WHY THE “PESHTIGO” FIRE ? (1871)
WHY THE “PESHTIGO” FIRE ?
In 1871 Peshtigo, on the eastern shore of Wisconsin along Lake Michigan, was a rapidly expanding frontier village. Lumber was the new “King” of industry in the area and people were flocking to the settlement for jobs and new homesteads. Many came from the New England coast of the US and Eastern Canada. Due to the extensive population loss (estimated at 800 people just from Peshtigo village alone) and the absolute, total destruction of the village at nearly the center of the conflagration, the disaster was dubbed “The Great Peshtigo Fire”.
HOW DID IT START?
No one knows, even today, with all the sophisticated technology available to go over the data and documents of that time, there was no singular starting point uncovered. The year had been very dry, and the abundant moist wetland areas (cedar swamps) had dried completely, making the usually moist peat bogs into tinder. Also, the hardwoods had shed their sparse leaves early and these leaves had dried completely. The evergreens had suffered much needle loss and this caused a thick carpet of dry needles on the dense forest floor.
Lightning is not considered to have played any part. People were not careful about fire, even with the ominous conditions around them. For months before “the Great One”, trains’ sparks started small fires, hunters and fishermen left campfires smoldering, homesteads had large outdoor bonfires to clear dead branches and stumps, sawmill wastes of bark and sawdust were dumped into diminished river and creek beds or at roadsides; even used as winter insulation around the foundations of village homes. None of these actually went so very far, but fires had broken out in the woods and around the villages for months and smoldered as far as 5 feet underground in the abundant dried peat beds. For weeks the air was filled with smoke, that was so thick and extensive, ships on Lake Michigan, miles from the Wisconsin and Michigan shores, had to use their fog horns, or rest at anchor far out in the lake. The smoke was as thick as heavy fog. There had been forest fires of much smaller intensity and all had burned out with limited danger to villages, but the isolated and uncounted homesteads dotting the thick forest were quite aware of the damage.
During this time due to the extended drought, itinerant preachers traveling through the area had preached that the end of the world was upon them all; hell fire and damnation. This was a determining factor in keeping many a person and family from seeking refuge in time. When the great fire came, they thought certainly this was the end of the world and would not move. Those attempting to save them often perished trying.
By October 8, having smoke and smaller fires was so commonplace that still others no longer feared a great holocaust would come before winter snows. Prevailing theory at this time is, that the huge area around the upper great lakes exploded into spontaneous fire all at once because conditions were just right and many smoldering points were handy to ignite the wind blown dryness. A weather front from the west brought high winds. The many fires grew, spread and converged to what is called the Great Peshtigo Fire. No one fire could have covered such an area in that time span or have grown into such a huge holocaust. Weather historians, using archives as a baseline , and adding information from recent decades, now offer a plausible theory. Meteor showers in Autumn are common in the upper great lakes. In recent years these showers have left burning chunks scattered over the entire region, some large enough to break through the roofs of homes and out buildings, starting fires in dry fields and wooded areas. With the tinder dry conditions present throughout the entire region on the night of October 8, 1871, such a meteor shower would easily have started what seemed like spontaneous fires in numerous places of Wisconsin, Michigan (upper and lower), and Illinois (the Great Chicago Fire). With the continuous thick smoke from smoldering smaller blazes already blanketing the land, and the unusually hot weather of that time making residents seek shelter inside their homes early in the evening, the meteors that entered the Earth’s atmosphere could not easily be seen. This certainly would account for the sudden eruption of numerous blazes over the vast area at exactly the same time.
HOW DID IT END?
The prevailing winds were from the south at the beginning of the fires, driving them south to north along Wisconsin and Upper Michigan’s eastern borders and lower Michigan’s western borders. Such vaporizing heat in a large area, at 2,000+ degrees F., created its own environment of tornadoes and super heated hurricane winds, drawing heat upward. This is thought by meteorologists studying present day forest fires, to have created a massive “sucking” of cooler air from Canada and the Western US. That condition created counter winds, first to feed more oxygen to the fire, then strong enough to cause a major change in wind direction and blow the fire eastward, back onto itself. Having no more fresh fuel, it died out. The same is thought to have happened along the Michigan western coast fire, but in the opposite directions, trapping all the fires between the burned out areas and the lake.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wioconto/Fire.htm
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