16
Jan

What occurred on the 5th of October 1871 was one of the deadliest fires the US has ever encountered. The Great Peshtigo Fire claimed around 1200 people’s lives and 1.5 acres of pine forest. The nearest town was Peshtigo (hence the name) and it was reported that only one building was left standing after the Peshtigo fire.

How did the fire start?

As years go, 1871 was an extremely dry one. A drought had completely dried up creeks, other bodies of water and the surrounding trees were also begging for water. These pine trees had shed their needles and these lay on the forest floor. These pine needles along with a lot of sawdust and slash (Peshtigo was a lumbering town), created the perfect environment for a fire to thrive.

Nobody knows exactly how the fire started, but there have been many educated guesses and all are plausible. One theory suggests that a meteor shower (quite common in the midwest) had littered the floor with hot rocks that ignited the flammable ground. This theory can be backed up by the fact that another fire broke out in Chicago around the same time.

A second theory is that several small fires ignited around the town, and the strong winds at the time fanned the flames causing the smaller fires to merge and become all-encompassing.

The Devastation

It was a dark time in US history, the loss of life was catastrophic with 1200 people all perishing and 1.5 acres of pine trees decimated. There were so many bodies, that a mass grave was dug for all of them to be put in. Those people that survived managed to find a miracle source of water, like a river and jump into it to make sure they were not engulfed by the flames.

Lessons Learned From The Great Peshtigo Fire

Sometimes it takes a huge tragedy such as the Peshtigo fire to create environments where more people don’t succumb to the same fate. Maintenance of forests became high on the agenda, so clearing the forest of flammable materials like the sawdust and slash became common. Fire marshalls and lookout towers were also implemented some years later, to identify and act fast whenever any other forest fires were created.
Thankfully because of these measures, forest fires can still be devastating but usually will not create so many casualties. The fires are spotted sooner and people act sooner to put them out or to try to slow them down.