Everything about Peshtigo Fire totally explained
The
October 8,
1871 Peshtigo Fire in
Peshtigo, Wisconsin, has the distinction of being the
conflagration that caused the most deaths by fire in
United States history. While more people perished in the fire and resulting
collapse of the World Trade Center on
September 11,
2001, most of the victims of that disaster were directly killed by collapsing buildings rather than the flames themselves. The Peshtigo Fire is mostly forgotten, having occurred on the same date as the much more renowned
Great Chicago Fire; across
Lake Michigan, the cities of
Holland, and
Manistee, Michigan also burned, and the same fate befell
Port Huron at the southern end of
Lake Huron.
Firestorm
On the day of the fire, a cold front moved in from the west, bringing strong winds that fanned smaller fires and escalated them to massive proportions. By the time it was over, 1,875 square miles (4,850 km² or 1.2 million acres) of forest were consumed, an area approximately twice the size of the state of
Rhode Island. Some sources list 1.5 million acres (6,000 km²) burned. Twelve towns were destroyed. An accurate death toll has never been determined since local population records were destroyed in the fire, with estimates of between 1,200 and 2,500 people thought to have lost their lives. Peshtigo had an estimated 1,700 residents before the fire. More than 350 bodies were buried in a mass grave, primarily because so many had died that no one remained alive who could identify many of them.
The fire was so intense it jumped several miles over the waters of Green Bay and burned parts of the
Door Peninsula as well as jumping the
Peshtigo River itself to
burn on both sides
of the inlet town. Surviving witnesses in Peshtigo reported that the firestorm generated a
fire tornado which threw rail cars and houses into the air. Many of the survivors of the firestorm escaped the flames by immersing themselves in the Peshtigo River, wells, or other nearby bodies of water. Some people drowned while doing so.
Legacy
The
Peshtigo Fire Museum, just west of
U.S. Route 41, has a small collection of artifacts from the fire, first-person descriptions about the event told by the survivors, and a
graveyard dedicated to victims of the tragedy.
National Fire Protection Week in October was started to commemorate the economic loss of the Chicago fire, which was ironically dwarfed by unremembered Peshtigo. A recent publication titled (ISBN 978-0805072938), by Denise Gess and William Lutz, gives a detailed account of the event. In the words of Lutz, "A
firestorm is called nature's nuclear explosion. Here's a wall of flame, a mile high, five miles (8 km) wide, traveling 90 to an hour, hotter than a crematorium, turning sand into glass."
The combination of wind, topography, and ignition sources that created the firestorm, primarily representing the conditions at the boundaries of human settlement and natural areas, is known as the Peshtigo Paradigm. This paradigm was closely studied by the American and British military during
World War II to learn how to recreate firestorm conditions for bombing campaigns against cities in Germany and Japan. The
bombing of Dresden and the even more severe one of
Tokyo by
incendiary devices resulted in death tolls comparable to or exceeding those of the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
During the 2004-05 school year, the Peshtigo High School band performed a piece entitled "Finger of God" inspired by the Peshtigo Fire. The work, composed by John Georgeson, used quotes throughout from survivors of the fire.
Comet theory
One controversial speculation, first suggested in 1883, is that the occurrence of the Peshtigo and Chicago fires on the same day wasn't a coincidence, but that both fires were caused by the impact of fragments from
Comet Biela. However, such a theory isn't credible because small meteorites are normally cold to the touch when they reach the ground. In the Peshtigo area, numerous small fires were burning prior to the great fire, set in the process ongoing at the time of clearing forest for farms and a railroad; thus, no additional source of ignition was needed.
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