20 True Stories of Firefighters Who Saved Lives: Deadly Fires, Impossible Rescues, and Extraordinary Acts Courage

When everyone else is trying to get out, firefighters are going in. London, 1666. Chicago, 1871. San Francisco, 1906. The burning oil wells of Kuwait. Feyzin. Notre-Dame. Grenfell Tower. The great California wildfires. The World Trade Center. Each time, the fire creates its own rules. >20 True Stories of Firefighters Who Saved Lives takes readers inside some of the most dramatic and destructive fires in history. This book is about what firefighters see, understand, and decide when plans stop matching reality. Inside, you will discover: - how specialized teams extinguished the enormous oil-well fires of Kuwait;- why the Great Fire of London became almost impossible to stop;- how San Francisco firefighters battled a burning city after the 1906 earthquake;- the decisions that helped save Notre-Dame de Paris;- what happened during the Grenfell Tower fire;- how firefighters defend critical sites against massive California wildfires;- what FDNY radio communications reveal about the final hours inside the World Trade Center;- why, at Mann Gulch, a firefighter being overtaken by flames made the seemingly insane decision to start a fire of his own. Techniques evolve. Equipment improves. Knowledge of fire behavior advances. One thing remains constant: in a major fire, someone has to understand what is happening before the flames make the decision for them. >Deadly fires. Impossible rescues. Split-second decisions. Twenty stories in which courage matters, and so does understanding the fire.