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Fire

Best Article

The Perfect Fire

It started with a candle in an abandoned warehouse. It ended with temperatures above 3,000 degrees and the men of the Worcester Fire Department in a fight for their lives.

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Flynn on the Longform Podcast

Sean Flynn Esquire Jul 2000 1h Permalink

Sports

A Boat Fire Killed 34 People, and We May Never Know Why

Investigating one of the deadliest maritime disasters in U.S. history.

Kathryn Miles Outside Feb 2020 20min Permalink

Best Article

‘We Have Fire Everywhere’

For eight hours last fall, Paradise, Calif., became a zone at the limits of the American imagination — and a preview of the American future.

Jon Mooallem New York Times Magazine Jul 2019 45min Permalink

Best Article Arts Crime

In the Ashes of Ghost Ship

He helped build an artists’ utopia. Now he faces trial for 36 deaths there.

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Max Harris was acquitted this week of charges of involuntary manslaughter.

Elizabeth Weil New York Times Magazine Dec 2018 45min Permalink

Best Article

Gone

Decades of greed, neglect, corruption, and bad politics led to last year’s Paradise fire, the worst in California history.

Mark Arax California Sunday Jul 2019 50min Permalink

Paradise Lost

Inside the most destructive fire in American history—and why the West’s cities and towns will keep on burning.

Kyle Dickman Outside Dec 2018 20min Permalink

150 Minutes of Hell

The inside story of death and survival as the Carr Fire’s tornado of flames stormed Redding—and changed firefighting in a warming California.

Lizzie Johnson San Francisco Chronicle Dec 2018 20min Permalink

Crime World

The Tower

A 60,000-word investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire.

Andrew O’Hagan London Review of Books Jun 2018 4h Permalink

Science

A Fire's First, Fatal Hours

Retracing the steps of the most devastating wildfire in California history.

Kevin Fagan, Jill Tucker, Lizzie Johnson, Peter Fimrite, Marissa Lang, Kurtis Alexander, Esther Mobley, Michael Cabanatuan San Francisco Chronicle Oct 2017 15min Permalink

The Day the Fire Came

Love and loss on the Texas Panhandle plains.

Skip Hollandsworth Texas Monthly Jul 2017 30min Permalink

Fire on the Mountain

A night of terror in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Justin Heckert Garden and Gun May 2017 20min Permalink

Best Article Crime

The Fire on Harvard Avenue

How junk arson science convicted a mother of killing her own daughters.

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Previously: The Longform Guide to Fire

Liliana Segura theintercept.com Mar 2017 55min Permalink

When the Devil Enters

An Italian town plagued by mysterious fires turns to science, the church, and the law in a search for answers.

The Atavist Magazine Nov 2016 45min Permalink

Superheroes are Real

Meet the smokejumpers of America.

Rachel Monroe Bleacher Report Oct 2016 20min Permalink

Firelight Along the Frontier

The fire department working a desolate New Mexico mesa is made up of 15 anarchists and recluses and led by a friendly giant whose job is to be an administrator in a place that defies administration.

Michael Canyon Meyer This Land Aug 2016 25min Permalink

Crime

A Trial By Fire

In eight minutes, Miashah Moses took out the trash and a blaze consumed the apartment where her nieces were watching television. What happened, and who’s to blame?

Carol Mersch The Big Roundtable May 2016 50min Permalink

Everything Gone but the Water

The wild fire that consumed Harbin Hot Springs, a legendary clothing-optional resort in Northern California.

Brandon R. Reynolds San Francisco Dec 2015 20min Permalink

Media

Fire Alarm

A journalist’s memories of covering the great Baltimore fire of 1904.

H.L. Mencken Newspaper Days Jan 1941 30min Permalink

Baptism by Fire

A rookie firefighter confronts his first test.

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Previously: The Longform Guide to Fire.

N.R. Kleinfeld New York Times Jun 2014 25min Permalink

19: The True Story of the Yarnell Fire

The Granite Mountain Hotshots, an outfit of professional wildland firefighters, had 20 members. On June 30, 19 of them lost their lives.

Kyle Dickman Outside Sep 2013 35min Permalink

The Line of Fire

How volunteer firefighters responded to a lethal West, Texas explosion.

Katy Vine Texas Monthly Sep 2013 35min Permalink

Science

In the Line of Wildfire

Embedded with the “hotshots” trying to battle forest fires.

Kyle Dickman Outside Jun 2013 20min Permalink

Death of a Building

A historic Little Rock building and its owner, before and after a catastrophic fire.

Paul Reyes Oxford American Apr 2013 25min Permalink

Best Article

4:52 on Christmas Morning

A father’s life, one year after the death of his three daughters in a fire.

Dan P. Lee New York Dec 2012 30min Permalink

Science

The Fire Next Door

A chronicle of the 2010 wildfire that burned down 169 homes in Colorado, told via the people who lived through it.

Robert Sanchez 5280 Sep 2011 30min Permalink

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