The Tragic Story of the Hamlet Fire
Wikimedia A view of the cooker around which the1991 Imperial Foods chicken processing plant fire was centered. Taken from a report by the United States Fire Administration. On the morning of September 3, 1991, the never-inspected chicken-processing plant a stone’s throw from city hall in tiny Hamlet, NC, burst into flames. Twenty-five people perished that day behind the plant’s locked and bolted doors. It remains one of the deadliest accidents ever in the history of the modern American food industry. For decades, the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina, thrived thanks to the rai...