THE SESQUICENTENNIAL OF FIRE PREVENTION WEEK.

Years ago, Cold Spring Shops posed a question.  "Late in the 19th Century, a tragic fire occurred in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in which more than 1,500 lives were lost. Yet this event was journalistically overshadowed by a simultaneous tragedy in which only 300 lives were lost. Where did this latter tragedy occur, and why is this question on the website today?"  The blogosphere was more active then, and by evening, we had answers.

Fire Prevention Week, and the Peshtigo Fire, are still relevant today.

East Coast newspapers and wire services, fixated on the Chicago fire, ignored Peshtigo that became a forgotten footnote to history.

Contrast 2021’s summer of wildfires “Out West.”  These need not have happened. For over a half century, official neglect and poor forest management had allowed many western forests to become a disgrace, overgrown with brush, diseased and insect-infested trees, and tinder lying deep on the forest floor.

Long before the European-American settlers arrived on the continent, Mother Nature and Native Americans teamed up to prevent the build-up of combustibles in their primeval homeland. With controlled burns, the partnership limited then what now in modern times have become frequently occurring major wildfires. We quickly forget and learn slowly.

Peshtigo's fire came in the wake of a dry summer, on one of those warm days with a southwesterly breeze that we used to refer to as Indian Summer.  That fire still tops the charts as deadlier and more destructive than any of the more recent forest fires in California or Oregon.