On the bitterly cold night of December 16, 1835, New York City experienced a nightmare scenario: it was burning to the ground while frozen solid. A burst gas pipe inside a merchant warehouse sparked a fire in lower Manhattan during a gale-force winter storm with temperatures plummeting below minus fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. As alarm bells rang, volunteer firefighters rushed to the scene, only to discover that the city's crude infrastructure had completely collapsed.
New York relied heavily on wooden water mains, which were frozen stiff underground. Hydrants yielded no water, forcing desperate firemen to chop holes through the thick ice layer covering the East River. The river water was so cold that it froze instantly inside the hand-pump fire engines, clogging hoses and solidifying leather valves.
To compound the disaster, deep snowdrifts made moving heavy firefighting equipment nearly impossible. A severe shortage of horses and transport sleds meant men had to manually drag heavy pumpers through freezing drifts while wearing canvas coats that froze into rigid suits of ice armor. With traditional firefighting rendered useless, the blaze swept unchecked across fifty acres of the financial district.
Out of options, city officials summoned the U. S. Navy and Marines to detonate kegs of gunpowder, blowing up entire blocks of buildings to create firebreaks.
By the time the flames died down, over six hundred buildings lay in ashes, causing hundreds of millions in modern economic damage. The catastrophic breakdown of frozen mains and inadequate transport ultimately spurred New York to construct the massive Croton Aqueduct system.