"This was a country ... where 'daily life was a fire hazard'"
December 12, 2024 10:29 AM Subscribe
Daniel Immerwahr (03/2024), "All That Is Solid Bursts into Flame: Capitalism and Fire in the Nineteenth-Century United States": "The hot capitalism story is one of speculation, calamities, collapses, deadbeats, dubious currencies, get-rich-quick schemes, manias, frauds and panics ... In the combustible United States, fire was a conspicuous sign of economic volatility." Related: "The American Museum in Ruins" by P.T. Barnum. "An oral history of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871." Steam fire engines (1893). Chicago's Awful Theater Horror (1904). Recollections of a Fire Insurance Man (1909). And a history of the National Board of Fire Underwriters (1916). Previouslies: Sanborn Maps. Disaster Capitalism. And Immerwahr. Tangents: Black firefighters. "The Great Chelsea Fire of 1973," in which two fires are explained in economic and 19th C. history terms. And "A Political Economy of Wildfire in the Western United States" [pdf].
Tufts University acquired the corpse of P.T. Barnum's famous elephant when it got all his other stuff, and displayed it in a case in Barnum Hall for 86 years. A fire in that hall in 1975 destroyed the building and its contents, including the elephant -- or, well, allllmost all of the elephant's body, save for the tail, or so I was told.
Jumbo remains the university's mascot, and Jumbo's remains are in the AD's office (according to this wonderful oral history of the fire).
That story also discusses how other people and their work were affected by the fire, which help illustrate that dousing the flames only starts the story of a fire.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:34 AM on December 12 [4 favorites]
Jumbo remains the university's mascot, and Jumbo's remains are in the AD's office (according to this wonderful oral history of the fire).
That story also discusses how other people and their work were affected by the fire, which help illustrate that dousing the flames only starts the story of a fire.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:34 AM on December 12 [4 favorites]
Here in Rochester, NY they built "skyscrapers" (4 stories and higher) that put the upper floors out of reach of hose streams from the steam fire engines of the day. Oops. So in 1874 the city installed a Holly high-pressure water system that allowed greater reach and is still in use to this day. Tragedy motivates innovation.
posted by tommasz at 12:02 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 12:02 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]
Tragedy motivates innovation.
I learned fairly recently about the Croton Aqueduct, an incredibly ambitious project built to carry fresh water 30+ miles south to NYC in the mid-1800s, partly as a response to cholera epidemics and partly due to rampant fires. The upgraded version of it built ~50 years later is still in use today!
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:19 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]
I learned fairly recently about the Croton Aqueduct, an incredibly ambitious project built to carry fresh water 30+ miles south to NYC in the mid-1800s, partly as a response to cholera epidemics and partly due to rampant fires. The upgraded version of it built ~50 years later is still in use today!
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:19 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]
I've seen a balloon framed building burn - if you've seen the 'wildfire on a windy day' videos, where fire basically crosses the forest floor as fast a human can run - that's basically what it's like.
We still use tons of wood today, but fire departments are mostly EMTs now and the number of fires across the country is around 4,000 a day - which may sound like a lot, but there are about 1200 cities in the US with a population over 35,000, and about 16,000 with a population under 10,000. So there a lot of cities and towns in the US, and most days they deal with between 0-3 fires.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:45 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]
We still use tons of wood today, but fire departments are mostly EMTs now and the number of fires across the country is around 4,000 a day - which may sound like a lot, but there are about 1200 cities in the US with a population over 35,000, and about 16,000 with a population under 10,000. So there a lot of cities and towns in the US, and most days they deal with between 0-3 fires.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:45 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]
I'm currently slowly reading American Lucifers which is quite dense and scholarly but interesting. Did you know that turpentine was harvested by enslaved labor from trees and was a popular (and explosive, when mixed with alcohol) artificial light source before kerosene? I didn't!
posted by BungaDunga at 12:48 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 12:48 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]
...but fire departments are mostly EMTs now...
I think it’s more accurate to say that most firefighters also receive EMT training, since most of the “fire” responses on any given day are personal injury accidents and the like.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:13 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]
I think it’s more accurate to say that most firefighters also receive EMT training, since most of the “fire” responses on any given day are personal injury accidents and the like.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:13 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]
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posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 11:20 AM on December 12 [2 favorites]