Fire!

On Sunday, October 8, 1871, the weather in Chicago was uncommonly warm and dry. A gusting southwest wind continuously swirled debris and dried leaves back-and-forth along the wooden streets and sidewalks that bound together the different parts of the city. Out for an evening stroll to escape his sweltering house, Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan was the first to notice the single flame that shot out from the side of a barn belonging to Patrick and Catherine O'Leary. Recognizing the danger, Sullivan was quick to react. "Fire! Fire!," he shouted at the top of his lungs, even as he hobbled toward the burning barn in the hope of rescuing the livestock he knew were trapped inside.

Like many American cities, Chicago in 1871 was ready to burn. With structures often made entirely of wood, fires like the one that swept through Chicago destroyed huge sections of nearly every major American city during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition, the miles of pine block streets and wooden sidewalks turned cities like Chicago into tinderboxes. These great fires were terrible and deadly. They were disasters for those who lost their property and tragedies for those who lost their loved ones.

By the time Sullivan reached the O'Leary's barn, it was engulfed in flames. The wind had already spread the blaze to a large shed that stood nearby, which contained coal and kindling and thus added to the intensity of the fire. The dry grass and leaves began to smolder and ignited the fence, shed, and house of James Dalton, one of the O'Leary's neighbors.

The fire spread rapidly, but would still have been containable if not for a series of blunders that led to catastrophe. Bruno Goll, the owner of a drugstore in the neighborhood where the fire broke out, either refused or failed to sound the fire alarm when several frantic residents asked him to do so.

To complicate matters, Mattias Schaffer, a watchman supposed to report fires, spotted billowing smoke in the distance, but dismissed it as the remnants of a fire that had occurred the previous evening. Only at 9:30 P. M., about an hour after "Peg Leg" Sullivan had first seen the flames at the O'Leary's barn, did Schaffer at last summon the fire department. Unfortunately, he sent the engines rushing to the wrong location. When he realized his mistake, Schaffer ordered his assistant, William J. Brown, to dispatch another fire company. Brown stubbornly refused, arguing that to do so would further confuse an already chaotic situation.

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