The Opelousas journal. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1868-1878, 1877-08-25
IN EXTRAORDINARY SEASON..

and by an unusual number of disastrou
confiagrations. Both series began yer,
early in the season. There were fores
fires in the east, north and northwes
within a very short time after the eyapo
ration of the last moisture from tn
& melted SHOWS of the winter months; ant
hurricanes began to. set in as early as tn,
third week in April. We printed a lis
of these last Saturday, and by that gu.
readers were advised OF the great humble,
OF them for sc early a period Of thu
spring t"ad summer, and also of their very
destructive character. Since then there
has been another and the most furious
and extensive of all, ranging and "a.
ging over a stretch Of country from
the Missouri river to the upper Ohio
some of the outfanking gusts reaching
even to our own city. All of these
showed great electrical disturbance, and,
taking them and the forest fires and the
widespread destruction by fires in two
cities, they furnish condolences entitled
to consideration. We cannot, of course,
arrest or escape the tornado, but we can
do something to reduce the risks of fire !;
and this latter is a thing to be done most
carefully at a season when there seems to
be an extraordinary susceptibility to fire
in the air. When a con1agration consumes
half city in a few hours, and a day or two,
after that another sweeps away the more
valuable half of another town, and when
both disasters are the product of
fires that, under ordinary circumstances,
would have been confined 10 the build
ings in which they originated, or, at the
worst, to two OF three others in the close
vicinity--surely such occurrences should
arouse the suspicion that some extraor-
binary agency or influence is at work.
Both the con1agration at St. John and
that at Marblehead were uncomfortable
from the first, just as the enormous de-
struction at Chicago was. The consum-
ing element seemed to have for the time
an augmented power far beyond the
reach of the usual appliances. The fire
leaped from street to street over spaces
broad enough to afford ample protection
at other times it advanced like a great,
irresistible waVe as long as any consum-
able material was left in it's path. These
were characteristics of all the fearful
CONGREGATIONS mentioned. It is not so
generally. Ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, the fires which reduced s O much
of the cities of Chicago, st. John, and
Marblehead to ruin, would have been ex-
tinguished before the second house was
destroyed. But all the power of the fire
departments of the cities named was of
no more avail thanif strickenby paralysis
before the petty fres-petty at the time
their ~origin-which grew into such
wide-sweeping calamities. These are,
however, circumstances characteristic of
them all. Not one of them at first
seemed to be anything different from the
usual fire that destroys single dwelling,
Or workshop, or mill /; yet each of them
almost Immediately got beEcnd control,
and at each of them the fire leaped from
street to street, over broad spaces, and
advanced until there was nothing more
in its path to burn.
Wa there anything in the atmospheric
conditions at the times of these fires to
give unusual potency to the consuming
This is not asked as a
question that can be answered, but a
question to suggest inquiry, in its rela-
to the extraordinary atmospheric
disturbances which have marked this
season, and which, to some extent, char
acterized the period at which the Chicago
fire occurred. In this last mentioned
year, and near about the time of the
Chicago calamity, there were most dis
astrous forest and prairie fires in Mime
sofa aud Wisconsin; and intelligent per-
sons who were eye-Witnesses to them, in
Wisconsin, testified that hot blasts vwept
the country for miles in advance Of the
fire that great luminous balls traversed
the air in the afflicted districts; and
that new flames started up at consider
4
able distances from the main body of the
coniagration. Assuming these state
ments to be true, and they have not been
questioned within vi knowledge, there
would seem to have been something
in the air of that region at that
time which gave it extraordinary po-
tency to excite combustion, to feed fire
and to carry it over long distances.
What can u meteorologists, physicists,
chemists and other scientists tell III about
this? Given these coincident circum-
stances, are there any relations between
them, and does the atmosphere at times
get into a condition to make it extremely
susceptible to fire, or to give it an
unusual power to excite and feed COM
bustion? If there be any such influences,
(even if there be only a suspicion of
them), and if this season, with its long
list of hurricanes, sever storms, and
disastrous forest and city fires, be one of
the seasons when such agencies may be
potent in the air, then it is a season to
be on guard against the beginnings Of
R-or -l.4La. - G nonsdonAO &