The Cause & Effect of the Great Fire in Peshtigo

At the time of the rear, Peshtigo was a booming village with a recorded population of 1500 sleeveless to over 2000 by hundreds of mean solar day laborers, mostly German immigrants, brought in to work in its factories and mills and on the nearby gelt and North wattern railroad line which was being extended. The village was bisected by the Peshtigo River and surrounded by nearby thick forests. The principal activities of the townsfolk centered around the timber and lumber industries, the felling of logs and their cutting and press in the local saw mill, the production of wooden tubs, buckets and opposite items at the Peshtigo Co. woodenware factory, a sash, door and blind factory and touch commercial establishments, schools and churches, almost all made of wood.

The stupefys of the squirt were both(prenominal) natural and manmade. Normally endowed with plentiful rain, northeastern Wisconsin suffered from an signally dry summer in 1871. Small campfires were often left-hand(a) lit by hunters and Indians in the woods. Farmers took advantage of the drought to put right land, and loggers to harvest timber, starting many another(prenominal) brush fires in the process. near workers on the railroad started other fires and left "large stacks of sawdust and waste, called slash, [which] built up in the forest" (Pernin 2). Fires sporadically stony-broke up in different parts of the forest in the area during September and early October. According to Christianson, "flames licked at the outskirts many times, but conflict crews of volunteers beat

Estep, Kim. "Tales of Heroism and Tragedy," Green Bay Press Gazette, Nov. 2, 1999.

Crowds travel for the bridge, but the bridge, like all else, was receiving its baptism of fire. Hundreds crowded into the river; cattle plunged in with them, and being huddled together in the general murkiness of the moment, many who had taken to the water to avoid the flames were drowned. A enceinte many were on the blazing bridge when it fell. The debris from the glowing town was hurled over and on the heads of those who were in the water, killing many and maiming others so that they gave up to despair and sank to a watery cypher (Holocaust 1).

The two fires helped bring greater awareness of the need for precautions in many areas.

Christianson said that "new fire policies on fighting and prevention developed in the area" [of Wisconsin] (4). Forest fire prevention and better management of forests did not develop until afterwards the beginning of the 20th Century under the leadership of chairwoman Theodore Roosevelt and Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania. Environmental protection is an even more youthful phenomena, dating back really only to the 1960s and 1970s.

The Marinette and Peshtigo shoot provided the following vivid account of the scene at the river:

During the day on October 8, Reverend Pernin noted several ominous signs to the west of the village: "thick smoke darkening the sky, the heavy, suffocating atmosphere, the shadowy silence filling the air" (4). Starting about 8:30 that evening and continuing on through the night, Peshtigo took on the visage of scenes from Dante's Inferno. Pernin observed "the crimson reflection in the western sandwich part of the sky was rapidly increase" (1). The immediate cause of the conflagration at Peshtigo was a high wind, "the forerunner of the tempest, [which] was increasing in violence, the redness in the sky deepening, and the roaring gruelling like thunder seemed almost upon us" (Pernin 2). This tornado of fire created many small fire
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