The Great Peshtigo Fire belch on October 8 , 1871 , desolate 1.2 million acre of country and kill more than 2500 people in northerly Wisconsin and Michigan . That’smore deaths by firefrom a individual incident than any other in the United States . And in one of the most inauspicious coincidences in Americanhistory , it happened on the same nighttime as a substantially - known , yet much smaller , fire — theGreat Chicago Fire , which ravaged 3.3 satisfying miles of land and kill 300 .
With today ’s technology andearly admonition arrangement , it ’s hard to imagine how a fire could take so many life . But in 1871 , the little town of Peshtigo , Wisconsin , did n’t have the hoses and pumps required to fight a fire of such outstanding magnitude . Surrounded by incinerate timber , the townspeople became immobilise in a city of wooden buildings , wooden sidewalks , and street traverse in sawdust . After scorch an field more than twice the size of Rhode Island , the flak give out down only when it finally strain the waters of Green Bay and rain began to fall .
Though the core were far-flung ( with more than 12 communities affected ) , the tragedy eventually took on the namePeshtigobecause that township put up the bad — approximately800 masses , about half of its population go that night . Many victims were burned so badly that they were unidentifiable . Three hundred and fifty of these men , women , and kid are buried in a mass grave at the Peshtigo Fire Cemetery .
The Peshtigo and Chicago fervor were n’t the only infernos that raged that day . The Great Michigan Fire also started on October 8 , 1871 , leading some to conceive that there was a central source for all three fires — namely , acometpassing over the Midwest , spraying hot junk in its Wake Island . The problem with that idea is that meteoritesaren’t hotby the time they get to Earth . A more potential scenario is that all three fires were have by dryweatherconditions and substantial breaking wind across the region .
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