What Was The Cause Of Chicago Fire In 1871

In 1871, Chicago was “A City Ready to Burn”. Jim Murphy clearly showed that the fire was ready to tear through the city of Chicago, and kill hundreds, and leave thousands homeless. Chicago was a city made of wood. This is just one out of a hundred reasons the fire spread so rapidly. Sidewalks and roads were made completely out of wood. There were 600 miles of wooden sidewalks and 55 miles of “pine-block streets.”Two-thirds of the 59,500 buildings were made out of wood. Including the Courthouse and the Tribune Building which were “large and ornately decorated.” The people in the poorer area were in the worst situation. Their “lot sizes were small, and the owners usually filled them up with cottages, barns, sheds, and outhouses.” All of these made out of fast burning wood. Also, since it was near fall the farmers had many barns and sheds filled with coal and the barns were also filled with hay for their animals to eat during the winter. Huge factories were at the south end of the town. They were very flammable and contained coal and gasoline.

July through October only had a few showers that did not contain much water, and even when it did rain, it flooded. They were going through a very long drought, and they had already had a fire the night before and the blaze destroyed four blocks. The wind wasn’t on their side either. The wind was rushing up from the south east, and the gust of wind spread the fire from building to building in a matter of seconds. The fire alarms were not helpful either, because many of them were very hard to get to. And of course back then, at that time, there were no phones! When William Lee raced to the fire alarm at Gull’s drug store the “ fire was only 15 minutes old. What followed was a series of fatal errors that set the fire free and doomed the city of Chicago to a fiery