# Big City Fires in the US **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 3, 2012, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568 "2012-10-03T10:52:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/21 "2012-10-04T03:24:59Z")
Chicago had another fire in 1874 that burned about 20 blocks (and displaced hundreds of prostitutes) and convinced the city council to get serious about forbidding wooden buildings. ---
**Author:** ![2gigch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/2gigch1/32/3313_2.png) [@2gigch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2gigch1)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/22 "2012-10-04T04:25:01Z")
[Great Baltimore Fire of 1904](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Fire) destroyed most of downtown Baltimore: 1500 buildings over 140 acres. It was the reason a national standard for fire hydrant and hose connections was adopted since out of town responding fire units could not hook up to Baltimore hydrants. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/23 "2012-10-04T04:44:57Z")
Not a big town but the oldest one west of the Rockies, Astoria, Oregon burned down twice. It was built on pilings and the fire ran underneath the streets. The town is still built that way and there are still passages under the streets. > [@](#): > > In 1883, and again in 1922, downtown Astoria was devastated by fire, partly because it was mostly wood and entirely raised off the marshy ground on pilings. Even after the first fire, the same format was used, and the second time around the flames spread quickly again, as collapsing streets took out the water system. Frantic citizens resorted to dynamite, blowing up entire buildings to stop the fire from going further. > **[PSTOS - Astoria Fire, 1922](https://www.pstos.org/instruments/or/astoria/fire1922.htm)** > **[Astoria, Oregon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astoria,_Oregon)** > > Astoria is a port city in and the county seat of Clatsop County, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1811, Astoria is the oldest city in the state and was the first permanent American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. The county is the northwest corner of Oregon, and Astoria is located on the south shore of the Columbia River, near where the river flows into the Pacific Ocean. The city is named for John Jacob Astor, an investor and entrepreneur from New York City, whose American Fur Compan ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/24 "2012-10-04T07:01:35Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#): > > Seattle’s was in 1889. But again, that was prior to San Fran’s. Spokane had their Great Fire just a couple months after Seattle. No doubt they were just copycatting… According to Wikipedia [Salem MA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salem_Fire_of_1914) had a Great Fire in 1914. That postdates the SF fire. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/25 "2012-10-04T09:26:50Z")
Regarding using wide boulevards as fire breaks, if you travel to Japan and visit Kyoto (I highly recommend it, it’s a beautiful city), you may notice that the central part of the city has two wide boulevards running across it, with a river further dividing the city. The boulevards actually weren’t there before the later part of WWII, when the city government bulldozed quite a few buildings in order to incorporate the boulevards as firebreaks due to the American fire bombing campaign of Japan at the time. (The war ended before Kyoto’s turn on the target list came up, so they fortunately never had a chance to see if it would make a difference). Also, building design is often tweaked to contain or delay the spread of fires. When I was in college in Texas, our dorms were a heavy cinderblock construction, and the hallways had automatic firedoors on either side of every stairwell. If the alarm went off, the doors would swing shut (if you were on the hot side of the door, all you had to do was pull it open to get through). The idea was that if a fire started, it would be limited to a single section of hallway and not the entire dorm, though they found one time that a dorm did catch fire, they still had to close the whole building down due to heat and smoke related damage, which was still better than losing the whole building and maybe the ones next to it. The reason for placing the fire doors on either side of the stairwell is obvious, of course. In the event of a fire, the first and last rule to follow is to survive, and an important part of this for the buildings’ occupants is having a safe escape route. This way there was much less of a chance of a stairwell being engulfed in flames. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/26 "2012-10-08T15:55:43Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > But since 1906, has there been a big US city getting burned to the ground? Sim City, last time I played it a few months ago. I burned my city, just to watch it die. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/27 "2012-10-08T16:28:14Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > Sim City, last time I played it a few months ago. I burned my city, just to watch it die. Was it Reno? ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2012, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/28 "2012-10-08T21:24:07Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > Was it Reno? Actually, I think I called it something like “Dead Meat”. I was planning on burning it right from the start. I gave it lots of trees, so even the empty squares would burn well. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2012, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568/29 "2012-10-09T13:18:24Z")
> [@Michael63129](#): > > One reason for the major fires in old cities is that wood was much more common back then, if not exclusively used. Indeed. It’s not the US but check out wikipedia’s list of [town fires](http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadsbrand) where some or all of the town burnt down. Check out the photos [here](http://www.gavledraget.se/Branden_1869.htm) of the 1869 fire in Gävle - 8,000 of 10,000 people left homeless, and this sort of thing wasn’t that uncommon when buildings were wood and cooking/heating was by coal or wood fires. Once people started rebuilding with brick/concrete and heating with gas/electric the amount of firestorms decreased significantly all across the developed world. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-city-fires-in-the-us/636568.md?page=1)