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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609490348 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 11/29/2010 |
| Series: | Disaster |
| Pages: | 112 |
| Sales rank: | 1,136,753 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.31(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
FLAMES OF HELL
The Great Chicago Fire
Nobody could see it all — no more than one man could see the whole of the Battle of Gettysburg. It was too vast, too swift, too full of smoke, too full of danger, for anybody to see it all ... It was simply indescribable in its terrible grandeur.
–Horace White, editor in chief, Chicago Tribune
The autumn of 1871 had been one of the driest in memory, the tail-end of a vicious drought that had gripped Chicago and the Great Lakes area since midsummer. Between July and October, only a scant 2.5 inches of rain had fallen on the parched city, a mere trifle in comparison with the normal average of about 14.0 inches for the period. Small fires scampered through the dusty streets, taunting the exhausted men of the fire department who chased them with a mixture of determination and despair. There were too many of them — about twenty in the first week of October alone — and too few resources to bring to bear against the incessant flames. Something had to give.
Everything was as dry as a tinderbox. The city itself was, at that time, a city of wood. Hastily erected tenements of board and log crouched along every avenue. Wooden sidewalks helped pedestrians avoid the usually muddy and swampy streets, the byproduct of building a town on top of a marsh. But now, those streets were as dry as a bone. The unseasonably hot autumn winds swirled dry leaves and dirt in miniature cyclones across the rutted wagon trails, and passing carriages left billowing clouds of dust and grit in their wakes. As people ambled along, twigs crackled and snapped underfoot. Many covered their faces with handkerchiefs, their eyes smarting and lungs burning from the perpetual haze of acrid smoke that hung over the city like a blanket.
On the evening of Sunday, October 8, Patrick and Catherine O'Leary and their five children had retired early for the night. Their modest wood-frame home was located at 137 De Koven Street on Chicago's near southwest side, in a working-class neighborhood of mostly poor Irish immigrants. The house actually consisted of two small adjoining cottages, and the O'Learys rented the front two-room cottage to the McLaughlin family. In the rear, bordering a small alley, was a barn in which Catherine O'Leary kept her livestock. The six cows, one calf and horse and wagon were her livelihood — and the only appreciable wealth her family owned.
Shortly before 9:00 p.m. that night, a neighbor, Daniel Sullivan, banged on their door to warn them that the barn was on fire. Sullivan had a wooden leg and was known to his neighbors and friends as "Peg Leg." He claimed that he had been sitting against a neighbor's fence on De Koven Street when he spotted the fire in O'Leary's barn. According to his later testimony, he ran to the barn in order to rescue the animals and then rushed to awaken the family. He managed to rescue the calf and released one cow that fled and was never found, but the other animals were trapped.
The O'Learys raced to see if they could save anything, but the barn was completely aflame. Meanwhile, the McLaughlins had a small party going on that evening in front of their cottage, and everyone joined in a quick effort to gather buckets of water. It was too late for the barn, but the bucket brigade kept pouring water on the cottages and managed to keep the fire at bay while someone ran down the street to a nearby pharmacy to pull the fire alarm. The first alarm box did not activate, and the neighbor ran off in search of another.
In the meantime, a fire spotter in the courthouse tower to the north spotted the flames and pulled an alarm. From his perspective, however, he misjudged the location and sent crews in a wild scramble about a mile southwest of the actual fire. By the time the first engines arrived on the scene, the fire was out of control. It spared the O'Learys' humble cottages but sped to the northeast, aiming directly for the heart of the city. At that point, no one knew the monster they were facing.
The previous day, a massive fire at a wood mill and lumberyard on South Canal Street had exhausted and depleted fire department resources. A hook and ladder unit was destroyed in the blaze, along with hoses and other equipment. The seventeen-hour battle pushed men nearly to their breaking points, but their heroic efforts prevailed and the fire was snuffed out. Now, without a decent night's rest, they were facing an even larger conflagration. To make matters worse, the coal needed to stoke the pumping steamers was in short supply. Desperate fireman began to rip up boards from the wooden sidewalks to fuel the pumpers, while others raced on foot the several blocks to the engine house to retrieve a few precious buckets of coal.
The fire, however, would not wait. The brisk twenty-mile-per-hour southwest breeze whipped the flames from building to building, incinerating everything in sight. At first, people believed that the fire would stop when it reached the south branch of the Chicago River, but it hopped across the river with ease, its fierce embers dancing across the wooden ships moored in the water. Next, the inferno raged through Conley's Patch, a shantytown of poor immigrants living in crowded wooden shacks near the river. It was past midnight now, and many of the residents had little if any warning of the fiery death headed for their humble doors.
The insatiable blaze, fueled by kindling, hay and the common wood shavings often used by the poor as an inexpensive alternative to coal, now developed a life of its own. It had grown strong enough to create its own intense updraft, creating a vacuum effect that drew cooler air and fuel into the base of the fire. Known as the convection effect, this phenomenon allowed the fire to advance like a whirlwind without any assistance from the gusty breezes that had earlier aided its movement. After it quickly dispatched the mills and factories in its path, it bore down on the city center of commerce and administration.
As it approached the courthouse, workers scrambled to rescue vital records. There was no time to safely evacuate the one hundred or so prisoners locked up in the basement jail, so deputies tossed open the cells and instructed the inmates to flee. Just five convicted murderers remained in custody, moved by police to a safer location. Only moments later, the massive bell in the courthouse tower came crashing through the ceiling and fell all the way through to the basement.
By this time, a stampede of thousands of terrified residents surged toward the perceived safety of the north division. Some were trampled in the crush of bodies, and families and children became separated in the chaos. Merchants, bankers and others who could afford it bartered with wagon drivers to carry precious belongings or inventory out of the fire's path. The honest drivers were heroes; the dishonest ones were pirates who demanded an unreasonable sum of cash upfront, only to dump the cargo in the street as soon as another unfortunate soul sought to engage them.
Some businesses were fortunate enough to have their own stables. Field & Leiter, the predecessor to Chicago's iconic Marshall Field & Company, was able to save millions of dollars in valuable inventory through the heroic efforts of its teams of drivers, who galloped through the smoke and flames to deposit hastily salvaged merchandise at a safe spot along the lakefront. At first, it seemed as though the elegant building at State and Madison might be saved as well. Employees and the principals slaved throughout the night wielding pumps and hoses, even as the fire raged around them. At about 1:30 a.m., the gaslights flickered out, but they resolutely continued to work by candlelight and by the orange glow from the omnipresent flames. By about 3:30 a.m., the waterworks to the north of downtown fell to the hungry flames, and soon the city's water mains ran dry. Now there was no means left to fight the fire, which was finishing off the business section and marching on to the north division. Field & Leiter's beautiful marble palace eventually collapsed in flames in the wee hours of the morning, just as the last employees fled from the building with singed hair and soot-smudged faces.
Earlier that morning, the blaze had threatened the South Side Gas Works. A courageous engineer quickly diverted the gas to reservoirs and sewers and shut down the plant. Although it did explode and burn, the employee's bravery prevented an explosion of epic proportions. By this time, it has been estimated that as many as nine separate fires were raging in tandem. It was virtually impossible to tell what was happening, as the fire was so vast that no one person could view it as a whole. Instead, historians have attempted to piece together hundreds of eyewitness accounts into a coherent picture. Although enlightening, it does make the sequence of events somewhat muddied in the historical record.
All accounts, however, seem to agree on one point: the terrified crush of humanity that fled ahead of the flames was heart-rending but sometimes dangerous and unstable. The tragedy brought out the best in some, the worst in others. Looters and drunkards joined the crowds, attacking the helpless and pillaging from the businesses. In some reports, there are tales of thieves smashing windows and stealing merchandise, only to throw it in the street or willfully destroy their spoils. The night was a kaleidoscope of courage and cowardice, integrity and dishonesty and selfishness and selflessness.
The fire continued to burn unabated until it finally began to tire late in the day on Monday. It had simply run out of fuel as it burned to the end of the north district and reached the dry sod of the prairie. Shortly after midnight, during the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 10, a belated rainfall fell on the scorched earth and snuffed out the last stragglers of flame.
In its wake, the once proud young city resembled a Martian landscape. About one-third of the city's residents — nearly ninety thousand people — were left homeless. They huddled along the lakefront or in the prairies to the west and north, hungry and thirsty. There was no food and precious little potable water. In most cases, they had lost almost all of their worldly belongings. Even those who had been able to salvage a few items often lost them to thieves or trampling crowds; now all they had were the clothes on their backs. Class and social status no longer mattered. Millionaires wandered in shock along with laborers and immigrants. Most of those whose homes were spared opened their doors to the refugees, sharing whatever they had with friends and strangers alike.
Actually, they were the lucky ones — they had survived. About three hundred people lost their lives in the conflagration, although the exact number has never been determined. In some cases, entire families had been wiped out. With the nearest relatives still in Ireland or Germany or Scandinavia, those poor souls simply disappeared into the flames, leaving family in the mother country to wonder what had become of their kin in America.
The financial impact was also devastating. The fire caused about $222 million in property loss, about one-third of the city's total valuation. The swath of destruction spread for four miles, from DeKoven (1100 South) north to Fullerton (2400 North) and west to about Canal (500 West). More than two thousand acres were charred and blackened, with just rubble and debris where a great city had once stood. The only thing the fire did not destroy was Chicago's spirit.
Almost immediately, the rebuilding started. Donations began to pour in from across the country, and workers hammered together temporary dwellings for the homeless. The city, however, would not make the same mistake twice. Business and civic leaders quickly convened with fire safety crusaders and insurance investigators to develop fire and building codes that would make Chicago one of the most fire-safe cities in America. The resulting regulations changed the very face of the business district.
Field & Leiter opened a new store just two weeks later in an old horse barn that it hastily refurbished for the purpose. Shortly thereafter, the company built a sturdy brick warehouse and showroom for its wholesale trade, while its retail division remained in the horse barn until a suitable retail location could be found. Never again would the two divisions be housed together, because insurance companies could not afford the exposure of insuring such an expensive enterprise.
Hotelier and business leader Potter Palmer had opened a beautiful new hotel, the Palmer House, just thirteen days before the fire. It was (for its brief life) the tallest in the city, towering eight stories above the street. Its interior was decorated with white Italian marble, and French chandeliers cast a warm glow on the hallways and lobby. He had built it as a wedding present in honor of his wife, Bertha, and it promised to be the most elegant lodging the city had to offer. The fire, however, reduced it to rubble. Palmer, undeterred, immediately set to work on an even grander, and this time fireproof, hotel.
Palmer was so certain of his post-fire inn that he dared anyone to prove him wrong. He challenged curiosity seekers or aspiring arsonists to attempt to set the hotel ablaze in an advertisement:
If at the expiration of [one hour], the fire does not spread beyond the room, the person accepting this invitation is to pay for all damages done and for the use of the room. If the fire does extend beyond the room (I claim it will not), there shall be no charge for the damage done.
Luckily, no one ever accepted Palmer's challenge, and the Palmer House Hotel (now part of the Hilton chain) remains a landmark to this day. Despite the crippling odds, Chicago itself rose from the ashes like the legendary phoenix. Just twenty-two years later, the city dazzled visitors when it hosted the World's Columbian Exposition, removing any doubt that it was indeed a world-class metropolis.
In spite of lengthy investigations, the cause of the fire was never determined. Folklore says it was Catherine O'Leary's cow that kicked over a lantern and started the blaze. In fact, Michael Ahern, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, first broadcast that theory in an article the day after the fire. It was no doubt fueled by the anti-Irish sentiment that was prevalent at the time, but it was certainly not true. Ahern finally retracted the story and admitted the fabrication a few decades later, but the O'Leary family lived under a cloud of suspicion for most of their lives.
Many investigators believe that the fire was accidentally started by neighbor Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan, who was the first to awaken the O'Learys. Sullivan's mother kept a cow in O'Leary's barn, and perhaps Daniel was bringing feed to the animals when he lit the straw on fire through the careless use of smoking material. Once he realized the extent of the damage, he was undoubtedly fearful of admitting his involvement, so he concocted a tale. His story of spotting the flames from across the street is impossible, because another house next door would have blocked his view. His account of racing for the barn to save the animals is improbable as well. Due to his handicap, he could not run very fast and simply would not have had sufficient time to do as he said. There were many other inconsistencies in his story, but investigators did not pursue the issue.
Another similar theory involves Sullivan but includes a neighbor named Dennis Regan as well. Some researchers believe that Regan attempted to aid Sullivan in rescuing the livestock and extinguishing the fire but aided instead in a coverup when the fire raged out of control. Yet another theory blames a different neighbor, Louis M. Cohn. In his final years, Cohn claimed that he and some neighborhood youths had been playing craps in the barn when they accidentally kicked over a lantern.
Perhaps the most intriguing theory of all is one that would absolve each of those who stood accused. On the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, other devastating fires broke out across the Midwest, including a deadly firestorm in the area of Peshtigo, Wisconsin. The Peshtigo fire remains the worst recorded forest fire in North American history and resulted in about 2,400 deaths. Unfortunately, it was largely ignored by the media of the day, which concentrated instead on the dramatic story of Chicago. Tragic fires also struck in Michigan that night.
According to engineer and physicist Robert Wood, it's possible that the fire began when Biela's Comet created a meteor shower that rained over the Great Lakes area that night. This theory was first proposed and discarded back in 1882, but Wood believes it is not only possible but likely as well. Witnesses at the time mentioned "balls of fire from the sky." Other reports mentioned "blue flames," which could indicate the presence of methane gas, a common element of comets.
Of course, the brutally dry conditions in the Midwest that October set the stage for any happenstance to create a blaze. We will never know the exact cause of the Great Chicago Fire, but we can look back and witness the manner in which it shaped the city's finances, its growth, its culture and even its very geography. Although the legend of the cow and the lantern still lingers, the one unassailable truth is that the fire forever altered the course of a struggling young city.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Chicago Calamities"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Gayle Soucek.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 9
Part I Flames of Hell
The Great Chicago Fire 11
The Iroquois Theater Fire 22
The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire 30
Part II Depths of Disaster
The Great Chicago Flood of 1992 39
The Tragedy of the SS Eastland 45
The Sinking of the Lady Elgin 54
Part III Planes, Trains and Automobiles
American Airlines Flight 191 63
The 1972 Illinois Central Train Crash 70
The 1977 Loop El Crash 74
Part IV The Wrath of God
The 1954 Chicago Seiche 81
The 1967 Tornadoes 86
Part V Riots and Anarchy
The 1968 Democratic National Convention 93
The Haymarket Square Riot 99
The E2 Nightclub Stampede 105
About the Author 111