 The Eve of Disaster
Inside the Burning City
The Refugees
The Tribune Reports to Chicago on Its Own Destruction
William H. Carter Tells His Brother the Sad News
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Besides the fact that the Great Chicago Fire started around 9 o'clock on Sunday
evening, October 8, 1871, somewhere in or very near the O'Leary barn, the exact
particulars of its origins are unknown. But, given the dry summer and the
careless way the city had been built and managed, a kick from a cow would have
been sufficient but by no means necessary to burn Chicago down. As A.T. Andreas,
the city's leading nineteenth-century historian, put it, "Nature had withheld
her accustomed measure of prevention, and man had added to the peril by
recklessness."
Chicago averaged about two fires a day the previous year, including twenty in
the preceding week. The largest of these occurred just on Saturday night.
Firemen still might have been able to contain the Sunday blaze but for a series
of technological and human failures in the alarm system. The fire, driven by a
strong wind out of the southwest, headed straight for the center of the city. It
divided unpredictably into separate parts by hurling out flaming brands on the
superheated draft it generated, leaping the South Branch of the Chicago River
around midnight. Dividing yet again, it made short work of Conley's Patch. By
1:30 it reached the Courthouse tower, from which the watchman barely escaped
through the burning stairway by sliding down the banisters. When city officials
realized that the building was itself doomed, they released the prisoners from
the basement just before the great bell plummeted through the collapsing tower.
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