The Great Pittsburg(h) fire of 1845

One of the worst disasters to befall the residents of the City of Pittsburgh was the Great Fire of 1845. The holocaust began at approximately noon on April 10, 1845. It started in an icehouse on Second Avenue and spread throughout the Golden Triangle. By the time the flames had subsided over two-thirds of the city had burnt to the ground. Over 1200 buildings were destroyed, and 12,000 were left homeless. The Monongahela Bridge (the predecessor of the modern day Smithfield Street Bridge) was reduced to ashes. The fire comsumed nearly sixty acres of real estate and the city suffered $12,000,000 in damages.

The early-19th century brought rapid growth to the city of Pittsburgh. By 1845, it's population was over 20,000, and had swelled due to the recent construction of the Pennsylvania Canal. The city struggled to keep up with the increasing population, and sub-standard building practices resulted in a patchwork of large homes and businesses interspersed with rows of tightly packed wooden structures that housed the largely immigrant labor force.

Pittsburgh's infrastructure was ill-suited for the type of population and construction expansion experienced in the early-1800s. One of the main problems facing the growing city was poor water pressure and the insufficient equipping of its ten volunteer fire companies. In 1844 the city had completed construction of a new reservoir. The water lines and pumpers, however, were inadequate to fight a major blaze. There were just two water mains to service the entire city. To make matters worse, the fire companies did not have enough hose to reach the center of the city from the rivers.

The iron industry had grown to account for a quarter of the city's industrial output. The furnaces of iron and glass industries filled the air with coal dust and soot. The atmosphere was saturated by the smoke from the factories. Other industries contributed to this volatile mix, releasing flour dust and cotton fibers into the air, which settled throughout the city. The months of March and April saw little rainfall, leaving the new reservoir dangerously low. These conditions, coupled with gale-force winds, made Pittsburgh a prime target for the disaster that would strike at mid-day on April 10.

April 10, 1845 was a warm but windy day. Just before noon, Ann Brooks, who worked on Ferry Street, lit a fire to heat wash water and briefly left it unattended. A spark from this fire ignited a nearby ice shed. The fire companies responded, but a lack of water pressure left them helpless to fight the flames. The fire quickly spread to nearby buildings and to the Globe Cotton Factory.

The bells of the Third Presbyterian Church sounded the original alarm, but the church itself was only saved by dropping its burning wooden cornice into the street. The stone walls of the church provided barrier to prevent spread of fire towards the north and west. The winds pushed the flames to the southeast and fueled the already raging inferno.

One witness described the scene: “The roar of the flames was terrific, and their horrible glare, as they leaped through the dense black clouds of smoke, sweeping earth and sky, was appalling.”

By 2:00 PM, the fire was out of control and many of those who had been fighting the flames fled to save their own possessions. During the height of the disaster, between 2:00 and 4:00, the fire was consuming one block after another. The ocean of flame consumed wood, melted metal and glass, and collapsed stone and brick. The Bank of Pittsburgh, thought to be fireproof, fell victim when the heat of the fire shattered the windows and melted the zinc roof. The molten metal ignited the wooden interior and burned everything except the contents of the vault. The grand Monongahela House, considered the finest hotel in town, fell victim when its cupola caught fire and collapsed. Everything in the fire's path was destroyed.

http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Facts/images/Fire1845e.JPG

Many residents retreated to their homes and removed their belongings. Some fled to the high ground east of the city center, an area which remained free of the flames. Others fled south to the Monongahela River and were able to cross the Monongahela Bridge, which connected the city to the southern bank of the river. Unfortunately, the flames soon spread to the wood-covered structure and it ignited. The bridge was fully consumed in about fifteen minutes, leaving nothing but its supporting pylons. Those counting on riverboats to take their belongings suffered a worse fate. The boats that did not flee caught fire and burned, leaving the refugees to pile their belongings on the riverbank. Most of this material was burned by the advancing flames, stolen or looted.

The docks and warehouses on the waterfront were also consumed. Attempts to save materials by bringing them to the riverbank only delayed their destruction. The advancing fire followed the river into Pipetown, an area of worker's housing and factories, again spreading destruction. It only halted when the winds died down around 6:00. By 7:00pm the fire had run its course in the city itself, and began to die off. The Pipetown factories continued burning until 9:00pm.

How did it start and what kind of building was it?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_New_York_%281776%29

I'm wondering if this thread should be in More Than a Decade?

Thoughts?


Cat


I guess so but you can also keep it here since we're discussing history.

On a more serious note, have you ever had a fire close to your house, like another house, in your neighborhood?  :o


In 1997, I was staying at my mom and dad's when I smelt the smell of smoke REALLY strong.  We did the cursory check all the rooms, basement and attic, nothing.  I looked out my old bedroom window and saw what was on fire.  My cousin's house that they grew up in (but was now abandoned) and had been abandoned for several years.  It was a beautiful house, sort of California Mission Style (which in Pennsylvania, is rather uncommon).  My parents home is next to a wooded ravine, and my cousin's abandsoned house was just on the other side of the "holler" (ravine).  When we were kids, we'd take this path through the woods to get to their house.  To get to the house itself, you had to go down a VERY narrow lane that was not paved, and really only could fit one car at a time.  It was a pretty long lane (about half a mile, so it was always fun  ::) meeting a car coming out of the lane while you were driving in.)  So, it had been abandoned for so long that the neighbor built his garage so that it covered the lane (blocking any access to the house by car.)  When the house caught fire, there was no way to get a fire truck down that lane because A.) It was too narrow, and not paved  B.)The neighbor's garage blocked the road about halfway to the house.

So there is this HUGE raging fire with no way to get to it burning with woods pretty much surrounding it.  They brought a truck to my parents driveway to see if they could stretch a hose through the woods, but no, too much ground area and very steep hillside.  I'll give you a satellite view of my parents property with an area approximate to where the house burnt down.  We are darn lucky that the woods did not catch fire and in extension, my parents' home (among other neighbors homes.)

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff30/bookmistress4ever/firearea1997_zpsxuj1xqmk.jpg

This is my parents home at the top, and their garage at the left, with the remains of an old brick barn behind the garage.  I've marked about where the burning house was, perhaps it was a little further off the picture.  From the white areas in the picture, and where the barn ruins were, starts a very steep and wooded ravine.

Tokyo, Japan  1923 (Please excuse all of the run-on sentences, I did not write it, and I didn't feel like correcting it all.) 

http://www.toptenz.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Tokyo-Japan-1923-560x345.jpg

Much like San Francisco seventeen years earlier, the city of Tokyo was both leveled by a massive earthquake and ravaged by a fire that swept through the rubble afterwards, resulting in a staggering death toll that some estimates place as high as 142,000 (with the single greatest loss of life occurring when approximately 38,000 people packed into an open space in downtown Tokyo were incinerated by a firestorm-induced fire whirl).
What made this disaster so unique was how it combined a number of factors together to produce an especially devastating effect: for example, the earthquake struck at lunchtime when many people were cooking, resulting in numerous fires breaking out throughout the city which then spread rapidly as a result of the high winds from a nearby typhoon off the coast, some of which developed into firestorms which swept across the city. Further, the quake created a tsunami which added to the death toll and the destruction, resulting in the destruction of 570,000 homes and leaving a staggering 1.9 million homeless, giving the day much of a doomsday sort of feel. Not to worry, however; the city was entirely rebuilt just in time to be incinerated again in World War II by American B-29 bombers.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, March 25, 1911

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory occupied the top three floors of a 10 story building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in New York City. The garment factory, which specialized in manufacturing women's blouses, would be called a "sweat shop" in today's terminology. The workers were mainly immigrant women (some as young as 12 years old) from Italy, German and Eastern Europe, who worked 14-hour daily shifts for approximately $70 $7 per week.

Accident Waiting to Happen
The factory had flammable textiles stored throughout the building, and scraps of fabric littered the floors and overflowed from bins. Designers smoked cigarettes at their desks and regularly tossed their butts into the scrap fabric bins instead of ashtrays. (Buckets of water were located throughout the factory to extinguish the bin fires that cropped up regularly.) Per company policy, several of the exit doors were locked during business hours; when employees left for the day, they had to line up by the few unlocked doors and leave single file under the careful gaze of a supervisor to make sure they weren't stealing any fabric or other supplies.


The Fire

The quitting time bell rang at 4:45PM, and while the women were putting on their coats and gathering their belongings, someone on the eighth floor yelled "Fire!" Flames leapt up from discarded rags on the floor between the first and second row of cutting tables. One man grabbed a bucket of water and threw it on the fire, but the flames had already spread to the paper patterns hanging overhead. It seemed like only seconds after the first cry of "fire!" that the tables, partitions and ceiling were ablaze. Terrified employees crammed themselves into the single, small elevator and onto the narrow fire escape.

The fire quickly spread to the ninth and 10th floors. Some women were able to make it to the roof, where a professor at the New York University Law School next door used ladders left by painters to form a "bridge" between the two buildings and helped 69 Triangle employees to safety. Other workers were not so fortunate; when the fire escape collapsed from the stampede of panicked people, women began jumping from the windows. Engine Company 72 was the first on the scene, but the firefighters were torn between extinguishing the flames and trying to catch the jumpers in a life net. Once other fire departments reached the scene, it took 18 minutes to bring the fire under control, but not before 146 employees had lost their lives.

The Aftermath
The public outrage and the lawsuits filed by relatives of the dead led to the owners of Triangle Shirtwaist being tried for manslaughter (they were subsequently acquitted). A Factory Investigating Commission was formed, which examined the working conditions of all factories in New York City. Thanks to the findings of this Commission, 36 new laws were enacted to reform the state labor code. In addition, a Fire Prevention division was added to the city's fire department; its job was to inspect places of business and make sure they complied with the new laws, such as not locking doors during working hours and installing ceiling sprinklers.

The Collinwood school fire (also known as the Lake View School fire) of Ash Wednesday, March 4, 1908, was one of the deadliest disasters of its type in the United States. The conflagration in Collinwood, Ohio (a community that has since been absorbed into the city of Cleveland), resulted in the deaths of 172 students, two teachers and a rescuer.

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Fire

The Lake View School was built with load-bearing masonry outer walls, but much of the four story building's floor structure system used wooden joists. A wooden joist caught fire when it was overheated by a steam pipe. The building’s main staircase extended from the front doors of the building, up to the third floor, and had no fire doors. The stairwell acted like a chimney, helping to spread the fire quickly. Oiled wooden hall and classroom floors also fueled the fire.

Flames quickly blocked escape routes, and many students died pressed against doors that were locked or opened inward. Deputy State Fire Marshal Nathan Flegenbaum inspected the ruins the next day and "declared positively" that the doors of the schoolhouse opened toward the inside and that the rear doors were locked when the children reached them. The flammable construction gave only minutes for evacuation. Though one fire escape was accessible at the rear of the building, not all the children found their way to the exit. Panic led to a crush of a large number of students in a stairwell as students seeking escape rushed up the stairs while students above tried to descend. Most of the victims of the fire died here. Other students died of smoke inhalation or were burned to death. Some children died jumping from second- and third-story windows. Community members watched unable to help as victims trapped in the building were burned beyond recognition.
Aftermath
The fire safe building erected after the deadly fire 1911

Those killed in the fire who could not be individually identified, as well as those students whose parents could not afford a burial, were buried in a mass grave in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery. Additionally, several families who lost their children in the fire chose to bury their children's remains adjacent to the Collinwood victims.

Following the fire, the remains of the Lake View School were demolished and a memorial garden planned for the site. A new school—Collinwood Memorial Elementary School—was built adjacent to the disaster site, and incorporated many features that had been lacking in the previous building. Unlike the building involved in the disaster, the new school incorporated fire-safe stairwells and a central alarm system, and was built of steel framing and other fire-safe materials. Collinwood Memorial Elementary was closed in the 1970s and sat vacant until it was razed in 2004. A third school, simply called Memorial Elementary, was opened in 2005 on the same site with the original memorial to the victims preserved.

In the aftermath of the catastrophic Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago, 1903, a national drive was instigated to upgrade safe egress from buildings. Official regulations required that doors now open from the inside and swing outward, thereby facilitating public exit. The installation of what were called "panic bar" latches was mandated for doors in schools. The final casualty of the fire was the independence of the Collinwood community itself. Unable to sufficiently guarantee fire safety resources for its residents, voters approved an annexation of Collinwood into Cleveland within two years of the fire.