True-life Fire Disasters

Outdoor Mural at the Hinckley Fire Museum, Hinckley, Minnesota

ELD-CYCLONEN ELLER HINCKLEY-BRANDEN
(THE HINCKLEY FIRE)
Gudmund Emanuel Akermark
          ©1894 Written in Swedish (a language predominately spoken in the Northwoods at the time) in the same year the fire happened, this book is largely composed of first-hand accounts of the conflagration by survivors. The book was translated into English in 1976.
          All of the horror of the terrible forest fire that destroyed the Minnesota towns of Hinckley, Mission Creek, Sandstone, Pokegama (now known as Brook Park), Partridge, and Miller on Sept 1, 1894, is presented in this small, quick-read book. The minimum estimate was 418 lives lost in the fire, but most historians believe fatalities numbered closer to 800. There is no way of knowing how many Native Americans and isolated settlers living back in the woods were also killed.
          The book is filled with horrendous descriptions of the suffering shared by so many. Whole families perished when they climbed down into their wells, thinking it a safe place to wait out the fire. They never realized that the firestorm would suck all the oxygen from the well and asphyxiate them. Some 300 people were saved by immersing themselves in the Grindstone River and in the shallow water and mud of a gravel pit. Two trains were instrumental in rescuing survivors.
          As an interesting side-note, Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett, the Union soldier who killed Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, is believed to have died in this fire.
          It’s hard to say that one enjoys a book like this about a disaster that kills so many people, but it was fascinating in the many incidents of selfless heroics. As in the Johnstown Flood, the aftermath of the tragedy kept people busy for many months caring for the survivors, gathering and burying the charred bodies of those who died, and rebuilding the villages leveled by the firestorm.

GHOSTS OF THE FIREGROUND 
Peter M. Leschak
          ©2002 An interesting account of the lives of wildlands firefighters, this book is heavy on firefighting technology. Working primarily from a helicopter in the Northwoods of Minnesota, Leschak and his crews of firefighters also work in remote wilderness areas in the American and Canadian west.
The bulk of the book details the science of firefighting, with examples from many forest fires Leschak has fought over the years.
          There are also two other “side” stories interwoven into his narrative. One deals with Leschak’s personal spiritual journey, and the other tells the story of the little-known 1871 firestorm that destroyed the Wisconsin town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing at least 1200 of the town’s 2000 residents. The reason most people haven’t heard of the Peshtigo fire is because it happened on the same day as the famous Chicago fire (back when Chicago had a population of only 300,000).
          I didn’t think I’d ever get to the end of the book. The author was constantly jumping from one topic to another, back and forth from events of 1871 to the present. I was reading the book mainly to find out about the Peshtigo fire, but there wasn’t that much about it, compared to the endless details of what seemed like every fire the author had ever fought. The book will appeal to anyone interested in forestry, logging, and firefighting.