Today your Gallup Fire Department would like to share some interesting fire service history. Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the Great Boston Fire. Many are aware of the Great Chicago Fire that happened in 1871 but the Great Boston Fire that occurred on November 9th, 1872 is often forgotten.
The fire started at 720pm on November 9th, 1872 in the basement of a commercial warehouse. The fire burned for 12 hours and consumed 65 acres of downtown Boston. The fire destroyed 776 buildings and caused $73.5 million in damage ($1.5 billion today). At the end of the fire it was found at least 30 people died including 12 Firefighters.
The extent of the fire was related to multiple items. The first was the building construction in Boston which did not have strictly enforced building codes. Many of the buildings were built close together and had flammable roofs. Another item was the fire alarm box system in the city. The fire alarm boxes were locked to prevent false alarms so when a fire was found the key holder had to be located to unlock the fire alarm box to alert the fire department. On November 9th, 1872 it took almost 20 minutes after the fire had been found to locate the key holder to alert the fire department.
Three other significant issues caused the fire devastation. The first was during this time frame the Boston fire engines were pulled by horses. At the time of the fire there was an outbreak of epizootic equine flue that affected all of the fire horses, so the fire engines had to be pulled by hand. The second issue is the water infrastructure in the city was poor. Hydrants were few and the water pressure supplied was not enough for the water to reach the tops of some of the buildings.
The most significant issue was that the Mayor was trying to come up with ways to create fire breaks as the fire spread through the city. The Mayor authorized the use of gunpowder to blow up buildings. A group of citizens was quickly formed and they started packing buildings with kegs of gunpowder. Instead of creating fire breaks, the buildings exploded injuring and killing civilians but also caused flaming debris to rain down on other buildings increasing the fire spread.
Original source found here.
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