The Great Fire Research Paper

Words: 502
Pages: 3

“A City Ready to Burn”
On the tragic day October 8, 1871, Chicago was “A city ready to burn.” It was such a tragic day that it caused so much diminstation. In the book the book”The Great Fire”it was rumor that Catherine O’Leary was in the barn milking cows and a calf kicked it over and that is how the fire begun. We know that it was a rumor because in the text it says” Daniel Sullivan remembers going to the O’Learys around eight o’clock but left after only a few minutes because the O’Leary family was already in bed”

The weather was thriving for water after the long drought over the summer. The whole city had been set up for a horrible disaster, a fire disaster.The bad part was that everything was made of wood in the town, city, EVERYTHING was made of wood. Houses were painted to look like stone. The sidewalks were wood even the roads were wood. Under the paint it was wood. The fire spread quickly because of the fierce winds blowing. The high fierce winds just gave the fire more life to breathe and ruin everything in its path. Some of the buildings that burned where the courthouse and the Tribune building. Most church steeples seem to be solid but from a closer look they were made to be carved out of a course WOOD!!!!
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But in these factories were flamable things like coal, lumberyard, distilleries, mills, furniture, gasworks, manufactures, and warehouses. Everything was made to burn!!!! Fires were very common back in Chicago. Back in 1863 there had been 186 fires reported the number had risen to 515 in 1868. In only 2 years they had 515 fire. It rose up 329 fire in just a short period of time. I think that is more fire Berryville and Green Forest combined in a year. Chicago was Set up for a huge disaster, and all of its precios buildings would be lost in the ashes and ruins of