As far as I can remember, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was the last time a major US city burned down. Prior to that, there was the Great Chicago fire in 1871, Atlanta getting torched in the civil war and DC getting burned by the British in the war of 1812. But since 1906, has there been a big US city getting burned to the ground?
Prior to San Francisco, don’t forget Baltimore in 1904 and Boston in 1872.
Post-1906, I don’t know of any major cities that had all-out conflagrations like those in the latter half of the 19th century. There were some significant developments in firefighting (large steam pumpers, transition to gasoline engines, sprinkler systems, better techniques, etc) and in the building codes. In fact, the turn of the century was the start of many building codes. A lot if cities looked at what happened in Chicago and Boston to see how they could prevent similar occurrences in their own communities. For example, wide boulevards are nice to look at, but they make a wonderful fire break.
That held true for the major metropolis-type cities. There were still some major conflagrations after 1906. Fall River, Massachusetts burned out its downtown in 1928, and a neighborhood in 1982. Chelsea, Mass had two conflagrations - one in 1908 and another in 1973. Include wildfires and you can count the Oakland hills fire in 1989. Civil disturbances in the 1960s added to the count also (Watts et al). The MOVE fire in Philadelphia in 1985 could also be construed as a conflagration, but again, that’s a special case.
Modern building codes, city planning and sufficient fire suppression resources have, for the most part, made conflagrations a thing of the past (hopefully).
I think only the oldest U.S. cities are capable of ‘burning down’. The rest of them don’t have a building and population density high enough to make that a realistic scenario. I am not even sure what it would mean for say, Houston or Los Angeles or Dallas to burn down today. They are huge and sprawling and not well-defined at all.
I think the big thing is people learned how to fight fires. We don’t think of things like fire departments and police departments as technologies but they had to be invented just like steam engines and electric lights - and their effectiveness improved as new techniques and new equipment were developed.
You hear the periodic reports of wildfires in Southern California and you realize the potential for a city to burn down is still there. But now we have professionals who know how to control a large fire.
It would take a couple of nukes to burn down LA today. Not that people haven’t tried, mind you. Every time South Central erupts in riots they set fire to buildings and take out a couple of blocks. But the city is just too spread out for any major conflagration. Even the brush fires in Malibu only take out the odd neighborhood or three.
One reason for the major fires in old cities is that wood was much more common back then, if not exclusively used. A modern glass and steel skyscraper isn’t going to be that vulnerable to external fires (even internally, building codes will help limit damage, except in extreme cases like the WTC, and that was due to all of the jet fuel released).
Those in Peshtigo Wisconsin, get all jealous about not being recognized. It was huge and more people died then in any other fire in U.S. history. It has been overlooked because it had the misfortune of burning the same day that piddly little fire started in Chicago.
Things were pretty crappy in Colorado Springs this summer.
By some measures, yes, but it doesn’t relate to this question. I was in Colorado Springs just a few weeks after the fires. It was hard to see any evidence of fires there at all unless you drove outside of the main part of town and really looked for it. The tourism industry was ticked off because the national news made it sound like the city itself burned down. Not even close. It was a big fire and destroyed a few hundred houses but the vast majority of the city it was unaffected. There is lots of open land in Colorado so huge fires can burn while doing relatively little damage to structures.
I’m having vague memories of reading somewhere about some U.S. city where a ship was docked in the city’s harbor, and there were munitions on the ship. A fire take place on the ship, and eventually the explosions and subsequent fires basically level the city.
I want to say Galveston, but nothing is turning up about this on Google.
Seattle’s was in 1889. But again, that was prior to San Fran’s.
That was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
Well, that was one explosion that meets your description. Maybe there was another in the US?
And the explosive in question was ammonium nitrate. The fire got out of control, and the captain decided to dump steam into the hold. This was not a good idea. My grandfather was about seven miles away in the Galveston railyards, and a large chunk of something flew through the air over him.
Part of Los Alamos burned in May of 2000. It’s not exactly a huge city but it’s a rather historically significant one.
Also Port Chicago, California.
Just to add to the list of pre-1906 big-city fires, large portions of NYC burned to the ground in 1776 and 1835.
There was also Jacksonville fire of 1901.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1901
The first production fire apparatus also started hitting the streets in 1905-1906.