The Great Fires and the forgetting
One of the earliest posts I ever wrote on this blog (in January 2005) was called “The tsunami and the forgetting“. It was about the phenomenon of people forgetting—and certainly forgetting the details of—huge and terrible disasters, even recent ones.
Here’s an excerpt:
We hardly hear about the tsunami anymore, although for a while it dominated the news. The tsunami was videotaped in a staggering variety of manifestations: from the tall towering waves of Japanese art, to rolling swells that almost resembled a normal tide coming in–except for the fact that this particular tide just kept coming and coming and coming. We viewed forlorn beaches where villages had once stood, and saw keening mourners whose anguish was almost unbearable to watch even on the small screen.
Over and over, newspeople, relief workers, politicians, and officials declared this to be an unprecedented catastrophe. But in the annals of history there have been far greater catastrophes (at least in terms of number of deaths), and many of them have been almost utterly forgotten–although some of these have actually occurred relatively recently…
Only those of a certain age might remember the massive 1970 floods in Bangladesh which killed 300,000 people…An earthquake in the city of Tianjin in China in 1976, in the bad old days when almost no news emerged from that country, was reported to have killed at least 255,000, and more likely 655,000. How many of us have even heard of the city, much less the earthquake? Those with longer memories than I might even recall the flooding of the Yangtze in 1931 that caused at least three million deaths–and this was in a time when the world’s population was far smaller than it is today.
Stranger still is the lack of common knowledge about the 1918-9 influenza epidemic that disrupted most of the world (with the exception of Africa and South America) at the same time WWI was ravaging Western Europe. It was an event medieval or even Biblical in its apocalyptic scope. How many people died worldwide? Estimates vary, but the most conservative state that the death toll was 25 million. Oher estimates go much higher, up to 70 million or even 100 million. And, as this transcript [dead link] from a fascinating PBS documentary on the pandemic relates, “As soon as the dying stopped, the forgetting began.”
I thought of that post again in the wake of the Camp Fire that tragically and horrifyingly has taken so many lives, although the number is of course dwarfed by those previous tolls.
And then I was surprised to read a headline saying that the Camp Fire was the worst since 1918, when the Cloquet Fire in Minnesota caused 453 known deaths (there may have been many more), destroyed 38 communities, and displaced or injured over fifty thousand people.
And until yesterday I’d never even heard of the Cloquet Fire. Had you? Maybe if you live in Minnesota you have, but has anyone else?
I discovered that there were some similarities between the Cloquet Fire and the Camp Fire. Although we don’t usually think of Minnesota as a dry state (at least, I certainly don’t), it had been experiencing a drought and high winds, and it happened in the fall.
And then, reading about that fire led me to links about another destructive and out-of-control forest fire in Minnesota (with the same conditions of drought and high winds), the Hinckley fire of 1894. I’d never before heard a thing about that one, either. But I came across an article from a 1977 issue of American Heritage that was one of the most riveting, intense, bloodcurdling tales of horror and heroism I’ve ever read.
Please read the whole thing. Our ancestors were tough, tough people.
But that one was not the deadliest fire of its kind in US history. That dubious honor goes to the Peshtigo fire that took place in Wisconsin in 1871, also involving a drought and high winds, and also occurring in the fall. The number of dead was never determined, but estimates are between 1,500 and 2,500 people:
Occurring on the same day as the more famous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo fire has been largely forgotten.
There is a pretty good movie, titled “Hereafter” that has a terrific special effects version of the 2005 Thailand tsunami. The movie is about another topic but is well done and the special effects are terrific.
My personal experience is with the Bel Air fire which burned a lot of homes but I don’t there were any deaths. One neighbor of my in-laws could not get out and submerged himself in his pool as his house burned.
A bunch of homeowners had their fire insurance cancelled the week before the fire. One of them hid in his house when the sheriffs came through with mandatory evacuation, then wrapped wet towels around himself and saved his house by tearing down drapes and throwing flammable outdoor items into the canyon. He did the same with some other houses on his block and saved a half dozen. Not my in-laws, though.
I used to* live in MN, and when I drove north on I-35 I would see signs for the exit to a museum dedicated to the Hinckley fire. Even then I didn’t know anything about it. Finally one day heard a story about it on NPR, quite a huge thing as it turned out. So even living there I knew nothing beyond the fact that it had happened.
(I find “use to” and “used to” confusing. I think that was correct.)
About 20 years ago I was lounging with family members at the natural hot springs in Ouray, CO. They had a newspaper style promotional flyer for the hot springs and its considerable history. Mixed in, was a moderately detailed account of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
I don’t recall the precise connection between the two histories, but I think they had a presidential candidate make a pass through Silverton and Ouray in 1918 and he either died or caught the flu there and died shortly thereafter.
I wonder how these wildfires rank besides building fires in mortality? I recall the 1970 Pioneer Hotel fire in my home town of Tucson killed 28 people.
It is human nature to forget the unpredictable nature of nature. Survivors have to get on with their lives, so they put the disaster behind him, pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives as best as they can. Although none of us died or were seriously injured, a tornado hit our farm when I was 10, my dad and mom suffered minor injuries when they turned the livestock out of the barn and coop to let them out to make their own way. The house lost shingles and a couple of broken windows.
The house was insured, but not the out buildings. We, including the kids, set to work clearing up they mess, and with the help of neighbors, life went on. We knew another tornado or hailstorm was always looming on the horizon. But what could we do but put it behind us and return to ‘normal’ life?
<i.Mixed in, was a moderately detailed account of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
There are books about that epidemic but one facet that is not well described is that a large share of the deaths were from bacterial pneumonia that developed empyema, which is pus in the chest, usually related to pneumonia in the lung beneath it. Hippocrates recognized it and gave advice on how to treat it.
Soem empyemas, especially before antibiotics, were from Staph aureus. These produced thick pus and the lung adhered to the chest wall. Those from strep, produced thin pus and the lung did not adhere. Most of the cases in the flu epidemic were strep empyema and the doctors of the time did not know how to treat it. They would put a drain into the chest to drain the pus.
Hippocrates observed that empyema with thick pus would usually recover but those with thin watery pus would die.
The flu cases had thin strep pus and the lung collapsed when the drain was inserted and they died.
After the epidemic, The Empyema Commission, chaired by Evarts Graham, who would do the first lung resection in the 1930s, discovered the cause of the deaths and recommended the use of war seal on chest tubes, which is the standard now.
There were deaths from the viral pneumonia, which was virulent, but about half would not died if it were to return today.
When the new plan of management became generally effective, results promptly improved. At Camp Lee, for example, the case fatality rate fell from 40 percent to 4.3 percent.
That description of the Hinckley Fire was incredible. In a way worth reading, and I’m glad there are no visuals other than the words – not because I would find the visual effects particularly disturbing at this point, but rather that in reading it, I paradoxically felt I got a more accurate image of things than could be provided by soaking in the work of any Hollywood director or some such person who would try to make a movie out of it.
“Occurring on the same day as the more famous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo fire has been largely forgotten.”
As Tom Lehrer famously implied, a disaster must have a song written about it to be remembered.
This rewrite is a parody of the typical folk song about disasters (the original was neither a folk song nor a parody, and I never knew anything but the Chicago version).
“There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”
Late last night when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O’Leary left her lantern in the shed.
Well, the cow kicked it over, and this is what they said:
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!”
Wikipedia: “The [original] song is now frequently sung by fans of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club of Major League Soccer during matches, with lyrics reflecting the legend of Catherine O’Leary’s cow’s, alleged role in the team’s namesake, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The Great Fire coincidentally burned much of the city’s Old Town neighborhood, where the Chicago Fire Soccer Club held their first team practice in 1998 at the Moody Bible Institute.”
We do the same for mass murders and horrific crimes. What gets remembered about wars is all out of proportion to the deaths. Seven of the top ten for casualties occurred in Asia. We don’t count that, we remember low-casualty English wars because the English were the primary founders of America until other Europeans came in great numbers centuries later. A few crimes or tragedies get held for political or cultural reasons – or, as above, because there is a song or movie about them. We remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but our fire-bombing of Tokyo killed more. As stated, people get on with their lives. It is likely an evolutionary trait that those who were not crushed and overwhelmed in grief went on to reproduce.
As for the so-called “Spanish Flu,” it may have started in Kansas, then spread to Europe by American soldiers. Newish theory. https://www.kansasww1.org/unknown-enemy-the-spanish-flu-pandemic-of-1918-1920/
The CFD Fire Academy is built on the grounds of the O’Leary barn.
What Parker said, about rebuilding lives and moving on. I did a long post some years ago about similar disasters – the Pestigo Fire, the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, the sinkings of the General Slocum and the Eastland; horrific mass-casualty events that are barely recalled today.
http://www.ncobrief.com/index.php/archives/american-century-mass-cas/
Sgt. Mom; parker:
In this post I was not referring to any sort of “forgetting” by the people involved in the disaster, or their communities, in order to rebuild lives.
I was talking about the forgetting by the public at large who reads about these things, thinks about them for a day or two (or a bit more) and then forgets completely in the sense that we never even read references to them. For example, the 1918 flu pandemic that killed as many people as WWII has been forgotten by most people, or at the most has become a phrase “1918 flu pandemic” that is poorly understood in terms of its scope. And yet it was an absolutely huge event.
I realize there are many things that get forgotten. That’s the nature of history and life.
Sgt. Mom:
Last night I was reading about the Slocum disaster—for the very first time. And I grew up in NYC and learned NY history in school. What a terrible event! And yet (as with the Triangle fire, which I had heard of long ago) certain necessary safeguards came out of it, the enforcement of safety standards. Also, apparently, a push to get people, including women and children, to learn to swim.
My own father and many of his generation, growing up fairly poor in an urban environment, never learned to swim, although I think he could kind of paddle around and save himself if he had to. And he was a good athlete. But not swimming. I wonder if he knew how to ride a bike. I don’t know, but somehow I think perhaps not. I don’t think he had access to a bike as a child.
I think this forgetting is combination of natural human nature as stated by Parker above and then add in that with each passing generation the event loses it’s impact as those with direct memories of it die. We are starting to see this happen with 9/11 as there are people in their early twenties now with no real memory of that event. Then throw in the social media ‘now, now, now’ aspect of our culture and even some of the most devastating events are quickly pushed aside.
P.S.- I read a book on the General Slocum disaster or maybe it was just a part of the book a few years ago but I can’t seem to find what it was. It told various stories of the school children and families on board that fateful day.
It seems that the more our technology enables us to remember, the less inclined we are to remember. It is an ancient problem. From Plato’s Phaedrus. Theuth, inventor of writing is bragging to the Egyptian King Thamus about the benefits of writing and how it will help memory. Thamus counters:
“So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”
I think Ben Rhodes was unconsciously channeling Plato when he described journalists. To paraphrase only slightly “And as for wisdom and knowledge, 27-year-old journalists will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.”
In book about Canadian train travel, the author noted the strange layout of towns in northern Canada—the streets are wide because streets are firebreaks. He asked a “First Peoples” about how his ancestors coped with raging fires. I’d like to think I accurately remember the reply: “Burned up. Sometimes whole tribes.”
Then throw in the social media ‘now, now, now’ aspect of our culture
Yeah. The culmination of teaching for decades people should “live for today,” “carpe diem,” and “live each day as if it were your last.”
For myself, if I thought today was my last day, I’d praise and thank God all day. I don’t think that’s what the people telling me intend when they say “live each day as if it were my last.”
When I lived in Manhattan in the last 90’s, there used to be an annual memorial ceremony commemorating the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. It was rather moving to watch.
I’d heard about the Peshtigo fire since I was a kid. A few years ago, a book about it came out. I recommend it.
I was an undergraduate theater major. Our technical theater instructor was big on fire — a lot of theater design developed in response to disaster. The Iroquois Theatre Fire for one.
But the Great Molasses Flood was a new one to me when I first read about almost ten years ago.