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ESCAPE FROM THE BLAZE
A pounding on her door woke Claire Innes a second time. Her mother shouted for her to come downstairs: The fire was coming close! Claire ran down and saw her parents, brothers, and sister piling the family’s belongings onto a cart. Claire grabbed a bundle as she ran out to help them. As the Innes family ran toward the Chicago River, the streets swarmed with frightened people, all shouting.
The fire kept advancing. And the strong wind hurled fire devils, whirling masses of fire and superheated air carrying burning bits of wood. The fire devils spread the blaze all across the city.
 A moving mass of people pushed Claire down the street as if she were “a leaf in a great rushing river.” She managed to stay with her family. Then, in the confusion, Claire felt a man grab at her bundle. She held on tight until another man pulled the would-be thief away. But in that moment Claire was separated from her family. She waited, thinking her parents would come back. When a nearby building caught fire, another mass of people forced her to move. She ran down an alley, hoping to spot her family in the rushing crowds. But the mob passed, and her family was not in it. Claire was all alone.
OUT OF CONTROL!
As the fire blazed, there arose a deafening roar—wood crackling as flames devoured it, cries for help, explosions from oil and gas tanks, the crash of falling buildings.
The fire department could do nothing to stop the fire. Around 4 a.m. the next day, the fire destroyed the city’s waterworks, shutting off water to the fire hydrants. Firefighters had to drag water in buckets from Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. City officials made a desperate call for help to other cities, but their forces arrived too late. The fire kept burning—totally out of control.
Separated from her family, Claire followed a crowd into an alley. She rested briefly. When she looked up again, fire blocked her way. She saw a pile of bricks and hid behind them, then buried her face in the dirt and covered her head with her bundle. She prayed as the fire burned wildly around her.
Claire’s dress caught fire but somehow she smothered the flames. Then she searched for her family. Exhausted, Claire walked back to her neighborhood. “Where our house had been was nothing but a pile of brick and ash,” Claire wrote later. But she was also happy: She saw her father in the street!
The Great Fire burned until October 10, when rain finally fell. Thousands of buildings had been destroyed. About 300 people had died in the blaze, and more than 100,000 were left homeless. Claire and her family were lucky—they survived.
Would you know what to do in case of a fire? Have YOU or any of your friends escaped a fire? Read what other kids had to say.
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Chicago in 1871 was already a big city, bustling with more than 334,000 residents. Its streets, sidewalks, and most of its buildings were made of wood. Hay and straw were inside every barn. To make the situation worse, people used candles and oil lamps.
Fires had been common that year because of the dry weather. The Chicago Fire Department was overworked and underequipped. On Saturday, October 7, firefighters began putting out a fire that wiped out four city blocks. It took them 16 hours. By Sunday evening the men were exhausted. Then around 8:45 p.m., a fire began in the barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary.
FROM THE BEGINNING, EVERYTHING WENT WRONG
Human error then made a bad situation worse. One firefighter later said, “From the beginning of that fatal fire, everything went wrong!” A watchman atop the courthouse saw smoke rising from the O’Leary barn, but he assumed it was coming from the previous fire. When he finally realized a new fire was blazing, he misjudged its location. His assistant sent a message to the fire stations, but he mistakenly directed horse-drawn fire wagons to a location about a mile from the burning barn. When the fire department finally reached the barn, its equipment was no match for the blaze. The new fire raged on.
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