Stephen McCaffrey and his younger brother Brian are two feuding siblings carrying on an heroic family tradition in the Chicago fire department. Stephen is so relentless that he drives Brian out of firefighting and into arson investigation. Assisting arson investigator Donald Rimgale, Brian becomes involved in a puzzling series of arson attacks, each ignited by explosive phenomena known as backdrafts. Before the smoke clears, love affairs are rekindled...

Explains the clothing, tools, schooling, and work of fire fighters.

The fire that tore through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the gruesome culmination of years of unrest in America's most profitable manufacturing industry. Two years earlier, led by a spontaneous walkout in the same factory, twenty thousand garment workers, in the largest women's strike in American history, took to the streets of New York to protest working conditions. They gained the support of both progressives...