 Piles of ruined film cans outside the fire-damaged vault building | |
| Date | July 9, 1937 |
|---|---|
| Location | Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States |
| Coordinates | 40°51′18″N 74°02′51″W / 40.8550°N 74.0475°W |
| Cause | Spontaneous ignition of Nitrate film resulting from heat wave |
| Outcome | Destruction of archived silent films of the Fox Film Corporation and Educational Pictures |
| Deaths | 1 |
| Non-fatal injuries | 2 |
A major fire occurred in a 20th Century-Fox film-storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States on July 9, 1937. Flammable nitrate film had previously contributed to several fires in film-industry laboratories, studios and vaults, although the precise causes were often unknown. In Little Ferry, gases produced by decaying film, combined with high temperatures and inadequate ventilation, resulted in spontaneous combustion.
One death and two injuries resulted from the fire, which also destroyed all of the archived film in the vaults, resulting in the loss of most of the silent films produced by the Fox Film Corporation before 1932. Also destroyed were negatives from several other studios. The fire brought attention to the potential for decaying nitrate film to spontaneously ignite and changed the focus of film-preservation efforts to include a greater focus on fire safety.