In a national contest, readers voted and decided that the next I SURVIVED topic will be the Great Chicago Fire, 1871!
Could an entire city really burn to the ground?
Oscar Starling never wanted to come to Chicago. But then Oscar finds himself not just in the heart of the big city, but in the middle of a terrible fire! No one knows exactly how it began, but one thing is clear: Chicago is like a giant powder keg about to explode.
An army of firemen is trying to help, but this fire is a ferocious beast that wants to devour everything in its path, including Oscar! Will Oscar survive one of the most famous and devastating fires in history?
Could an entire city really burn to the ground?
Oscar Starling never wanted to come to Chicago. But then Oscar finds himself not just in the heart of the big city, but in the middle of a terrible fire! No one knows exactly how it began, but one thing is clear: Chicago is like a giant powder keg about to explode.
An army of firemen is trying to help, but this fire is a ferocious beast that wants to devour everything in its path, including Oscar! Will Oscar survive one of the most famous and devastating fires in history?
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Did You Know...Facts about the Great Chicago Fire, 1871
- The fire began at around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 8, 1871. In the end, it destroyed an area of the city four whole miles long and one mile wide.
- The most famous story about the Chicago Fire tells how it started. It goes like this: A poor and lazy woman named Catherine O’Leary was in her barn on Sunday night, milking the cow she’d ignored all day. The cow was upset and kicked over a kerosene lamp that Mrs. O’Leary had brought into the barn to light her way. Whoosh! The fire started, and burned much of Chicago to the ground. This story was first printed in the Chicago Evening Journal–Extra on Monday, October 9, while the fire still raged. The story spread as quickly as the fire. The only problem with the story: It’s probably not true.
- Like some of the characters in the book, many children living in Chicago at the time of the Great Chicago Fire were orphaned. Many children lost their parents to diseases that today are curable, such as cholera and influenza; others had lost their fathers on the battlefields of the Civil War, which ended in 1865.
- An estimated 300 people died in the fire. At the time, about 334,000 people lived in Chicago, so the vast majority of the residents did manage to escape. Many of those who died were trapped by the fire. Others died crossing bridges that collapsed into the Chicago River. Of the 334,000 people living in Chicago at the time of the fire, 100,000 lost their homes.
- Amazingly the deadliest fire in U.S. history happened the very same day as the Great Chicago Fire, about 250 miles to the north, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin.
