I remember the History channel special on the Hindenburgh... yeah, the material they used to cover it was VERY VOLATILE. Even in the film footage of the airship coming down it isn't exploding into a "Michael Bay extravaganza" as most people seem to think but the skin is literally burning away and the fire is being fueled by the hydrogen cells within.
Remember that quite a few of the passengers did walk away from the collapsing airship. Most deaths occured from people JUMPING out of the vessel when it was still in the air.
Just another example of "doomed by design". We'll probably never know for sure what was the exact cause (because there are so many things to blame from static charge, sabotage and lightning to hydrogen leakage...) but yeah, not exactly the same thing as jackal said.
There were more deaths in a helium-filled airship (USS Akron) than in the Hindy.
USS Akron (ZRS-4) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia