The Great Fire: Introduction–Chapter 2

Many survivors wrote about their harrowing experiences in books, newspaper and magazine articles, or letters to friends and relatives.

It was Sunday and an unusually warm evening for October eighth, so Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan left his stifling little house in the West Side of Chicago and went to visit neighbors.

It contained two tons of coal for the winter and a large supply of kindling wood.

The heat from the burning barn, shed, and fence was so hot that the O’Learys’ house, forty feet away, began to smolder.

On the day the fire started, over 55 miles of pine-block streets and 600 miles of wooden sidewalks bound the 23,000 acres of the city in a highly combustible knot.

As the city grew in size, the roads, sidewalks, and buildings were gradually raised to alleviate the muddy conditions.

A few minutes after the second man hurried away, Goll took off his apron, carefully extinguished the store’s gaslights, and left, locking the door behind him.

Chicago had recently renovated its fire alarm system, making it one of the best in the nation.

The light was from a different fire after all; he’d been fooled because this new blaze was almost directly behind the still-flickering remnants of the Saturday October 7 fire.

Two men hauled the cumbersome canvas hose as close to the flames as possible and aimed a stream of water at the burning building.

“I stepped in among some sheds south of Ewing Street; a fence by my side began to blaze; I beat a hasty retreat, and in five minutes the place where I had stood was all ablaze. Nothing could stop that conflagration there. It must sweep on until it reached a broad street, and then, everybody said, it would burn itself out.”

“For days past alarm has followed alarm, but the comparatively trifling losses have familiarized us to the pealing of the Courthouse bell, and we [have] forgotten that the absence of rain for three weeks [has] left everything in so dry and inflammable a condition that a spark might set a fire which would sweep from end to end of the city.”

Many people were just returning from the Sunday evening services at the various churches when the general alarm was given, but, beyond the immediate vicinity of the beginning of the conflagration, no unusual fear or solicitude was felt by the citizens.

Spectators were asked to help and many responded by chopping up fences and sidewalks, hoping to deprive the fire of fuel.

Next, he suggested that a firebreak could be created to contain the flames if several houses were blown up, thus depriving the fire of fuel. Williams protested that he did not have the authority or powder to carry out such a drastic plan, but Hildreth persisted, saying he knew where he could get the necessary explosives.