Posted on 08/13/2018 7:41:24 PM PDT by crz
Fifty years ago this month, some folks were saying, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow--Where are you now that we really need you?"
Grandmother said that day, like most days, there was a glow in that direction in the sky. Only this one was different. She said that her mother-my great grandmother, were out looking when the wind kicked up and was going TOWARDS that glow. Grt Grandmom yelled to the kids to run to the river. She grabbed the patch quilt and ran after them. Grandmother said it sounded like a giant waterfalls with crackling noises in it.
She also claimed that some people baked near shore that couldnt swim. It hit so fast that many couldnt get away from it.
Funny thing, the state govt in WI didn’t know about it for a day or two. They started sending aid to Chicago, then they realized they had this big fire in their own state.
Wisconsinites know about it. Thanks for the post.
And you all thought Mrs. O’Leary’s cow did some damage to Chicago - just about ALL of our entire STATE was on fire!
That’s a theory I first heard at a lecture by Jack Horkheimet at the now closed Miami Space Transit Planetrrium. He suggested that the fire was the result of a small comet that broke up or meteor shower. I forget why he believed that, but it seemed convincing at the time.
Michigan was burning too.
I forget how many towns burned up in that fire. Over twenty I guess.
Yep. :(
Same day as the Chicago fire, more area burned, more people killed, but no one knows about it.
I did as I grew up not far from there.
Bingo. Now if only we can put away the nonsense about the dinosaurs and a meteor.
Well, don’t go crowing over land management just yet. The science of “fire ecology” is in its infancy. Besides, Peshtigo was a LOGGING town, built entirely of wood, had literal BOARDwalks and the hills were filled with slash from logging and wood related industry. The combination of weather, an unknown fire cycle and wooden buildings made for a disaster. I, too, believe it was started by one fragment of an unknown meteorite, but it could just as easily been started by a train on another day and not been nearly as devastating due to the lack of winds.
Bad luck.
The Tillamook fire was similar in scope & severity, as well as driven by a similar storm system. I don’t have the numbers but it’s a sure bet that the law of averages on these things means that these types of fires WILL occur despite human intervention or contribution.
On a different subject, I do not agree at all with putting firefighters’ lives at risk to combat wildland fires. Other than protecting towns with slash burns to save lives, they endanger everyone and do almost nothing.
The Yellowstone fire was extinguished only by a seasonal 1/4” of snow and the Tillamook burn only after the winds ceased and a coastal fog enveloped the hills.
Champion Wisconsin is a long way from there. Same night...
The Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help is now the only Marian shrine in the United States on the site of an approved apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
12 years after the apparitions, the same firestorm that devastated Peshtigo, Wisconsin threatened the Shrine....
(The short version)
The Sisters, the children, area farmers and their families fled to the Shrine’s chapel for protection from the unprecedented fire. In defiance of the inferno, they lifted the statue of Mary and carried it around the sanctuary. When wind and fire threatened suffocation in one direction, they turned in another direction to pray. Hours later, a downpour began to extinguish the raging fire. The area surrounding the Shrine’s grounds was destroyed and desolate. Though the fire charred the chapel fence, it had not harmed the chapel grounds. The only livestock to survive the fire were the cattle farmers led to the chapel. Though the chapel well was only a few feet deep, it gave the cattle outside all the water they needed to survive the fire, while many deeper wells in the area went dry.
Prophesied about ahead of time by a French Catholic nun living in Wisconsin, who was told of it by an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She said fire would fall from the Heavens.
Uncanny... within seconds of each other!
“It hit so fast that many couldnt get away from it.”
In Northern Minnesota there was a big fire - I thought perhaps the same date (meteor shower!?) - but it was in 1894, The Hinkley Fire. Same thing - logging, leave behind the slash, hot and dry and a temperature inversion.
Wiped out six towns, 450 square miles - in four hours!
An older neighbor lady up at our cabin would tell stories about it. But I’m guessing they must have been stories her parents told her?
I was thinking Mrs O’Leary’s cow had a real bad gas attack that night....
I read about that one. Some escaped by a train that ran backwards for miles.
Back then, smoke from fires was not even noticed since the GD dumb ass timber barons would rape the land and get out. Some places they gave the land to the workers for farming if they worked for one season. So the farmers-most who worked as teamsters, would pull stumps and pile slash and burn it.
Those two fires, the Hinkley and Peshtigo, were firestorms.
To this day, if they had NOT burned that slash, we would be logging the big pine now.
They can mount brush grinders like these on all types of machines. Timberpro has tilt machines that will go up very steep slopes and fitted with these, they can clear brush on nearly any terrain.
This day and age we need not burn nearly anything.
Champion isnt that far from by good friends place near Brussels Wis.
Matter of fact, used to go through there before they built the new highway.
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