaning he either pin wheeled out the building and landed
that way, or he purposefully superman flew out the window,
and you might think, wow, the human survival instinct is incredible.
Of course, it's also possible that the fumes wrecked his
brain and he thought he might have been Superman. The
fire was clearly burning up some pretty chemically complex construction materials.

(25:01):
So you're at the airport. You've made it through customs
and security, but now you're all, hmm, what is that scent?
Is that melamine resin? Well? Would you know what to do?
Most people fear fire, It's only logical, but smoke is
objectively worse because although you can see it, and if

(25:22):
you can see it, you can avoid it. What about
the things that you can't see or smell. The thing
you don't think about in a fire is that everything
that's been manufactured is manufactured with chemicals, and when things burn,
all of those little chemicals off gas, even in tiny
little squirts, but they are chemicals. The paint on your walls,
your carpet, hardwood flooring, your clothes, anything made of plastic,

(25:47):
your curtains, pet food bowls, blankets, light shades, your radio,
your phone, your shoes. Every single thing contributes to a
toxic environment that will kill you. Certain toxics overwhelm your
body's ability to function and yet just shut off. They
call it rapid incapacitation. Carbrominoxide's pretty popular. It comes out

(26:09):
of a lot of things, and its only role in
your body is to block oxygen from doing its job.
CO two just quietly hijacks your hemoglobin, which usually takes
oxygen around your body. But because it's now taken up
that space, it makes them less effective at you, making
think so good hydrogen cyanides even worse. It makes your
cells use for oxygen need make not so good, also

(26:32):
effectively suffocating you from the inside out. And maybe you
make notts think so good. Then weakness than dizziness, and
at high concentrations, unconsciousness or cardiac arrest can all be
yours in less than a minute. But people are not
afraid of smoke the way that I feel they should be.
So let me say that smoke does to people what

(26:52):
you think bug spray is supposed to do to bugs,
incapacitate them in seconds, leaving no time for escape, and
they immediately die. Those are just the suffeken gases, while
most people are really only aware of irritant gases, gases
like nitrogen oxide and hydrochloric acid, which sound really, really
bad and can irritate your respiratory tract so bad that

(27:15):
you bark yourself half to death while your lungs filled
with fluids. Now, depending on your situation, you might hear
all this and think, well, beats going back to work
on Tuesday. And to those people, I would say, do
you really want to miss Brenda's birthday on Wednesday? They've
already ordered a slab cake and we've got conference room
one booked for noon, and I don't want to be rude,

(27:37):
So what can I do? Okay, excellent. In a toxic
smoke situation, things escalate quickly. First, you're going to be
replacing feelings of panic and urgency with confusion and disorientation
as the health bar on your brain takes up, beating
as breathing goes. Imagine coughing fits and gasping for air

(27:57):
like a fish while the heat and the toxins take
their But instead of just sitting there thinking well, I
mean that's some, let's go for a walk. Well, maybe
a walk, maybe a crawl. You ever play the floor
as lava as a kid, It's the same idea here,
except it's in three dimensions where instead of the floor
being lava air everything above your hips is poison. So

(28:18):
maybe you crawl, maybe you roll, maybe a crab walk
under the smoke, because smoke rises and the cleanest air
is closest to the floor. I also advise using anything
at hand to cover your nose and mouth. The wetter
the better. It'll help filter out your tints, but it's
not going to save you from invisible killers like CO two.
So get a move on, and once you're out, if

(28:40):
your exposure has left you with any of those symptoms
that we already talked about. You want to get yourself
checked out, Please trust me, this stuff is in you now.
While you are sprint crawling your way to safety, imagine
you found someone less vertical. The safety part of my
brain tells you, if you find someone who's going to
slow you down and get you killed, you have to
just wrap their id and crab walk over them. Of course,

(29:03):
if you've been listening to the show more than a week,
you know I'm unlikely and good conscience gonna leave someone
behind to suffocate and burn. So I'm gonna shush you
out of the room because I need you to be safe.
That is my absolute priority. Out you go now while
I'm here. My protocol is I yell your name one time.
If you don't answer, I grab you by your wrist

(29:23):
or your foot, or I just tie your hair to
one of my belt loops and I drag you with me.
And then once we're safe, then I'm gonna check your
pulse and you're breathing. And if that person weren't breathing,
this is the time to start CBR because every second
does count. But unless you are prepared to become a
biological ventilator machine for the rest of your day. You're

(29:43):
gonna wanna urge others to call nine to one one.
It's very safe to say that anybody who has been
knocked unconscious after smoke exposure has a lot of CO
two in their blood which they need to get out
or they're never gonna recover. See it's one thing to
use CBR to try to keep their brain oxygenated this way,
but in a hospital setting, not a parking lot, they

(30:03):
are going to be able to supply the kind of
high flow oxygen in a way that would hyperventilate you flat.
They might need anything from bronchodilators to open up the
airways all the way up to mechanical ventilation to keep
them here with us. And in a worst case scenario,
they might even use a pressurized hyperbaric chamber filled with
pure oxygen to help clear the body of CO two

(30:25):
even faster. And that's not including all of the various
toxins that we've talked about swimming around in their bloodstream,
something like hydroxycobalamine, which is a chemical that binds to cyanide,
so you just piss it out later. I mean, it's
not going to be a very good sipping urine, but
it will help save their life. But I always like
to say that choking to death and tasting your own

(30:47):
urine are never mandatory, because prevention is the best cure.
If you ask the people of Los Angeles if they
woke up thinking, I wonder if I'll be surrounded by
flames later today, they'd probably say, hey, why don't you
just take the one ten north over to the ten
east and get out of here. No, no one plans

(31:07):
to get caught in a fire, but a little preparedness
can save your life. Smoke detectors, even a cheap battery
powered one, is your first and most important line of defense.
A fire extinguisher is a close runner up, And if
you ever actually have to use one, remember the pass method.
You just pull the pin, aim load, squeeze the handle,

(31:28):
and just sweep from side to side like you're airbrushing
an old van. And you only really want to use
it if the fire is small and you have a
clear escape path. You are not going to stick around
to take action selfies against a ceiling fire. And you
got to remember that extinguishers don't last forever. Escaping is
way more important than fighting. To save your property. In fact,

(31:50):
if you are looking for a late New Year's resolution,
why not get into the habit of figuring out your
exits when you enter a new place. I know, I
know you want to spend January fighting with yourself about
that ten pounds you want to lose, But why not
just improve your life by being a little more observant.
It's a lot easier. And let me ask you this.

(32:10):
They used to always tell people to do fire drills
in their house, but have you ever tried escaping your
home with your eyes closed or while crawling? I'm good
with fire drills. They definitely have purpose. They only really
prioritize getting you from point A to point B. They
care about the why, but they don't care about the how.
And I say, how is kind of important practice something
like that, and you're cutting down on any confusion in

(32:32):
an actual situation. And two things on that, we need
to keep every listener as safe as we can and
Brenda slab Cake ain't can eat itself now. Every time
we talk about fire on this show, and specifically smoke
related to fire, the one thing I always try to
impart is how hot it is. TV and movies have

(32:53):
done a terrible job by teaching you that dripping off
your shirt and running into a burning building to save
a cat is perfectly acceptable. Except smoke, depending on proximity
to the original flame and the source materials and ventilation,
et cetera, et cetera, can easily pass one thousand degrees
or over eighteen hundred fahrenheit. And in the Dussldorf airport
there were all kinds of enclosed spaces for smoke to

(33:14):
collect and then retain more heat and then drive up
that thermometer. In more open spaces, smoke doesn't usually top
three hundred degrees or five hundred and seventy fahrenheit, which
is still stupidly hot, I would care to remind you.
I will also remind you that human skin does not
melt like plastic or wax. It thermally degrades as the
proteins in your skinlycolagen start to fall apart around seventy

(33:37):
celsius or one hundred and sixty fahrenheit. Get that closer
to two hundred celsius or four hundred fahrenheit, and it
can burst into flames. By now, the smoke alone had
damaged about two thirds of the second and third levels
of terminal A, but it was already spreading into the
fourth level. Many victims found themselves trapped in areas where
emergency exits were poorly marked or inaccessible, or they didn't exist.

(34:01):
Before long, there would be about one hundred vehicles and
about seven hundred personnel from twelve different rescue services, and
half of those were firefighters. Teams of paramedics were lined
outside the terminal to treat people for smoke injuries and burns.
Rescue teams managed to pull two thousand people to safety.
That is incredible, and some of those had been basically

(34:24):
dragged out wearing the firefighters breathing equipment on the edge
of death. At one point three police officers found themselves
trapped in the terminal by flames. They couldn't get out.
They tried unwindowing their way out of there with an axe,
but the smoke left them so weak they couldn't really
swing it. There really wasn't anything they could do, so
they just lay down, struck a memorable pose, and waited

(34:45):
to die. But at the last second, a group of
firefighters in protective gear appeared from nowhere and dragged them
through the smoke and the flames to safety, which was
no small feet. You have to remember, and it's kind
of hard to picture, but the entire first level of
the terminal was going up in flames all around them
and everything in there, the carpeting, the wall, treatments, the

(35:07):
rubber conveyor belts, frequent flyer points, everything, all converting into
fumes of the most toxic variety. When I said we
would be burning down an airport together in this episode,
I meant it. But thanks to the unbelievably difficult and
dangerous work the responders, the fire was finally declared quote
under control at seven twenty. That was just three hours

(35:30):
and forty nine minutes after the first call. It took
about one thousand firefighters to get it to that point,
and it was finally declared dead by nine point thirty.
That's a hard number of people to picture doing anything,
let alone spring hoses into the mouth of an inferno.
When the smoke cleared, eight were found dead in the lounge,

(35:51):
seven were found in the elevators. Another victim, a soldier
from Britain, had died in the bathroom. That was six French,
two ue Italians and seven Germans killed. The last victim,
an elderly woman she'd initially escaped the fire. She'd been rescued,
but she died two weeks later from smoke inhalation. As

(36:12):
many as eighty eight people had smoke or burn injuries,
but several hundred more were treated on the scene for
lesser injuries. Most of the people killed appeared to have asphyxiated,
but some of the victims did burn to death. In total,
seventeen people died. So what happened, Well, in order man

(36:35):
stared at birds, then icarus flew too close to the
sun on wings made of wax. And if you know
that story, that is actually the original disaster metaphor. By
the way, then the Wright brothers made Kitty Hawk the
seventh most interesting place to visit in North Carolina, according
to Trip Adviser. Then ninety three years later, the Dortmund

(36:56):
Welding Company were doing a little welding around an expansion
joint on the ramp to the elevated access road above
Terminal A Well, actually they hired subcontractors to do that
for them, and part of the work meant using blowtorches
to cut and weld materials between it and the arrival
hall suspended ceiling. There was nothing but an unprotected void,

(37:18):
and unbeknownst to them, as they had been welding, droplets
of molten metal had been falling onto a three inch
thick layer of highly flammable polystyrene insulation, which created a
massive amount of gases and increased temperatures in that void.
Polystyrene insulation looks like packing foam and it offers excellent

(37:38):
thermal resistance, but on the downside, it's highly flammable, and
in this case, its installation may have been illegal, So
that was a thing Dortmund neglected to inform the fire
brigade what they were going to be doing that day,
or to post a guard beneath the welding site for safety,
which maybe it sounds like a lot, but either could

(37:59):
have saved lives and both were mandatory at other airports
like Munich only an hour away. For more than two hours,
the insulation heated up before it finally flashed over, and
that flashover covered the entire terminal ceiling and quickly spread
to the terminal second level, complete with an intense build
up of thick black smoke. Every firefighter who saw it

(38:22):
was all, well, that's not good and had to call
for backup, and as such, seven hundred and one firefighters
and two hundred and fifteen vehicles from across Dusseldorf and
neighboring towns were on the scene. But as get togethers go,
this one was thrown together hastily, and there was a
distinct lack of cooperation and communication between the different rescue

(38:45):
services and the airport. What they didn't realize all that
smoke was made up of all kinds of synthetic materials,
and of course eleven tons of polystyrene. So when I
said the smoke was toxic, I mean your palette might
be refined enough to pull melamine resin. Could you pick
out and identify carbon monoxide or hydrogen chloride, or hydrogen cyanide,

(39:07):
or even just a regular stew of dioxins out of
a single whiff? I think not. What I do think
is that fire doors would have kept the stairwells free
of smoke long enough for people to escape without having
to be poisoned. But with no fire doors and no
sprinkler systems, the fire was free to spread throughout the
entire building. I told my patreons earlier all about stereotypical

(39:30):
German fascination with rules, But what I did not tell
them was that although there are rules regulating the diameter
of German toilet poles, there was no national safety rules
for fire protection, which probably explains why so many of
the firefighters summoned did not have experience with fires this
size or the equipment needed to fight something like this.

(39:53):
I believe the German term for something like this is
a riisin catastrophe or a schlamazl, but for the sakes
of our non German listeners, the response was a cluster file.
The inferno destroyed both terminals A and B. When the
airport reopened three and a half days later, only Terminal
C was in any way inhabitable, so they ended up

(40:16):
creating temporary hangars out of tents. Imagine handing your baggage
to someone on a tarmac and then catching a plane
out of a tent. I mean, it doesn't sound great
in bad weather, but it sounds an awful lot more
streamlined than the regular process. The resulting investigation identified a
few problems, and this may take a minute in order.

(40:37):
They blamed the road workers for not taking adequate safety precautions.
Their employer did not inform the airport fire brigade about
the repair works. And if they had, the fire Brigade
would have been required to set up a fire watch.
It's literally what it sounds like, but I'll go on.
They were not overly psyched about combustible insulation illegally packed
into the ceiling either. They were also equally unenthused about

(41:00):
the lack of automatic fire suppression or sprinkler systems, or
even fire doors. This part of the airport was built
in nineteen seventy two, when all that kind of thing
wasn't mandatory. And actually, I'm just going to say this
real quick, because in my research I came to find
that sprinklers were not even mandatory near fuel storage. Then

(41:20):
there were the standpipes for water that were connected to
the actual water supply. The point of sprinklers isn't actually
to piss out a fire and then water damage everything
else that you own. I mean, those are certainly huge pluses,
but the point of fire suppression systems like sprinklers are
to slow things down. They create the time needed to

(41:42):
get more people to safety. It's been said that if
the terminal had sprinklers or roll down fire doors, the
fire could have been contained at level one. There was
also a lack of communications between the command staff and
the actual firefighters, like we said, which was a problem
considering there were people here who were untrained for indoor
fire scenarios. The investigators also had design issues with the

(42:06):
unprotected vertical openings around stairs and escalators that made the
space feel less claustrophobic, but also allowed the fire and
smoke to spread to the upper levels. And they had
something to say about the fact that seemingly everything inside
of the airport was made out of combustible materials that
gave off poison gas fumes, and the resulting smoke spread

(42:28):
throughout the entire facility, even penetrating all the way down
into the subway below the main building. The arriving firefighters
did not have a good sense of the building layout,
and the PA system almost immediately tried to corral everyone
into the flames. There was no procedure for handling a
fire inside the terminal building. There was also the fact

(42:49):
that the public address wasn't even working in the lounges
and no one could find the emergency exits. Oh and
the elevators open basically directly into the mouth of a flamethrower.
Airport security officials were supposed to turn off the elevators
once they knew there was a fire. Most of the
victims had died from suffocation or smoke inhalation, including a

(43:10):
child and a policeman. If it were for the brave
reactions of all the different firefighters and emergency responders, the
death toll would have been much higher. Approximately two thousand
passengers were saved from the fire. The deaths of seventeen people,
hundreds of injuries, and damages of around a billion German marks,

(43:32):
which by the math around that time would have been
about six hundred million dollars called for a couple of
heads to roll. The public prosecutor's office filed a seven
hundred page indictment against everyone from the welders, the technical
director of the airport, the architect, the building inspectors, and
even the supervisors. And if you thought the oj trial

(43:55):
was big, this one had twenty six defense attorneys, ninety
four wins, witnesses, and an army of press. I dare you, no,
I double dare you to guess how it went. Five
and a half years later, with the trial finally concluded,
all of the defendants were acquitted. According to the verdict,
the accident couldn't be conclusively traced to the specific wrongdoings

(44:19):
of any single defendant. Basically, the case was delayed and
eventually abandoned without a verdict identifying those responsible for the disaster.
So nothing was learned, and of course there were the
three follow up blazes in nineteen ninety seven. I'm just kidding.
The Dusal Door Fire Service called for improved disaster prevention

(44:41):
and control management, particularly for large public buildings. The airport
authorities were pretty enthusiastic about preventing a repeat, let alone
a three peat. After the fire terminals A and B
were considered completely unusable, well yeah, about a billion dollars
worth the damage, we'll do that, and so Terminal A

(45:03):
was extensively renovated and Terminal B was basically bulldozed and rebuilt.
Terminal A reopened at nineteen ninety eight and B was
ready by two thousand and one, and this time the
rebuilt terminals were equipped with fire detectors and sprinklers and
automatic fire alarms and fire reporting systems and even smoke

(45:24):
clearing systems. Vertical dividers were also installed within and between
the different levels to slow down the potential spread of
fire and smoke. Not bad also thirty six security exits
were added. Oh and everything, the insulation, panels, the furniture,
all of it were now to be made from non

(45:45):
combustible materials. They just updated their regulations. And I don't
just mean a Dusseldorf or even just Germany. The response
to this disaster didn't just change national safety, it changed
international fire safety regulations. So three cheers for safety or
prost or zoom wall if you're local. They really thought

(46:08):
about how buildings themselves could be better built to help
people in an event before human responders are even there,
like rethinking everything from how people flow through the building
and how to better corral them to the emergency exits,
and of course introducing more fire resistant materials into the
actual builds of these places. Fire alarm systems with optical

(46:30):
smoke and heat detectors also became mandatory. And I'm glad
all of this has happened. You have to remember where
we started from. How many episodes have we done where
fire exits were just painted over or hid and bind
plants and acdotally. At least Dusseldorf is now considered to
be the safest airport in Europe. It has transformed from

(46:52):
an international travel hub and death trap into a model
for other airports to emulate and look up to. It
also holds a grimmer distinction. The Dusseldorf Airport disaster of
nineteen ninety six remains the most catastrophic structural airport fire
in history. After our last episode, where we literally lost

(47:24):
everything and had to cobble it back together, with my
sanity hanging in the balance, I started thinking about Love
and Rockets, the band, not the comic book. Back in
nineteen ninety five, they were recording a new album when
their studio burned down and they lost everything, all their instruments,
all their gear, all the recordings. And did they hold
hands and just walk into traffic together. No, They've started

(47:48):
over from scratch, and they named their new album sweet
Fa short for sweet Fill, which is exactly what they
had immediately following their disaster. And I know how they felt,
And today the album is remembered as a testament to
perseverance in the face of adversity. When I'm not at
my best, I usually don't feel a very strong sense

(48:09):
of resilience or perseverance. But enough of you gave me
props for not punching myself to death after my own
brush with a recording disaster. So I'd like to say
thank you and throw out a reminder to all of
you that negative self awareness can lead to self loathing.
We've all got flaws and we are all pretty punishable. However,
I want you to try to be more aware of

(48:31):
your good qualities too. Just try a little positive self
awareness for a minute. In more exciting news, I also
mentioned giving away the very first book that I used
as research when beginning the very first episode of this show.
I wanted to find a way to give something special
to some lucky listener, and I know exactly how we
are going to do this. In the spirit of today's episode,

(48:54):
I am going to play seven different fire truck fire
alarms from seven different countries, and the first listener to
correctly guest them all in order wins. Good luck to
you all, and here we go. I hope I didn't
make this too easy. Send me a private message at
Patreon or Facebook or Instagram or Twitter and let me

(49:17):
know your answers. And if that was too easy, and
you're all, man, I feel bad for this guy. That
was too easy. Well why not take pity on that
guy and consider becoming a supporter of the show. It
would really help me fulfill my dream of doing this
full time. And if you and a few thousand of
your friends could spare a buck or two, you would
really be helping make that dream come true. Now, before

(49:38):
I tell you, go Patreon. If you're into it but
you're not looking for a whole relationship, you can visit
buy me a coffee dot com slash doomsday to make
a one time donation, And for those of you who do,
I deeply appreciate you. I myself think getting episodes a
little early without all the sponsor interruptions and with additional
ridiculously interesting material in each new episode is worth it,

(50:00):
and if you agree, you can find out more at
patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo quick but heartfelt shut
out to Tracy Thomas, Sarah Ecrick, Sorry if I mispronounced that,
Jessica McCowan, David moorehead Actual Medieval Knight, Sir Lancelot, Katie Arens,
David Mason, doctor s t Ray, and Daniel Rivera for

(50:21):
supporting me on Patreon. I would also like to share
a very special Happy Birthday to the Great Cheese Fish
because your wife loves you very much. Oh and another
special shout out to CMS Appliances in Rockfalls, Illinois if
your vacuum flows will make it suck at CMS Appliance

(50:42):
in Rockfalls, Illinois. Older episodes can be found wherever you
found this one, and while you're there, please leave us
a review and tell your friends. And I always thank
my Patreon listeners, new and old for their support and encouragement. However,
I also say that if you could spare the money
and had to choose, I asked thank you to consider
making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic is a

(51:03):
rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the
world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises.
They are often the first and sometimes the only team
to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations,
and to date they have helped over three point six
million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn

(51:25):
more and donate at Globalmedic dot CA. On the next episode,
it is another That day of Work episode, but in
this story, the company in question did everything within their
power to find out how many different ways their employees
could die. It's the cherrymind disaster of nineteen oh nine.

(51:48):
We'll talk soon. Save Icago's off, and thanks for listening.