Fire In 1871 : The Great Chicago Fire Of 1871

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was a large part of Chicago's history. Destroying most of the city, the fire went on for two days and was uncontrolled. Though fire fighting and alarms were great for the time, multiple mistakes cause the fire to go wild. It is unknown how it started but it was spread by dry winds and a mostly wooden city.

their possessions in to the street. Both the west and south side were cover in

Chicago from the1920s through the 1940s was the melting pot of America, with its multitude of vastly different people and different types of housing and living conditions. Around the early 1920s in Chicago, 80 percent of the undeveloped city were immigrants from Europe and their children. A majority of the houses in Chicago in the 1920s were set up to improve immigrants’ living conditions. These houses were often large complexes in which immigrants lived together in and were provided meals and tutoring in English. After World War I ended in 1918, many people moved from small rural communities in the Midwest to Chicago. This resulted in the construction of many large apartment buildings in place of old townhouses. In large cities like Chicago,

The two texts, “The Great Chicago Fire” by Julia Ann Moore, and the “fanny Boggs Lester” letter by Fanny Lester, both share the same theme. The authors argue that incredible devastation can be caused from trying to come back from a huge fire incident.

The Great Chicago Fire was a major milestone in the city’s history. The fire started on October 8th, 1871 and did not end until October 10th, 1871. People never saw this fire coming which might have made it even worse. The only reason it spread so far was because everything was made out of wood, the ground was parched and the wind was blowing that night; the reason it stopped was because it had started raining. Although the fire destroyed most of the city, it was a positive turning point in history. The Chicago Fire improved firefighting and their equipment, new buildings that were made out of fireproof materials, and it brought big investors to the city.

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 destroyed over half of the area, Chicago was overflowing with history on how this area became a city. In addition, the first records of people ever moving into the territory of Chicago was during the seventeenth century, but the first tribes who lived on this land where the Miami, Sauk, and the Fox. (Owens, 20). The first two people who surveyed the area in 1673, were Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet who traveled from New France, Quebec, searching for the Northwest Passage in order to have a more effective

From there, a piece of debris was flown onto an oil tanker located across the river in the North Side. The North Side was ablaze. It was a terrible night for many of the residents of the city of Chicago and is one that will go down in infamy until the end of time. The final totals for the fire were at the minimum 300 deaths, 70,000 buildings burned to the ground, 100 thousand people forced to homelessness, 73 miles of street were incinerated, and 200 million dollars in damage.

Great Chicago Fire in 1871; “Big Burn” the Great Fire of 1910; Miramichi Fire; Oakland Firestorm of 1991; Cloquet Fire; Yellowstone 's 'Summer of Fire '; California 's Cedar Fire of 2003; 2004 Taylor Complex Fire; Great Hinckley Fire of 1894; and the 2007 California wildfires (Nelson, 2013).

Throughout the mid 1800´s Chicago was undergoing substantial growth. The city had a population of 30,000 in 1850 and within 30 years had grown to nearly 90,000. Middle class individuals settled the outskirts of the city expanding it's borders. Lower class individuals continued to settle in the downtown districts. This resulted in an extremely dense concentration of people and wooden structures which would contribute to the extensive damage caused by the fire.

After the fire, new laws were enforced for new construction to use fireproof materials. An example of new materials used for construction included brick, stone, marble, and limestone. (Nat Geo Sites) To keep the materials from moving, builders started using mortar to keep buildings structurally intact. Terra cotta clay, another fireproof material, became popular because it was less costly. (Nat Geo Sites) For a stronger structure and another way for buildings to be fireproof, frames of buildings would be made out of steel. For an event like The Chicago Fire to never happen again, these fireproofing methods in new construction helped prevent future catastrophic events.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire not only affected the city of New York, but also the rest of the country. It forever changed the way our country would look at safety regulations in factories and buildings. The fire proved to America what can and will happen if we over-look safety regulations and over-crowd buildings. Unfortunately, 146 lives are taken before we fully understand this concept.

Back in the 1870's many of the city's establishments, sidewalks, and roads were all made of wood, which made Chicago a prime target for a fire. Wooden houses, commercial and industrial buildings, along with other institutions were caught in the blaze and ended up leaving 100.000 people homeless and on the street in the

The great Chicago fire was a fire that burned through the city of Chicago rapidly, leaving hundreds of people homeless and some dead. On the night of October 8th, 1871 a fire started in the barn of Cathrine and Patrick Oleary quickly spreading out.

It was October 8, 1871, Chicago was a city ready to burn. It was a Sunday night, the fire would burn for the rest of Sunday, all of Monday, and into the early hours of Tuesday with really “little opposition”. This day was not going to be a good day. In Jim Murphy’s book, The Great Fire, the author gives all the evidence to show that Chicago was “ready to burn”.