By the way, my friend Disasterthon has covered this incident, too - take a look at their video for some archive footage of the fire itself, and a bit about the memorial, which was only recently put in place: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rZ2Ye86nzbXIemg.html

‘The fire burned through the fire alarms before they could go off’ that just feels like a terrible terrible joke

At this point Fascinating Horror could make a playlist entitled "Fires in 'Fireproof' Structures"

Electrical Engineer here who is currently working on a family entertainment center that seats over 5000 people. After watching this video, I triple checked section 700 of the NEC to make sure my feeders were fitted for pathway survivability. This guy is out here straight making me a better engineer.

This whole channel is honestly the strongest argument against deregulation that I've ever come across. For every person who goes all-in on safety features even when they're not required and regularly inspected, there's another guy going "eh, screw it, the sprinklers on the ceiling are gonna break the budget, how's the progress on the paper mache rollercoaster coming along" lmao

“A parked car blocked the fire exit...it was the safety officer’s car” You really can’t make that shit up. Just wow.

PSA for anyone watching: Confused about whose job it is to call the fire brigade? If you're in or near a burning building, it's your job.

10:06 "The non-fireproof glass would soften and fall out of its framing, facilitating escape" I love how their plan in the event of a fire, apparently, was to have guests escape over piles of melting plastic on fire. As if that's not bad enough, the guests who were in the swimming pool likely wouldn't have been wearing shoes.

To the man who doused himself in water so he could stay in there building longer to help people, we salute you. You were one of the good ones.

1:30 “Set the architectural world alight.” Followed by the loudest pause I’ve ever heard.

this channel has taught me that i will probably die in an accident because someone cheaped out on something, and then afterwards nobody will even be held accountable for my death. the system works!

This was my swimming pool as a kid! (well, the post 1977 version). The place was like one huge fire escape - it had huge signs everywhere letting you know absolutely at all times exactly how to get out. Always found that strange as a kid

Can't think of this disaster without tears. I was in the building that day, but had left an hour or two before. Such a shock to get back to our "digs" in Castletown and hear that Summerland was on fire. I'll never forget that day, but it makes me bitter that nobody was ever really held accountable. So many errors and possibly dubious practices. Some things never change.

You have the carousel worker that fled with the ride still moving, then you have the staff member who doused himself in water so he could stay longer to help people

"It's no ones fault. The doors just randomly chained themselves together." *sigh*

Yes I was survivor of Summer land just 14 years old. I am glad people bring this to the attention of others there was virtually no way out and evacuation of the complex! Everything locked if it wasn't for 2 men smashing the glass which was beginning to melt I don't know! In those days there was no help or counseling afterwards I was very lucky with my wonderful family and we were on holiday!!

“There we’re no villains” Nah. Miss me with that nonsense. They made every safety fault imaginable with the intention of cutting costs. Any one of these issues on their own is an honest mistake; together, it’s clear that the park owners were fine risking their visitors’ lives in the name of margins.

I hate how flammable fireproof buildings are 😭 the liquid hot plastic part was horrendous

"They chained the door shut to prevent people from sneaking in" Tell me you care more about profits than human life in one sentence.

A friend of mine had holidayed there the year before and had a great time. The family tried to book again for the first week in August 1973 but it was full. They managed to book for the first week in September. My mate realised how 'lucky' they had been to not be there when the fire hit. What an awful tragedy this was.

It was a poorly designed resort, but a well designed death trap.

Given the missing keys and a fire door partially blocked by their parked car, suggests that the Safety Officer was appallingly incompetent.

"Fireproof" structures reminds me of an "unsinkable" ship from 1912.

The amount of fire accidents that include "They thought it was fireproof" and "The exits were closed so people couldn't sneak in" is staggering. Oh and not to forget: The corner cutting.

I find it all very strange how in most of these horrific tragedies nobody is ever brought to justice or held accountable.

"One employee even doused himself in water from a fire extinguisher so he could stay longer and help guests" Just damn....

Farout that staff member is a hero, dousing themself in water to stay longer to catch children being thrown down. What an absolute nightmare scenario, and just imagine being one of the parents trying to throw your child in the hopes that they survive

Does anyone know the name of the employee who doused himself in water so he could try and save people for longer? I’ve been trying to find stuff about him but no luck. He’s an incredible hero Sidenote, I know you must already do a lot of work but I’d love it if for these videos you could give us the sources you used for your research so we could read more about the events if we wanted

“Fascinating Horror” should cover the Our Lady of the Angels Fire, December 1, 1958, in Chicago. I lost 93 classmates and three nuns, one who managed to get some of the children to safety and went back one time too many. Every family in our neighborhood was touched, some lost all their children. And many survivors were horribly burned. A sad, sad day.

My mum was meant to be working there that day but she had food poisoning from dodgy prawns the night before. Her replacement died

"..by a parked car outside the building. A car that, with horrible irony, belonged to Summerland's safety officer." I literally facepalmed. YOU HAD ONE JOB.

Ahhh, the 1970’s, a family driving to this center in a car without anyone wearing seatbelts, no airbags, with the parents chain smoking while the kids are unbelted in the backseat with all the windows up. ……And all of this was before arriving at the death trap of a building.

Someone ran away from their post at a kids’ ride without even taking a second to stop the machine or unbuckle them, leaving them trapped to die. I would like to personally fight the people who said, “there were no villains.”

If the phrasing in the brochure was used in a novel, the editor would return it and ask to make the foreshadowing less obvious.

My dad, grandmother and great-grandmother were all survivors of this. My dad is still unable to talk about it, but my grandmother used to show me the scars from skin- graphs over her arms. I'm now wondering if that was from the melting plastic. Feels emotional to listen to one of these where it invovled your own family.

A reminder that in an emergency, we generally default to the level of our training. Part of the brain shuts down, and the other part takes over, and if you don't have appropriate training in what to do in case of an emergency, you might find that you've left a bunch of kids on a moving carousel because your brain in panic mode couldn't find a better pattern to follow than "GET OUT NOW". This is why fire drills and fire safety education is so crucial to staff of any sort of public venue.

The fact they built another "entertainment" complex in the same spot is just mind numbing. Talk about bad vibes.

As an ex fire inspector, this video hits close to home. People rarely take fire inspectors seriously, lives tend to get lost when they do so. So sad

The safety officer parked his car in front of the escape fire door , the carousel attendant ran off and left the kids on the ride for dead , same with the three that started the fire , the escape keys weren’t placed on the boxes they were supposed to be ... Jesus there was literally no safety regulations in the 70s.

Accidental fires from cigarettes are so common, and especially back then, everyone was just smoking everywhere. Because of this, fire regulations are so desperately needed. Even if you think "what could possibly cause a fire here?", just one single stray person too stubborn to smoke somewhere else, that's all it takes. And you know it happens all the time. I remember seeing sprinklers all over the vacation park I visited last year, they didn't make the ceiling very pretty, but they are a matter of life and death in these places. Glad they're there.

My wife, young daughter and I were there for an event at the TT in 1973. It was a death trap, in retrospect. The escape doors into the pool area were chained shut then. Access was up narrow, twisting stairs inside and outside. I actually said to my wife as we left that it would be God help anyone trying to escape. We could very easily have been in the same boat as those who died.

I can't even imagine trying to escape and having the windows _melting_ on me. It always bothers me to hear about locked and chained doors in mass public venues. Weren't crash bars invented by that time?

I was in there the week before it burned down... My dad worried about safety due to the fire escapes being chained shut. So we only visited once. Thank goodness.

Sadly ... when comparing some of the catalogue of errors and the lack of accountability to what happened at Grenfell Tower it seems the lessons did disappear as quickly as Summerland II.

*gives Safety Officer a stern look* "You had one job lad. One."

All of these disasters make me feel so sad for those poor people who died in such terrible ways :(

My next door neighbours got caught up in this, but managed to escape with nothing more than singed hair. Thanks for doing this, most have forgotten about it!

Fire is always a serious issue. I stepped out of my old apartment in 1995 and made my way down the sidewalk when I noticed someone lighting a bbq grill on his porch. I stopped walking forward and started back-peddling towards my apt. And just like I feared the charcoal, soaked in starter fluid, shot a flame 5 or 6 feet high and immediately set the floor of the porch on the 2and floor ablaze. I grabbed the phone from its base and dialed 911 as I went back out to observe and report. In less than 60 seconds the entire building was burning, it was eye-opening to see just what fire can do and with such quickness! The fire brigade arrived very fast and nobody was hurt, but the building itself was damaged quite a lot. Fire is fast and powerful, never underestimate what it can do.

Two old friends of mine lost their wives in this horror. Appaling.

I know any loss of life is a tragedy but I’m actually surprised the number of dead wasn’t higher in a situation like that. It sounds horrifying.

"an ultra modern building constructed mainly from metal and plastic" me: oh no

My family visited a couple of weeks before the fire. It was difficult to get into from street level, having to go up several small circular flights of stairs, then across a concrete concourse to the main building. The entrance was small with turnstiles and barriers only letting one person a time in. We stayed in the main space for a while but it all seemed a bit disjointed and not well thought out. To get to anything you had to take a tortuous route on overhead walkways and after having some snacks and playing some games in the open area, the rain had stopped outside so we left. It was more difficult to get out due to the turnstiles etc, and after the disaster I often thought how scared people must have been trying to find each other and squeeze thru the small exits with all the other panicked people whilst molten plastic was falling on them.

I remember standing on the North Pier in Blackpool watching the black smoke coming over in waves. I was 12 and I'll always remember that too this day

"There were no villains, just many human errors"- yep, whoever signed off all the budget cuts is a human error.

As a retired Firefighter, retrieving the bodies of children, still makes me cry to this day.

I discovered this channel about an hour ago and have been bingeing videos ever since

I remember this happening, my cousin was staying with us at the time, and her 2 sisters were in the Isle of Man, we were all really worried that they had been in the building. No mobile phones in those days, it was a while before we heard from our cousins that they were OK. The news programs covered it for weeks, really horrific.

This channel has taught me to bolt at the first whiff of trouble when in a large crowd.

A recurring theme in these disaster stories is that the wealthy investors who repeatedly put profits before people’s lives - invariably walk away without a single consequence.

I live on the Isle of man and this incident still haunts us as a community. As a child we used to go into areas of the building that still had the visable marks of the fire but were blocked off. It was knocked down many years ago now but you can still see the stair cases and parts of the building in the cliff behind. It is truly haunting

This is truly horrifying m!! Especially if you were there and split up from your children... i would 100% be panic searching for them rather than evacuating. Can't imagine the terror :((((

As a child you learn about fire safety with strict rules like "don't run, walk", "the priority is to get yourself out safely", "never go back into a burning building" and "remain calm". it's heartbreaking to learn about the incidents that inspire these rules

If I had heard it was just a "chip pan fire" I would have left on my own. Because even though it was a lie Ive seen a chip pan fire just go up in seconds because someone threw water on it.

My grandparents had visited Summerland the day before the fire and were still in the Isle of Man when it happened. It's sobering to think that if they had been in there on the day of the disaster I may never have known them. I'd heard the story many times growing up and a couple of years ago even wrote a song about the disaster as I somehow feel connected. Such a tragedy.

We were supposed to go there that day but didn't go because 4 year old me wasn't feeling well. That night, while watching the news in our hotel on the other side of the Isle of Man, we were shocked when we saw the footage of the fire. So glad we didn't go when we were supposed to.

Safety officer blocking a fire exit with his car is next level Homer Simpson shit.

"the sprinkler system was not installed due to finances". Sounds like a huge lawsuit to me.

All I have to say is mad kudos to those staff members that stayed behind to help, that takes a lot of balls. All I have to say is TEACH YOURSELF AND YOUR CHILDREN PROPER FIRE SAFETY

I saw it. We were on holiday there. I was eleven years old. We were at the amusement arcade up on Douglas Head. As we watched it burn, we had no idea that people had died. The horses from the horse trams were unharnessed and reared in fear. Next day was Friday, the last day of our holiday. The local radio station played sad music all day. We tried to phone our family in Liverpool to reassure them, but the phone lines were jammed - early 1970s, remember. They were so worried. My Dad hated Summerland because it was such an ugly modern building. I was a daddy's girl. That stopped me wanting to go there.

This channel has taught me that most disasters started with, "Hey, I got this great idea to save $100..."

I find myself planning a fire exit inside my head everywhere we go. Feel so bad for people who pass away like this. Last minutes being absolutely horrific.

This delights me. (Your whole channel makes me happy; I have trainwreck syndrome and am a compulsive researcher, and having documentaries like these which highlight particular disasters available to get other people interested in them is wonderful.) I wrote up Summerland myself years ago and the thing that struck me most about the whole gigantic mess was the disconnect between the two architects/architectural firms -- and the fact that Oroglas's manufacturers themselves knew the stuff was flammable, an internal memo even pointing out that the stuff could burn "in quite a frightening manner" -- and yet everyone sort of just looked the other way. Brilliant work.

Very well done documentary. My dad went on a family trip there a couple of days before for his 8th birthday and it's crazy to think how lucky he was that he avoided the tragedy by just a handful of days. Rest in peace to all the victims :( and my heart goes out to all of the survivors.

Those three boys would be in their early 60s now. I wonder how their life went with such a big burden to carry.

Maybe you could make a video about the Sampoong mall collapse in Korea sometime? It was a pretty big disaster, and I feel like a lot of people don't know about it.

my dad was an isle of man local, i remember him talking about the dripping roof and thick black smoke from the plastic when we went back to (illegally) look around the property some time in 2011, thank you so much for covering this it was great to hear what happened in detail and not just vague stuff my dad remembers.

Oh my goodness didn’t even know this 😟 It’s a mix of the 70’s film Towering Inferno and the flammable plastic from the Grenville Towers fire in London a few years back

Just like how the doors here were locked to keep people from sneaking in, the same kind of thing happened at the Stardust nightclub fire here in ireland. My dad was a young adult when this happened and he is very particular about fire safety since. The club was dark and it was too late before the smoke was noticed and the was a stampede to the front door because the fire door was locked to stop people sneaking in. My dad was in another place a few weeks after and e checked the fire door, heres a giant lock and chain on the door. Bouncer came over and told my dad to leave it alone. My dad said why is it locked? Same reason as alwasys. My dad brought up Stardust and said it would be very bad if someone brought the fire Marshall into it and the bouncer cut the lock right in front of him. so stupid and so many people have died because they don't want to lose money instead of hiring better security guards.

The worse part for the people was probably trying to find their children in the crowded pools or on another level!!! I could never have just run out of the building without knowing where my family was!

Quite amazingly I'd never even heard of this disaster even though I was a kid at the time; it's even more amazing to me that no-one has ever made a TV drama series of it, along the lines of Chernobyl.

As a fire warden, I feel confident working for a company that takes fire safety extremely seriously. They installed more sprinkler coverage than legally necessary, fire doors are checked daily to make sure no one is blocking them, dozens of fire extinguishers around the store and multiple fire wardens trained in their use, things like wood or cardboard waste are stored away from the building to prevent accidental (or deliberate) fires from spreading to the building's wall, a special wet chemical fire suppression system above the fryers, and a proper automated announcement that tells customers that children left in our care in the children's playroom have already left the building through their own dedicated fire escape so parents don't try running halfway across the building in search of their kids, but rather in the furthest corner of the car park. We even have an automated fire alarm panel that automatically activates the evacuation message if a smoke alarm trips and our security team don't investigate and confirm it's a false alarm within two or three minutes. I've had to be that guy and have a go at customers for blocking fire doors before, or people trying to prop fire blocking doors open, but I'd rather mildly inconvenience someone than be one of the people wishing they hadn't been complacent after a disaster happens. Changes in rules and designs only happened because of huge incidents such as this one, when disasters don't happen for a while people get lazy and think it won't happen to them, procedures get ignored day to day, corners get cut in design or renovation, we always need to be vigilant and proactive in our approach to fire safety.

My mum saw this happen from her stay-room window, aged 4 when she was on holiday with her mum. She’d been inside the building earlier that day but they had gone back because it would be her bed time soon. Such an unfortunate tragedy.

My god not only were there flames, but it was "raining" fire due to the melting glass!

I remember when someone did a showcase of Summerland at UCM (the college) in Douglas for the art gallery and after the video, it had all the names with photos of the victims (like school pictures/family photos) and it was heart-wrenching

I’ve just watched 5 of your videos back to back. Interesting, detailed and well told. Your voice is now soothing me to sleep 😊

Fire genuinely is the most terrifying thing cause people just don't seem to grasp how insidious it is. My mate burnt down his mother's house by falling asleep with just one candle lit. The curtains caught the flame and next thing he woke up and the walls were all on fire. He said the only thing that saved his life was that he had cleaned his room earlier in the day so there were no clothes and rubbish littering the floor, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get out cause they would have caught too. Fire is no joke, once it catches it really catches!

"Set the architectural world alight" _Now that's just tempting fate, isn't it?_

Growing up in the States I always wondered why fire safety equipment and training was so abundant despite never witnessing a building fire. Now I get it

your writing and narration are excellent. Found myself viewing similar material from a lot of different channels of late but yours definitely stands out. Keep it up!

Honestly I get that how the boys acted was irresponsible of them but holy shit imagine having that on your shoulders forever. Especially when most of the damage and deaths could be better attributed to the other failings. Absolutely awful

I remember this horrible disaster. There was a rumour at the time that workmen constructing Summerland would use some of the window materials to start small fires (in order to keep warm). It was known beforehand that there were highly flammable products incorporated in the structure of the building.

How tragic and awful to imagine this facility where families felt safe. Parents in an adult area and kids in a play area, and suddenly Fire breaks out. Scrambling to find your kids as plastic melts dropping fire on you. WHERE ARE YOUR KIDS?! -Peace all.

Excellent documentary! Straight to it and concise. Left the viewer well informed and didn’t take 1.5 hrs Thank you! Great job!

I don't know if it's just me, but my stomach dropped when they mentioned young children being left trapped on the fairground rides during the fire - after the ride operators fled without switching them off or letting them out - and nearby adults having to climb on while they were still going to rescue them. Even the very thought of that happening in the midst of a massive inferno is beyond horrifying.

I live in South Korea and it would be amazing if you could cover the collapse of the Sampoong department store in 1995. It has always horrified and fascinated me. I LOVE your videos!

As my wisened old grandad said only weeks before the disaster ‘that cannot be safe’. He said the same about the twin towers, Ro-Ro ferry design, my aunt’s ‘tendency to burn water’, the grand national and Concorde. He wasn’t always right but he was never wrong.

I couldn't imagine being a kid riding a carousel with like a sibling or friend for a fire to start, and the adult who is a operator, leave you for dead.

As a kid I remember burning myself pretty bad after trying to melt an action figure...I can't imagine how awful it would be to have giant, melting pieces of plastic raining down on you as you're trying to escape certain death.

My Mum was staying up the road in a hotel with her husband. They were on their way to Summerland when they saw people starting to run out screaming. It wasn't long before they saw it in flames. She was also a passenger on the Herald of Free Enterprise the day before it sank which you've also talked about. She had some very narrow brushes with disaster. It's so strange to have grown up with these stories and then see videos with photographs and back story, really scary.

"Exits should not have been chained shut..." I had to bring that up several times to the p.o.s. 'greeter' at a local WalMart last year during the 'quarantine' b.s. who insisted that they were following the law by only having one entrance open (while the others were locked, and the gates at the garden center were chained). It wasn't until I finally raised a ruckus outside about the OSHA violations that the manager finally unlocked everything. I'm just glad we _didn't_ have a catastrophe during that time. >=(