The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 Essay

T’s been 145 years since the event of The Great Chicago Fire. The fire started October 8, 1871 just after 9:00pm. The fire started in a barn at Patrick and Catherine O’Leary’s house. There was a bell at the top of the courthouse that warned people of the fire. However, the cause of fire is still unknown, but the biggest theory is that O’Leary cow kicked over a lantern.

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.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was a tragic event that impacted many people at the time. The fire raged through the city of Chicago, Illinois from October 8th to October 10th, destroying 3.3 square miles of downtown Chicago. While the fire was devastating, it laid the groundwork for rebuilding a stronger Chicago.

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”.

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 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.

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.

On 1871, October 8th a fire started in a town called chicago on the property of catherine o’leary’s farm. This is how the chicago fire happened and how they rebuilt from it and how it affected the people of chicago.

Even as the Golden Age of Sail was coming to a close, Saint John had remained at the top – the fourth largest shipbuilding center in the world and one of the greatest in North America. Their affluence took a turn during 1877, when the Great Fire of Saint John devastated the city. It shattered not only the lives of city shipbuilders and merchants, but crippled local citizens as well. Summers in Saint John were typically dry and muggy, though on June 20, 1877 there was an eerie uncharacteristic breeze. Although the cause of the original spark remains unknown, it is believed to have started from McLaughlan & Son’s boiler shop or from a nearby sawmill. As wood is a naturally rapid burning agent, it led to the quick demise of many wood built city structures. The structures in the Market Square area burnt rapidly – destroying “over 80 hectares (200 hundred acres) and 1612 structures including eight churches, six banks, fourteen hotels, eleven schooners and four woodboats in just over a nine hour period.” It was a period of despair, as men and women were completely drained after “dragging bedding, pieces of furniture and other articles through the streets, a vain task in many cases, as the new places of refuge sought out often proved as unsafe as those that were deserted.” Several business owners and residents lost everything they had ¬– leaving many Saint John natives with nowhere to go. Support quickly began to pour in from all around the world, with donations reaching in

The Great Chicago Fire was one of the significant devastation that happened in the eighteenth century. Through this tragic event, hundreds of people died and thousands of buildings were completely destroyed in the fire. Before, the city was flourishing as more people traveled and decided to call Chicago their home. After the fire destroyed most of the surrounding area, people began blaming one another for the deaths of all the people. As time passed, Chicago slowly began to rebuild like never before. Although the city of Chicago continued to grow before the fire, after, the city boomed with the abundance of money and people. Moreover, because there was destruction, the people of Chicago, Illinois did not allow a fire to stop them from creating more opportunities for the future. The city has changed from the fire, but because of the help that was received, it was able to get rebuilt, and invite new individuals to explore the wondrous city of Chicago.

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.

The wooden city often experienced fires but, on October 8, 1871 the firefighters were already fatigued from a large fire the night before. The previous fire also resulted in the loss of some firefighting equipment. To make matters worse, the city had been experiencing a lengthy dry spell. A steady breeze from the Southwest, in addition to the dry spell which had spanned the length of several months, would make firefighters efforts futile.

fires in the first week of October, on Saturday night, October 7, a blaze broke

The Chicago Fire of 1871, otherwise know as the Great Chicago Fire, began on October 8th and lasted through the 10th. The fire left the windy city in ruins and left nearly 100,000 people homeless. The fire burned four miles long of the city and nearly a mile wide, which cause almost 300 people to die and 200 million dollars of property damage. The Great Chicago Fire was a historical event that won't soon be forgotten, and caused this sturdy city to grow to greatness.