The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1882-08-10
A STORM OF FIRE


A correspondent of the Firemsn's
Journal, who has lately gone over the
territory devastated by the great fire in
the forests of Michigan last fall, says his
observations are conclusive that phe-
nomena aside from the ordinary condi-
tions Of combustion were developed. In |
the first place the fire created at least
two storm centers which had the essen |
tial features Of storms, and especially
the spiral winds. The evidences are
confirmatory of the belief that this
storm center, after it became fully de-
veloped, consisted of heated body of
air or gas in q state of combustion,
which was constantly fed. by the smoke
and vapor driven to the center by the
whirling winds and the gases generated
in the combustion of pines and other
resinous woods. This body of air, OF
burning gas, if 1t may be SO called, by
its heat acquired an ascensiYe force, but
by the rapid forward motion of the FIRE
was sucked forward and devoured, actu-
ally preceding the fire proper. It is
evident that this body was of intense
heat, possibly as great as 400 degrees
Fair, at which point oxygen and car
bon unite That such body of lumi-
nous Vspor existed, detached from the
fire, is asserted by many who saw it
from q distance, and by those who were
under 1t, but who escaped from the fact
that it passed above their places.
This idea is further sustained by the
fact that the fire jumped whole patches
of infammable slashings, and alighted
beyond, lifting and falling in its forward
motion like a balloon touching the earth.
Fences in the center of broad fields
burst INTO blaze as If by explosion, and
others nearer the fire escaped. A man
| in fighting the fire took of his trowsers,
fearing they would catch fire and burn
him up, and left them in furrow in the
middle of field remote from any COM
bustible material. When he went to
get them he found them burned, and
six quarter-dOllars that were in the
pocket melted together. A set of spoons
were served the same way at another
place.
Mrs. Lock and five children were
burned to ashes, nothing but their bones
remaining in the middle of the road, one
hundred feet from any heavy timber.
Green timber was dried and burned, and
perhaps the most conclusive evidence
was the apparently spontaneously ap-
pearance Of fire in stumps and fences
when no sparks were falling. These
blazes appeared of white light and indi.
Gated q chemical union of carbon and
oxygen. Anoth or general feature is the
fact that the fire appeared to move for.
ward in parallel lines of varying width,
and that in these lines everything was
burned, and frequently to ashes. At the
edge of the track fence would be burned
square of, just as though it had been
cut or sawed perpendicularly; a house
would be taken and the barn left; wag.
on and tanning mill were within five
feet of each other, and the wagon was
burned to ashes and the tanning mill not
charred. 1t would be impossible, under
ordinary circumstances, to burn a wag-
on without piling combustible material
over it, but of this nothing but the iron
was left.
Finally, the storm and fire disappear
ed simultaneously; that is TO say, the
fire was dependent upon the storm, or sec
ondary to it-that it was prevented from
lingering in the track or from burning
sideways. In from two to three hours
the fire was practically out where it had
passed indicating that the prime cause
of the rapid combustion was in the storm
which had passed, and which passing,
perhaps carried in its wake a condition
of atmosphere opposed to combustion.
This hypothesis explains pretty much
all the phenomena except the balls of
fire, which exactly correspond with
what is known as "ball lightning" but
which is form of electricity wholly
disputed by some, but recognized by
Professor Loomis.
The statements of Ballentine and
Kabocke are confirmatory of this ball
idea and contradictory of the idea that
these lights arose from the intense heat,
or they themselves could not have sur
vived it. Other statements arc to the
effect that this ball of fire fell on the
ground and exploded, running in all
directions. This is explained by some
who were not present, who say that it
was but the resinous cones of the pine
ignited, carried by the wind, falling,
scattering the burning pitch about
them; but it should be remembered that
those people who saw this phenomenon
are men who have lived amid forest
fires all their lives and have seen all the
ordinary phenomena, and are not of a
class exactly visionary or imaginative.
It is fair to assume the possibility of
electrical phenomena incidental to this
fire storm, both from the fact that it was
q great commotion in the elements and
because it differed from a storm only in
the facts of the absence of rain and
presence of fire.