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Informative essay of the great chicago fire
Informative essay of the great chicago fire
Informative essay of the great chicago fire
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"Late on night, when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O'Learylit a lantern in the shed.
Her cow kicked it over, then winked her eye and said
'There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight' "
-Chicago folksong (Whatorwhocausedthegreatchicagofire)
For three days Chicago was filled with chaos and destruction as a wicked flame tore through the city. As it ripped through the city it left people injured and houses demolished leaving people homeless and even death. There was nothing they could do to stop it, people and firemen quaked with terror as they lied in its wake attempting to stop it. To get out of the fires burning wrath, people traveled across town to get to Lincoln Park, and they even jumped into the rivers and lakes to avoid its grasp. The Chicago Fire was the worst thing that had ever happened in Chicago's history because all of the devastation in its wake.
The fire of October 8, 1871, that started atis known for being the Great Chicago Fire and it earned it. The fire had annihilated seventy-three miles of street, destroyed 17,500 buildings, causing $200 million of property damage, made 100,000 homeless and claimed 300 souls. How it started nobody knows, but they blamed Mrs. Catherine O'Leary and her cows. In 1871, Chicago suffered from a huge drought from early July until October with less than three inches of rain fall (DestroyedTheEntireCity). It was very dry year leaving the ground barren and the wooden city susceptible to fires (History Files). Over the year of 1871 an average of two fires sprang to life every day, but in the past week twenty fires popped to life (U.S.History). On October 7 a big fire popped to life which firemen put out with little to no effort, and they thought they could battle any fire until they ha...
... middle of paper ...
...fire ended up leaving things in piles of smoldering ash. The city of Chicago didn't give up instead they rebuilt and rose from the ash like the mighty pheonix after a horrible death.
Works Cited
http://www.chicagohs.org/history/fire.html http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215480/fire.htm http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/10/what-caused-the-great- chicago-fire/ http://history1800s.about.com/od/urbanconditions/a/chicagofire.htm http://britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/110459/Chicago-fire-of-1871 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/735486.html http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/news/chicago-fire-1871-and-great-rebuilding/?ar_a=1 http://www.u- shistory.com/pages/h1854.html http://gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/politics-reform/resources/great-chicago- fire-1871-story-human-tragedy-and-triumph
http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChicagoFire.html
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Fires were a very common obstacle at the time, but nothing was even close to the fire of 1871. On October 8th, firefighters received a call from the neighbor of Catherine O’Leary. Neighbors reported seeing a number of flames coming from the cow barn. Firemen instantly spotted the fire, but miscalculated how big it really was. This event was historically known as the Chicago Fire of 1871 (“People 7 Events”).
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fires in the first week of October, on Saturday night, October 7, a blaze broke
Kerr, Walter. "'Chicago' Comes On Like Doomsday." Rev. of Chicago. New York Times 8 June 1975, Arts and Leisure sec.: 109. New York Times Archives. New York Times. Web. 1 May 2014.
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). 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).
Repeatedly, politicians, activists, landlords and even many of the residents themselves echoed the sentiment that nothing in the South Bronx mattered: it became “an area not worth saving.” The Charlotte Street that once represented promise as long as the family worked hard had crumbled, becoming just another target for planned arson. Most arson plans spread by word of mouth in the hopes that the fires would hit only buildings themselves, yet not everyone escaped the flames unscathed. Using a 1982 interview with Charles Lefkowitz on the subject of fire victims, Jonnes quotes, “One kid caught in it was a crispy critter by the time we got to him. The other two were badly burnt.”
The Great Fire of London, as documented by Samuel Pepys and other writers, began on the early morning of Sunday, September 2nd 1666 when a fire erupted at Pudding Lane in Thomas Farriner’s bakery (Dailey and Tomedi 43). Farriner, who was the king’s baker, went to fetch a candle some time close to midnight. While going to get the candle, Farriner observed that his oven was not lit and that there were no embers. However, two hours later Farriner and his family awoke feeling “almost choked with smoked” (Shields 80). Farriner quickly dashed over to the top of the stairs and found flames making their way up from the shop below. According to Farriner, the fire was not in the proximity of his over nor the pile of wood close to his house (Shields 81). However this and the actual cause of the fire in the house are debatable due to Farriner possibly attempting to remove any blame placed on him from the fire by lying in his testimony of the in...
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