L'Innovation Department Store Fire

The L'Innovation Department Store Fire took place on May 22, 1967 in Brussels, Belgium, and killed 322 people, many of them women and children. The tragedy was a source of Cold War controversy since it came during a period that included anti-American protests from communist supporters.

An exhibit featuring American merchandise that began on May 5 and included blue jeans, barbecue equipment and paper dolls had created outrage among a pro-China group called "Action for the Peace and Independence of Peoples." In the days leading up to the fire, picketing outside the store had taken place, while pamphlets promising greater conflict also circulated.

The blaze began in the five-story structure, built in 1897, at approximately 1:30 p.m. with more than 1,000 people in the store. The store was built with an atrium in the center open to all floors and topped with a skylight, an architecture that behaved like a chimney giving a steady air draft to the store's wooden floors and walls. Cries of, "Fire!" incited panic, with virtually the entire store engulfed in just 10 minutes due to the lack of sprinkler systems. Many shoppers rushed to windows, since the main stairway was enveloped in thick black smoke, while some jumped to their deaths before fire ladders arrived. Still others went to the roof and escaped via nearby buildings. Some employees, having become used to the exploding fireworks that protestors had set off, ignored pleas to leave the building until it was too late.

The origin of the fire was a source of confusion, with store management first stating that the inferno began in the first-floor children's wear department. That was a contradiction of witnesses who had seen exploding butane canisters in the third floor camping department, as well as fourth floor problems in the kitchen of the store's restaurant. Further controversy came about when one witness claimed to have heard one person shout after the fire began, "I'm giving my life for Vietnam!"

On May 30, a funeral service for the victims, attended by Belgium's King Baldwin I and Queen Fabiola, was held at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Other towns also held celebrated funeral masses. The fire marked the worst catastrophe worldwide since the 1961 Niteroi Circus fire in Brazil, and was Belgium's greatest disaster since an August 1956 coal mine tragedy.