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Cause And Effect Essay On Chicago Fire

818 Words4 Pages

Before now, I hated the city of Chicago. I thought it was an awful place that no one like me should be going to. I based this on my family’s experience with the city. Back in 1871, my family lived there. It was growing to be an important city (Marx 7).Then, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed it. They blamed for our cow starting the fire. After that people treated us like trash. That is why I hate the city so much. I refuse to go, but Emma, my daughter, wants to go for her birthday. It occurred to me that I had never told Emma the full story about the Great Chicago Fire. Before, I didn’t think Emma was old enough to understand. Catherine O’Leary was the person everyone blamed. Catherine was my great-grandma. She didn’t live to see me born, but my mom named me Cathy in honor of her. I wasn’t alive when the fire happened, but I can see how much it has affected my family. My mom and grandma told me many stories about everything that happened. It was so bad that, when the fire was over, our family had to get away from all the reporters . They wouldn’t leave us alone. We had to sell everything we had and get away from that town (Abbot, “What Caused the Great Chicago Fire?”). Our family has moved around since then. We now live in a small town in northern Mississippi. From stories I have heard, people in the city blamed our family because …show more content…

Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. On the night before the fire, in the West Division, there was a good sized fire. Four blocks were destroyed. It took the firemen eighteen hours to finally put out the fire. Because of this, they had lots of injuries and damaged equipment. There was not enough time for them to recover to fight the bigger fire the next day (Marx 14). On top of that, Chicago had about two fires every day and in the week before the fire, there were twenty (Marx 11). You would think that they would get the hint that something needed to be

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