The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was one of the largest disasters in American history. Practically overnight the great city of Chicago was destroyed. Before the fire there was a large drought causing everything to be dry and flammable, then a fire broke out in the O’Leary’s barn and spread throughout the city. Many attempts were made to put out the fire but there were too many errors and problems in the beginning. After the fire many people were left homeless and had to help build their city again (Murphy, 39) Before the fire broke out on Sunday night, October 8, 1871 there had been a large drought causing everything to be dry and extremely flammable.
Many fires had been breaking out in Chicago. Records show that in 1870 the fire fighters went to nearly 600 fires. On Saturday night there had been a large fire that destroyed about four blocks and lasted for 16 hours. Another reason why everything in Chicago was so flammable was because almost the entire city was made out of wood. It was a lot worse in the middle class and poor sections of the town (19).
Just about every house was made out of wood.
Even buildings that claimed to be fire proof had wood roofs covered with tar. The richer part of town had stone and brick homes, but wooden interiors, wooden stables, and wooden storage buildings (Cromie, 81).
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Chicago was built on marshland and every time it rained the city flooded, so to help this problem the roads were made out of wood and elevated above the waterline. The day the fire started there were over 55 miles of pine-block street and 600 miles of wooden sidewalks.
“Chicago in 1871 was a city ready to burn,” according to Jim Murphy, author of The Great Fire (Murphy, 18).
It was Sunday October 8 th about 8: 45 pm, when Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan went to visit the O’Learys’ house only to find out they were asleep. So Sullivan walked across the street to Thomas White’s house and sat down to lean against the fence. The wind was very strong that night and there was a party at the McLaughlin’s to celebrate the arrival of a relative from Ireland. Sullivan decided to go home when he noticed a fire in the O’Learys’ barn.
He started shouting, “FIRE!” as loud as he could and ran to the barn to save the five cows, horse, and calf inside. As he did, his peg leg got stuck in the floorboards. He hung onto the calf as they made their way out (13, 14, 15).
There were many stories about how the fire broke out, but no one really knows what happened. Some stories say that the O’Learys’ cow kicked over a lantern in the stable; others say the O’Learys’ intentionally started the fire.
An anarchist group called the Societe Internationale was blamed, and even a fire extinguisher salesman was accused because people say he was showing people how his product was useful. The editor of one paper said that a higher being was responsible and that God was balancing the acts done by the North to the South in the Civil War. No one is sure how the fire started, but the O’Learys were the scapegoats and got a lot of bad treatment after the fire (126).
The fire spread from the O’Learys’ barn to the yards nearby. Soon it was spreading throughout the neighborhood. William Lee, a neighbor a block away, saw the fire and ran to Bruno Goll’s drugstore to turn in the fire alarm.
Bruno Goll refused to turn in the alarm because he said the fire truck had already gone past. So instead of arguing, Lee went home to his family. At the courthouse the lookout on duty saw smoke, but thought nothing of it, thinking it was just Saturday’s fire and there was no reason to be alarmed. Then he looked up and noticed it was a different fire and had his assistant strike the Box 342 for the fire department. Soon fire trucks were at the scene and attempted to put out the fire. The fire department’s Chief Marshal, Robert A.
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Williams got the engines to circle the fire to contain it. They got as close to the fire as they could until their arm hair was being burned and their clothes started to smolder (26-34).
But there was no stopping the fire and it kept moving because of the strong wind. At around three in the morning the water supply stopped when the waterworks burned down (Cromie, 87).
People were running for safety, families were split in all the chaos and some were killed. Chicago’s mayor, Robert B.
Mason sent telegrams to the surrounding cities telling them of the fire and to send their whole departments. Fire fighters came to offer support from Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Dayton, Louisville, Detroit, Port Huron, Bloomington, Springfield, Janesville, Allegheny, and Pittsburgh (Murphy, 85).
Monday morning the fire was still going and people now began to see the effect it had had. Then at about eleven at night it began to rain. The fire was now contained and could be put out by the firefighters. Fires were still burning on Tuesday, but would soon be put out (Cromie, 88).
Now there was another problem. Almost 100, 000 people had been left homeless and the town had been destroyed. The area burnt was over four miles long and one mile wide. 17, 500 buildings and 73 miles of street were ruined (Murphy, 97-100).
The town was suffering from a water shortage now also. Some of the homeless left the city to start over but there were still a lot of people to deal with. Tents were sent in from the Army so the people had somewhere to sleep. Emergency supplies such as food and medicine, were sent but would only last a few days. Soon supplies came from charities by train containing blankets, bedding, food, clothes, and money (107).
Europe alone raised almost one million dollars (Cromie, 90).
120 bodies were found, but the officials that nearly 300 were cremated in the flames or fell in the river and sank (Austin, 2).
Hotels were getting ready to build to make room for the people who needed a place to live. Soon everyone started to rebuild his or her homes and businesses (Murphy, 112-115).
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But this time they were building them with brick and stone. The fire could have very well been stopped sooner if there hadn’t been so many errors and mistakes in the beginning.
To start off Bruno Goll claimed later that after William Lee left he turned in the alarm and then a second alarm when another man came, but there wasn’t an alarm received by the Courthouse (26-27).
The lookout on duty that night that struck Box 342 didn’t realize until later that the alarm sent the fire trucks about a mile away from the O’Learys’. He asked his assistant to strike Box 319, but he refused saying it would only confuse the firefighters. Many of the firefighters were ready to go though when they saw the flames, but as soon as they heard the Box 342 ring they figured it was out of their territory and unhitched their wagons (30-31).
As if this wasn’t bad enough, many of the fire fighters that finally got to the scene were exhausted from the fire on Saturday. They were also drunk after celebrating having put out the fire (33-34).
At one point while fighting the fire one of the firefighters was told to spray the houses with water so they would be wet and unable to burn. While he was doing this, a steamer unplugged his hose from its water plug because the steamer worked better than the little hose cart.
The steamer however, didn’t continue spraying the houses but went somewhere else. At the same time another steamer stopped working temporarily, but was soon fixed by banging it with a hammer. It was ready to go back to work, but the time that was wasted and the neglect of the two spots that were being worked on let the fire spread and burn the rest of the city (42).
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was a terrible disaster that affected many people. It destroyed the entire city of Chicago and touched people in a way that would change them and the city forever. The start of the fire is unknown, but it could have been prevented if the building structure had been better at that time.
But it is known that the fire could have been stopped had their not been so many careless mistakes and errors. As a result of the fire, Chicago was rebuilt and is once again a great city.
