Updated: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 - 8 PM
Three More Firefighter Deaths Make 1999 One of the Deadliest for America's Bravest in Last 10 Years
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1999 Deadly Year for Firefighters
Discuss: Iowa Tragedy & 1999 LODDs
DAVE J. IANNONE
Firehouse.Com Editor
The deaths of three Keokuk, Iowa firefighters today raises the number of firefighter fatalities reported to the United States Fire Administration (USFA) and Firehouse.Com to 109 for the year, likely ranking among the worst in a decade.
The Iowa incident was also the second deadliest for firefighters this year, along with a Lake Worth, Texas Church fire in February that also killed three firefighters. The worst firefighting tragedy this year occurred earlier this month when six Worcester, Mass. firefighters died in a warehouse fire. In December alone, 15 firefighters have been reported killed in the line of duty: 10 in structure fires, three in fire truck accidents, and two reportedly fallen by heart attacks.
The USFA investigates all reported line of duty deaths as they come in to determine whether they are "on-duty" related and should be classified as a line of duty death. Those classified as line of duty are memorialized at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Md. The full report for 1999 will be released in early summer 2000.
Final statistics for the year may cause the actual number of line of duty deaths to change. The NFDC is expected to release those figures in February.
"Those are reported deaths … there are some that haven't been reported that we will find out about, and there are some reported that will later turn out not to be on duty related," National Fire Data Center (NFDC) spokesperson Alex Furr said.
According to the NFDC, 109 firefighters died in the line of duty in 1991, Last year, 91 firefighters made the ultimate sacrifice. It has been a decade since more than 110 firefighters were killed in the line of duty, In 1989, 118 firefighters died. Firefighter deaths had been on a decline since the early 90's, except for 1994 when numbers rose after 14 wildland firefighters died in a Colorado mountain fire.
Since 1981, 14 Iowa firefighters have been killed in the line of duty, not including today's fatalities, according to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
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