Beers, D. G, et al. Map of Cambria Co., Pennsylvania: from actual surveys & official records. Philadelphia: Published by A. Pomeroy, . Phila.: Printed by Fred. Bourquin, 1867. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/2012592157/>.
A typical heating element is usually a coil, ribbon (straight or corrugated), of strip of wire that gives off heat much like a lamp filament. When an electric current flows through it, it glows red hot and converts the electrical energy passing through it into heat, which it radiates out in all directions.
It ruptured gas lines and ignited dozens of fires, many of which soon merged into the disaster's single largest blaze. Eyewitnesses estimated that this fire fiend, as one observer called it, reached 20 stories high. Its temperature exceeded 2,000 degrees, hot enough to melt steel.