My Grandmom went through this fire as a little girl. Although she died before I was born (1950) she had told the story of how they survived in the river by sheltering under a patch quilt and dunking under the water. They could only stay above for a few seconds and the quilt would start to smolder and then had to dunk under again.
She claimed that over 3 thousand people died since her Dad, my great Gramps, was a woods boss who ran several crews and that he said that there was several camps that disappeared and the men were never found.
It was so dry that year that they had to haul water to the crews out in the swamps for the horses and crewmen. They were building RR spurs to access timber for the winter.
To this day, there has NEVER been another forest fire that consumed even a tiny amount of acreage since they now LOG and MANAGE those forests up there. The county sells enough timber to put an average of 1.5 to 2 million dollars-sometimes more, into the county coffers each year.
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.