The Great city of Chicago was one of the fastest growing cities of its time. All the buildings were made out of wood. They were made out of wood because it was an easy recourse the harvest. The buildings were squished together and the city was extremely crowded. Rain was a rare occurrence there. Chicago’s summer and fall in 1871 were usually dry, with only one-fourth the normal amount of rain falling between July and October. Only two and a half inches of rain had fallen on the city between July 3 and October 8. Chicago had an average of about two fires per day over the past year and 20 the previous week. The fire station was a volunteered organization and was poorly funded. There was only one water station that served the whole city. It was a dry evening of October 8, 1871, just after 9 o’clock. There are many theories of how the fire but …show more content…
The Chicagoans knew what they had to do since this was common. They all went to boats out on the water, waiting for the fire to die down. When the fire started to go across the lake, they were all horrified. They had no safe place to go. After a while the fire finally died down. Some say it lost oxygen others say the light rain put it out. Either way, the fire was gone and nothing was left in its path. The fire completely destroyed that part of Chicago. It left 100,000 people homeless with 300 people dead. The fire destroyed an area of four miles long and one mile wide. Roughly one third of the city lay in ruins, 17,450 building burnt to a crisp. We learned a great number of things from the Great Chicago fire. We learned not to make whole cities out of wood or build buildings so close together. One of the most important things we learned was to get a proper fire department and a proper method of putting fires out. There were fire codes made and put into use. It took years for Chicago to recover. But they did, surely but