Forgotten Fires of Chicago: The Lake Michigan Inferno and a Century of Flame (Disaster Ser.)

By: John F. Hogan and Alex A. Burkholder

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Synopsis: A historical journey through the city&’s catastrophic fires, and the stories of the heroes who fought them. Chicago&’s war against cinder, flame, and smoke did not end with the Great Fire of 1871. In 1909, fire ripped through the dynamite room of a staging facility a mile and half off the Lake Michigan shoreline, transforming the pipe-laying operation into a raging inferno. During the World&’s Columbian Exposition, thousands of fairgoers watched in horror as twelve firefighters were trapped in a blazing ice warehouse. An opera-goer left a smoking bomb under his seat at the Auditorium Theater in 1917. And the newly invented smoke ejector arrived too late to save firemen and laborers cut off in a sewer in 1931. Join John F. Hogan and Alex A. Burkholder for the history of these forgotten fires—and those who responded to them. &“A must-read not only for first responders but also all history buffs, especially those interested in Chicago history.&” —Robert Hoff, retired fire commissioner, Chicago Fire Department, from the foreword