From the book "Forces of Nature"
TORNADOES ON FIRE:
One of America's most stunning catastrophes-a pair of gigantic firestorms that drove the flaming whirlwinds through a number of Wisconsin and Michigan towns in 1871- is also one of the least rememberd. Although the fires killed a thousund or more people, memory of the event was eclipsed by another, unrelated disaster that struck elswhere that night.
It was a dry autum in the upper midwest. There had been no rain since July 8, and for weeks small blazes had plagued the loggers and sawmill operaters in the pine forests along green bay near the border of wisconsin and michigan. On sunday october 8, an ominous yellow viel of smoke hid the sun over Peshtigo wisconsin. Residents of the lumber town did not know that arising wind had united the scatterd blazes into a single conflagration that was advancing on them like an army of fire.
That evening they heard it's ominous roar swelling in the south-west. Then, shortly after 9p.m., a massive storm of fire struck Peshtigo. "Houses crumbled like paper" wrote one reporter, "and flaming roofs were borne away like gigantic spars upon the fiery gale." The air itself became incinderary, and people died simply from inhaling it. The hair and clothing of others burst into flame. Hundreds crowded into the Peshtigo river, fighting for space to submerge themselves between breaths.
Storekeepers lowerd merchandise into wells in hope of saving it-unwittingly condemming the children who were lowerd into the same wells minutes later, then burned to death when the goods below them went up into flames.
Survivers described the onrushing blaze as a "tornado on fire." The account of Alfred Griffen, who lived near Peshtigo, was typical: "When I heard the roar of the aproaching tornado I ran out of my house and saw a great black, balloon-shaped object whirling through the air over the tops of the distant trees." Modern analysis demonstrated that Griffen did indeed see a whirlwind spawned not by weather but by fire. From expermints and the study of vast fires ignited in World War 2 bombing raids, scientists have learned that large intense blazes can create massive updrafts and hurricane force surface winds. These in turn spawned powerfull vortexes-tornado like whirlwinds.
Peshtigo was the largest town destroyed: 750 people or more died there. Another fire simultaneously swept up the door peninsula-now a placid resort area on the other side of green bay-and between them the fires devestated twenty-three towns and villages, badly damaged eighteen others, and leveled hundreds of isolated farm-steads. Estimates of death range as high as 1,500, and 1.3 million acres of timberland was burned.
But news of the Peshtigo horror, as it became to be called, was not to rivet the attention of the nation. On the very same night, several hundred miles to the south, a blaze was started that burned much of chicago. Although the Peshtigo horror took five times as many lives, It was ever after hidden in the Great Chicago Fire.
Of all the ways to go, hot flaming death is way down on my list of preferences.
