October 8, 1871: The Great Fire

Decent Essays
The Great Fire

Chicago in October 8, 1871, was a city ready to burn like a fireplace and the author Jim Murphy showed enough evidence to show it’s a city ready to burn. Also in the book you could see the fire from miles,but they didn’t think it was something to worry about.
In the book he tells you most of the city was made of wood. Such as “houses, roads, sidewalks, and even companies because they didn’t have enough money to make it out of stone”. There was only a few fireproof buildings in Chicago. Also if they had furniture most of it was wood, mostly everything was wood. If you think that’s bad to make it worse the wood was dry from the drought. Only the rich could afford a brick or fireproof house. Then if the poors house burnt down most of them didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford it.
Third, the fire alarm was hard to get to there was one at the drugstore. He didn’t believe anyone and when he did he only pulled it once and not four times. Then they didn’t think it was important or out of control, so they didn’t send any fire department. Also when he did send it it wasn’t
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Also they were hungover from the party they had the other night, and the fire engines didn’t have very much water pressure so it wasn’t helping much. Then some of the firefighters were not hungover because they didn’t party, so they helped out. Also so people started helping, but the dragons breath was already out of control. Then firenegines started breaking and hoses started breaking, so they started getting buckets of water. They never gave up, but not all the fire department's new about the fire because they didn’t get an alarm from the drug store or the watch tower. Also some fire departments didn’t get an alarm either, but they got suspicious so they went with no orders. If all of the fire departments went when it started at the O’Leary’s they could of put it out, but they

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