The Great Fire of 1871 Essay example

In 1871 there was a great fire that nobody expected.It was a fire that roared like a lion that shines like in sun and burns like a volcano.One second you close your eyes and then you open them then,for that one second of your eyes closed you felt peace then you opened them and everything went to screaming,running,crying,and you in this fire and it was called “The Great Fire”.Jim Murphy showed us information that all of this happened that everything went wrong in The Great Chicago Fire.

     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. 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

This tragic fire demonstrated how the fire inspections and precautions were noticeably lacking safety for these workers even though “a little more than five months before the tragedy Firemen Edward F. O’Conner made a routine inspection and said the Asch Building was ‘good’ and the building was ‘fireproof’”(28). The fire finally died down with over one hundred dead bodies piled along the streets. Sunday morning “thousands of people began to form into a slowly moving parade around the city blocks”(89). The people were walking in honor of these workers and would go around trying to identify the bodies and confiscate any items the bodies my have possessed for reminiscences. On the other hand, the departments felt immediate quilt for not stepping in to fix the Asch building before, because the departments knew of the horrible safety and health precautions the Asch building had but nobody emphasized the problems. “But who was to blame?” (113). Chief Croker was quick to blame

Everything seemd hopeless. This was impossible for humans to fix or cure, the fire was too out of control. There was only one thing that could tame is massive beast; rain. At 11 o’clock Monday night the sky began to rain. A light drizzle at first, but as the night went on, the rain became harder. Things were looking up for the buring city of Chicago. It continued to rain the rest of Monday night. Finally, in the dim light of Tuesday, the fire stopped.

   The fire was supposedly caused by Catherine O'Leary's cow who kicked over a lantern, however this is just legend and can't be proven as the actual start of the fire. The fire burned out of control due to the windy quality of the city and possibly even the dry weather. Another contributing factor is that the fire department was sent to the wrong location, which caused them to arrived at the fire later then they should have. The Fire began on the night of October 8th and was finally put out on the 10th. The fire was extinguished by the firefighters, but was also put out due the rain that fell that day. As you can see the fire was very uncontrollable, lasted for a long period of time, and would cause severe damage to the city.

The crew was not prepared for the fire when it suddenly arrived. A wave of fire, heat, and smoke over took them by surprise, Eight of the crew deployed their shelters on the road and the two civilians took shelter with one of the crew members. The squad boss was high above the road in the rock scree watching the fire. He ran down towards the road but couldn’t get there before the fire arrived, He turned around and ran back up the slope were the other four crew members and the crew boss was.

A fire that swept through the center of Chicago began on a Sunday night in October 8, 1871. The location that these roaring flames initiated from, was the place on 137 De Koven Street at the O'Leary family little barn. Misdirected fire equipment arrived too late, and a steady wind from the southwest carried the flames and blazing debris from block to block. The houses became kindling for the downtown conflagration, where even the supposedly fireproof stone and brick buildings exploded in flames as the destruction swept northward. This natural disaster would burn for the entirety of Sunday, all day Monday, and even into the early hours of Tuesday. The fire was supposedly started when a milk dairy cow kicked over a lantern, but some believe that it was from the striking of a meteor. Either way great devastation was concluded on Chicago. This year in history was also extremely

This alone would have help suppress and extinguish the fire before it got out of control. The only other suppression and detection systems to stop the fire either failed or were not present. There were only seven exits, four elevators with only one of them fully functional, two stairways down to the street but one the doors were locked, and one fire escape which was too narrow for a safe exit. The only elevator that was fully functional failed just after a few trips up and down. The one door to the stairway that was not locked was already engulfed in flames. Some of the workers were able to get to the roof but others who were trapped to extreme measure to get out of the fire. As the firefighters arrived, they watched as workers jumped form the eighth floor crashing on the concrete below. They attempted to put out a safety net but it quickly ripped under the weight and force of the falling workers. It only took 18 minutes for the fire to take all 145 workers. This incident caused an outbreak and forced safety measures to be enforced.

The factory normally employed 500-600 employees mostly immigrants, in which most worked nine hours a day. The fire began around 4:40 in the afternoon in a scrap bin under a cutters tables on the eighth floor. It is suspected that a match or a cigarette in the scrap bin caused the fire. The first alarm was set off buy a passerby at 4:45 who saw smoke coming from the building (Wikipedia Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, n.d.). A bookkeeper on the eighth floor was able to call and warn the tenth floor of the fire and those people along with the owners were able to escape via the roof. The means of egress were very sparse and most were locked. The man with the key to unlock the doors escaped the fire without unlocking most doors. At the time of the fire the only safety measures available for the workers were 27 buckets of water and a fire escape that would collapse when people tried to use them (The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, n.d.). Most of the doors were locked and those that were not locked only opened inwards and were effectively held shut by the onrush of workers escaping the fire (The

On the date of October 8, 1871 the Great Chicago Fire was spreading through the city of Chicago. Rain was a big facture in the fire, there was no rain in the 2 weeks leading up to the fire. Plus before the fire, the people made most of the city of wood so all the dry wood was all flammable. Back then they really didn’t have a real fire department and the firefighters didn’t have a transportation system so they couldn’t get to a fire until late. The people didn’t take well care of the river nearby so the river was polluted.

It is March 28, 1911, you wake up, make your coffee, and begin reading the newspaper, you notice a large printing at the top, reading, “148 leap to death or perish in fire.” As you read on, you come to realize that three days ago, women and men that lived on your street, are now dead due to a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

The city of Chicago had just started to grow and everyone was happily adapting to the changes. Little did the citizens of Chicago know, one of the scariest events of their lives was soon to come. It had been an unusually dry summer and fall for downtown Chicago in 1871. In the weeks prior to October 8th, numerous small fires had occurred because of the drought. Some of the fires would only burn down one or two houses, while some destroyed a couple buildings. The people anxiously waited for rainfall, but it came too late. Starting on October 8th and dying out on October 10th, a huge fire took place on the Southwest side of Chicago that would change the city of Chicago forever. No matter the cause that started the fire, the effect will last forever.

It’s the middle of winter in Maycomb, Alabama, it’s the coldest winter since 1885 and it’s the first time it snowed in a while. Nothing seems out of the ordinary when Ms. Maudie’s house started burning. Ms. Maudie’s heroic neighbors such as Mr.Finch and Mr. Avery started taking out some of her valuable furniture from the burning house while the fire department arrived. The fire department sent 3 fire trucks over, 2 of which came from another town. Unfortunately, some of the equipment malfunctioned and they also came late, so they weren’t able to save the house, but they kept it from spreading to the other houses. Ms. Maudie’s tin roof helped put out the fire when her

Later a fire truck appeared, delayed by the icy conditions. When the men attached its hose to a hydrant, the hose burst and water shot up, tinkling down on the pavement. By the time the Abbottsville fire truck arrived, the fire was beginning to spread. There were no other hydrants nearby, so men resorted to using hand extinguishers and blankets to suppress the fire. Another fire truck was brought in because the fire had grown to

As fall began in 1970, California had experienced practically no rainfall for many months, humidity levels dropped to being practically non existent, and the earth was scored from the raging summer heat (Rowley, n.d.). These conditions provided ample fuel for a wildfire that would burn for 13 days before being beaten back and extinguished by firefighters. Initially, it appeared controlling the fire spread would be done easily and quickly. However, multiple fires spawned rapidly into large fires that overwhelmed the local resources. Lack of communication, communication and application of skill became quickly evident as a major flaw in the control and command of such a large event. Prior to 1970 the Incident Command Systems did not exist, but