The Rugby gazette and east Tennessee news. (Rugby, Morgan Co., Tenn.) 1884-188?, 1885-05-16
SWEPT BY FIRE.
Chicago Visited by a Reminder of
the Confagration of 1871.
Forty-Five Million Feet of Lumber De.
strOyed.

CHICAGO, May S.-For more than eight
hours to-day the entire Fire Department of
Chicago, two hundred of her police and a
thousand of her citizens fought and strug-
gled with one of the most stubborn confa-
grations which the city has seen since the
memorial fire of 1871. The scene was the
immense lumber district on the south wes-
tern outskirts, six miles from the City Hall,
and less than mile from the Stock yards.
Here, lying on either side of the Chicago
River, is, or rather was, a vast field of
pine lumber, skirting the river fronts,
extending back for several blocks, piled in
STACKS from forty to fifty feet in height,
and averaging forty thousand feet to the
stack. At half-past twelve day work.
man rushed into the offices of the Chicago
Lumber Company, on the west side of the
river, and announced between his gasps
for breath that there was fire in alley
twenty EIGHT An alarm was at once
sounded, but ten minutes later, when the
iirst engine arrived on the spot, half mil
second and q third alarm were sounded,
and the entire force of the Street.
cleaning Department was ordered to the
scene, but the infammable nature of the
material had placed the flames beyond
control. To make matters worse, scow
which had been moored in the river took
hre, broke her fastenings, was swept
across the stream and communicated the
flames to the extensive yards of G.. w.
Hinchley q Co., Bigelow Bros. and Adams,
Hastings & Co. Twenty steamers, sta
toned one behind the other on either bank,
poured copious streams of water upon the
blazing lumber, but the water was 80 i'm
pregnated with grease and oil from the
factories above that it. fed rather than
quenched the flames. The wind was blow.
ing hurricane, the heat was terrible and
the immense volumes of black smoke blind
ed and sutfocated the firemen and retarded
their efforts. The fire continued to spread
IN southerly direction until it had cover.
ed district of half moon shape about
one-half mile from one end to the other,
and quarter of a mile deep at the center
All this territory was abase,
and as one pile after another
collapsed and those in the reaf took fire,
throwing tongues of flames high in the air,
the scene resembled vomiting volcano
with vast landscape of fire stretched out
beneath. The firemen, headed for time by
Mayor Harrison, worked with might and
main, but they We're driven back yard by
yard, and in many cases so rapidly had the
retreat to be made that engines
and hose were left behind. Huge
pieces of burning lumber were carried
by the wind a distance of half a
mile to Halsted street AMI lodged on the
roofs of several frame houses, all of which
were gutted. Scores of families, some of
them mile distant, removed their house,
hold goods to the prairie, while many
buried their valuables in the ground. At
nine O'Clock tonight the fire is reported as
under control. Several fremen were
Frustrated by heat or injured by falling
lumber. Forty-ive million feet of lumber
and six dwellings were destroyed, entail
Ing loss of 81 100000.