Leroy N. Soetoro
2018-11-24 01:39:39 UTC
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/22/5714558
With the death toll at 84 and counting, the Camp Fire in Butte County
ranks as the deadliest wildfire anywhere in the United States in 100
years.
But the last time a wildfire killed this many people in America, many of
the circumstances were eerily similar: Parched forests. Strong winds.
Terrified townspeople killed while fleeing in their cars. Towns wiped off
the map. A nation stunned.
It happened in 1918 in Northern Minnesota, near Duluth.
Our photos are black and white, said Rachel Martin, executive director
of the Carlton County Historical Society in Cloquet, a town of 12,000
people. The images from Californias fire are in color. But they look
similar. When I heard Jerry Brown on TV, I thought he could be talking
about this area. All the conditions were the same.
America was a different place in 1918. Woodrow Wilson was president. World
War I was in its final weeks. Charlie Chaplin filled movie theaters. Women
still didnt have the right to vote. And much of the country was built
around a rural farming economy.
On an unusually hot, sunny day on Oct. 12, and following a several years
of drought, sparks from steam-powered locomotives ignited the vast pine
forests of Northern Minnesota, about 100 miles north of Minneapolis.
The monstrous blaze took people by surprise. Huge walls of flame, fed by
piles of branches and bark left from logging operations, roared into towns
like Cloquet and Moose Lake, wiping several off the map. The fire burned
into the city of Duluth. Thousands of desperate people escaped on trains,
or survived by diving into lakes and streams. The smoke plume was so big
ships in the Atlantic Ocean reported it.
Scores were killed as they tried to flee in Model T cars, which crashed
and burned along the rural roadways as flames overtook them. When it was
over, more than 4,000 houses and 41 schools were destroyed, 249,000 acres
blackened and 453 people were dead. Many bodies were never found. It was
the worst disaster in the United States since the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake.
Get breaking news alerts on wildfire and other important stories Sign up
now
People who live in the small towns near Duluth have marked this year with
tributes and commemorations of that terrible event 100 years ago. They
have watched with sadness at Californias loss. And they know how long the
scars and memories will last.
Thats how you tell time around here, Martin said. Something either
happened before or after the fire. Every family from here who has lived
here a long time has family stories to tell. We have filing cabinets full
of them. It was a really big deal.
Cloquet, Minnesota was destroyed in a huge wildfire in October 1918 that
killed 453 people. (Carlton County Historical Society)
Families died while trying to take refuge in wells and root cellars. One
family, the Soderbergs, lost 13 people, including nine children, when they
hid in a root cellar and the fire consumed all the oxygen.
A 27-foot-tall obelisk at Riverside Cemetery in Moose Lake marks the spot
where 200 victims were buried in a mass grave.
The event remains the deadliest disaster in Minnesota history. After the
fires, residents sued the railroad companies, but didnt win repayment
until 1935 after 17 years of court battles. In the weeks after, people
flocked to the town to help it rebuild. As with other decimated towns, and
likely with Paradise, some survivors moved on for good.
The weekend after the fire, 300 carpenters from Duluth built hundreds of
houses, Martin said. They worked furiously to make it livable. But a lot
of people didnt come back. They stayed with relatives or couldnt afford
a new house. It displaced a lot of people.
Letters from survivors paint a harsh picture some of which is echoed in
the stories from Paradise.
The flames looked as if they reached the sky, and it roared like
thunder, 20-year-old Tony Hanson wrote in a letter to his sister Alice,
after the Cloquet fire. I cannot tell how terrible it looked out on the
west side. Mothers with children in their arms all burned together. Car
after car all along the road were burned and Moose Lake is under military
rule. It is just covered with tents soldiers guarding everywhere. You
have to get a pass to go in and out of town. They caught one man robbing
the dead they held a little trial and took him out and shot him.
PARADISE, CA NOVEMBER 09: A firefighter knocks down a wall in a burning
home as he tries to keep flames from spreading to a neighboring apartment
complex as they battle the Camp Fire on November 9, 2018 in Paradise,
California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Wildfires that destroyed entire American towns were not uncommon in the
late 1800s and very early 1900s.
The 1871 Peshtigo Fire killed about 1,500 people in Wisconsin and
Michigan, with so many fatalities that there werent enough survivors in
some communities to identify the dead. The Great Fire of 1910 burned 3
million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana, killing 86 and sending
smoke plumes to New York. Afterward, the U.S. Forest Service set a policy
of putting out fires by 10 a.m. the next morning, and radios, helicopters,
planes and other equipment improved safety dramatically over the
generations.
But now, with hotter, larger fires growing ever more intense in a warming
world, creating fire tornadoes and walls of flame hundreds of feet tall,
whole towns could again burn down, fire experts say.
Fire scientists Ive been talking to have been predicting this, said
Michael Kodas, author of Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly
Epidemic of Flame. Were finally seeing it happen. Its terribly sad.
Its probably going to happen again and happen more often.
Fires destroyed whole neighborhoods in the San Diego suburbs in 2007. They
burned into the city limits of Colorado Springs, the second largest city
in Colorado, in 2012, destroying 346 homes. Last year, the Tubbs fire
leveled 2,800 homes in Santa Rosa, killing 22 people.
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who co-founded Weather Underground, a
weather website, put together a list of the most deadly wildfires in U.S.
history, combining information from databases and other sources. When he
saw where the Paradise fire fit in on par with fires from a century gone
by he said it underscored the impact of warmer temperatures, longer fire
seasons and millions of people who now live in fire-prone areas.
I was shocked, he said. We thought we eradicated this. Its a very
sobering reminder we are in a new climate regime, and some of the old
threats we thought were past are with us again. The same goes for
hurricanes. Were an increasingly vulnerable society. We have more people,
more people in harms way, and more extreme weather. Thats adding up to
higher death tolls.
Deadliest U.S. wildfires
1,200+ deaths, 1871 (Peshtigo Fire, Wisconsin)
453+ deaths, 1918 (Cloquet Fire, Minnesota)
418+ deaths, 1894 (Hinkley Fire, Minnesota)
282 deaths, 1882 (Thumb Fire, Michigan)
87 deaths, 1910 (Great Fire of 1910, Idaho and Montana)
84 deaths, 2018 (Camp Fire, Paradise, California)
65 deaths, 1902 (Yacolt Burn, Oregon and Washington)
29 deaths, 1933 (Griffith Park Fire, Los Angeles, California)
25 deaths, 1991 (Tunnel Fire, Oakland Hills, California)
22 deaths, 2017 (Tubbs Fire, California)
19 deaths, 2013 (Yarnell Fire, Arizona)
16 deaths, 1947 (The Great Fires of 1947, Maine)
15 deaths, 2003 (Cedar Fire, Sand Diego County, California)
15 deaths, 1953 (Rattlesnake Fire, California)
15 deaths, 1937 (Blackwater Creek Fire, Wyoming)
14 deaths, 2017 (Gatlinburg, Tennessee)
13 deaths, 1994 (South Canyon Fire, Colorado)
Source: Jeff Masters, co-founder Weather Underground
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.
With the death toll at 84 and counting, the Camp Fire in Butte County
ranks as the deadliest wildfire anywhere in the United States in 100
years.
But the last time a wildfire killed this many people in America, many of
the circumstances were eerily similar: Parched forests. Strong winds.
Terrified townspeople killed while fleeing in their cars. Towns wiped off
the map. A nation stunned.
It happened in 1918 in Northern Minnesota, near Duluth.
Our photos are black and white, said Rachel Martin, executive director
of the Carlton County Historical Society in Cloquet, a town of 12,000
people. The images from Californias fire are in color. But they look
similar. When I heard Jerry Brown on TV, I thought he could be talking
about this area. All the conditions were the same.
America was a different place in 1918. Woodrow Wilson was president. World
War I was in its final weeks. Charlie Chaplin filled movie theaters. Women
still didnt have the right to vote. And much of the country was built
around a rural farming economy.
On an unusually hot, sunny day on Oct. 12, and following a several years
of drought, sparks from steam-powered locomotives ignited the vast pine
forests of Northern Minnesota, about 100 miles north of Minneapolis.
The monstrous blaze took people by surprise. Huge walls of flame, fed by
piles of branches and bark left from logging operations, roared into towns
like Cloquet and Moose Lake, wiping several off the map. The fire burned
into the city of Duluth. Thousands of desperate people escaped on trains,
or survived by diving into lakes and streams. The smoke plume was so big
ships in the Atlantic Ocean reported it.
Scores were killed as they tried to flee in Model T cars, which crashed
and burned along the rural roadways as flames overtook them. When it was
over, more than 4,000 houses and 41 schools were destroyed, 249,000 acres
blackened and 453 people were dead. Many bodies were never found. It was
the worst disaster in the United States since the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake.
Get breaking news alerts on wildfire and other important stories Sign up
now
People who live in the small towns near Duluth have marked this year with
tributes and commemorations of that terrible event 100 years ago. They
have watched with sadness at Californias loss. And they know how long the
scars and memories will last.
Thats how you tell time around here, Martin said. Something either
happened before or after the fire. Every family from here who has lived
here a long time has family stories to tell. We have filing cabinets full
of them. It was a really big deal.
Cloquet, Minnesota was destroyed in a huge wildfire in October 1918 that
killed 453 people. (Carlton County Historical Society)
Families died while trying to take refuge in wells and root cellars. One
family, the Soderbergs, lost 13 people, including nine children, when they
hid in a root cellar and the fire consumed all the oxygen.
A 27-foot-tall obelisk at Riverside Cemetery in Moose Lake marks the spot
where 200 victims were buried in a mass grave.
The event remains the deadliest disaster in Minnesota history. After the
fires, residents sued the railroad companies, but didnt win repayment
until 1935 after 17 years of court battles. In the weeks after, people
flocked to the town to help it rebuild. As with other decimated towns, and
likely with Paradise, some survivors moved on for good.
The weekend after the fire, 300 carpenters from Duluth built hundreds of
houses, Martin said. They worked furiously to make it livable. But a lot
of people didnt come back. They stayed with relatives or couldnt afford
a new house. It displaced a lot of people.
Letters from survivors paint a harsh picture some of which is echoed in
the stories from Paradise.
The flames looked as if they reached the sky, and it roared like
thunder, 20-year-old Tony Hanson wrote in a letter to his sister Alice,
after the Cloquet fire. I cannot tell how terrible it looked out on the
west side. Mothers with children in their arms all burned together. Car
after car all along the road were burned and Moose Lake is under military
rule. It is just covered with tents soldiers guarding everywhere. You
have to get a pass to go in and out of town. They caught one man robbing
the dead they held a little trial and took him out and shot him.
PARADISE, CA NOVEMBER 09: A firefighter knocks down a wall in a burning
home as he tries to keep flames from spreading to a neighboring apartment
complex as they battle the Camp Fire on November 9, 2018 in Paradise,
California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Wildfires that destroyed entire American towns were not uncommon in the
late 1800s and very early 1900s.
The 1871 Peshtigo Fire killed about 1,500 people in Wisconsin and
Michigan, with so many fatalities that there werent enough survivors in
some communities to identify the dead. The Great Fire of 1910 burned 3
million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana, killing 86 and sending
smoke plumes to New York. Afterward, the U.S. Forest Service set a policy
of putting out fires by 10 a.m. the next morning, and radios, helicopters,
planes and other equipment improved safety dramatically over the
generations.
But now, with hotter, larger fires growing ever more intense in a warming
world, creating fire tornadoes and walls of flame hundreds of feet tall,
whole towns could again burn down, fire experts say.
Fire scientists Ive been talking to have been predicting this, said
Michael Kodas, author of Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly
Epidemic of Flame. Were finally seeing it happen. Its terribly sad.
Its probably going to happen again and happen more often.
Fires destroyed whole neighborhoods in the San Diego suburbs in 2007. They
burned into the city limits of Colorado Springs, the second largest city
in Colorado, in 2012, destroying 346 homes. Last year, the Tubbs fire
leveled 2,800 homes in Santa Rosa, killing 22 people.
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who co-founded Weather Underground, a
weather website, put together a list of the most deadly wildfires in U.S.
history, combining information from databases and other sources. When he
saw where the Paradise fire fit in on par with fires from a century gone
by he said it underscored the impact of warmer temperatures, longer fire
seasons and millions of people who now live in fire-prone areas.
I was shocked, he said. We thought we eradicated this. Its a very
sobering reminder we are in a new climate regime, and some of the old
threats we thought were past are with us again. The same goes for
hurricanes. Were an increasingly vulnerable society. We have more people,
more people in harms way, and more extreme weather. Thats adding up to
higher death tolls.
Deadliest U.S. wildfires
1,200+ deaths, 1871 (Peshtigo Fire, Wisconsin)
453+ deaths, 1918 (Cloquet Fire, Minnesota)
418+ deaths, 1894 (Hinkley Fire, Minnesota)
282 deaths, 1882 (Thumb Fire, Michigan)
87 deaths, 1910 (Great Fire of 1910, Idaho and Montana)
84 deaths, 2018 (Camp Fire, Paradise, California)
65 deaths, 1902 (Yacolt Burn, Oregon and Washington)
29 deaths, 1933 (Griffith Park Fire, Los Angeles, California)
25 deaths, 1991 (Tunnel Fire, Oakland Hills, California)
22 deaths, 2017 (Tubbs Fire, California)
19 deaths, 2013 (Yarnell Fire, Arizona)
16 deaths, 1947 (The Great Fires of 1947, Maine)
15 deaths, 2003 (Cedar Fire, Sand Diego County, California)
15 deaths, 1953 (Rattlesnake Fire, California)
15 deaths, 1937 (Blackwater Creek Fire, Wyoming)
14 deaths, 2017 (Gatlinburg, Tennessee)
13 deaths, 1994 (South Canyon Fire, Colorado)
Source: Jeff Masters, co-founder Weather Underground
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.