Once upon a time 1.2 million acres of NE Wisconsin burned, few , almost none remember.

[31j20b3]

It happened in the same year, month and days as the Great Chicago Fire. But there was no cow kicking over a lantern...

The fire is believed to have been started when railroad maintenance crews started burning brush along a RR right-of-way. Under drought conditions it quickly went beyond control. 1200-2000 people died, 16 towns burnt to the ground Bodies and burned lumber floating down river is how knowledge of the extent of the catastrophy became known.

Wildfire is a terrible thing but it never happens in Trump's world So he has no appreciation, no humility, and no empathy for the people that a natural disaster amplified by a growing super El Nino can cause. For him, it's just offensive because it puts a smoke cloud (1/5 the size of the nation) over his big beautiful national birthday gala.

Like many people who can't escape their limited experience for Trump there must be an offender who can be blamed and threatened with punishment.

Think Mn will get help with this? Not me. Mn is that awful land of liberals that object to ICE.

[moniss]

1. I remember but I don't know

if Wisconsin schools even teach about it anymore. The Peshtigo Fire. True number of dead unknown. The local records of who lived in the area were all destroyed. People buried in mass graves because nobody was left alive who could identify who anybody was. We have to remember how slowly communication traveled then and how this horror unfolded over days and weeks after the fire. I drive through that area and never fail to think about it.

The telegraph lines were destroyed and the phone wasn't around yet.

[mopinko]

5. if u go to the museum, dont mention chgo.

the ex and i went there, and boy, i’ve never gotten so much side eye.
we spent over $100 in the gift shop just to make amends.

[Ocelot II]

2. That was the Peshtigo fire. They do remember it in that part of WI.

In 1894 there was another disastrous fire that destroyed the town of Hinckley, MN. In both cases the underlying circumstance was the logging-off of great swaths of timber, where the practice was to strip off the branches and leave them on the ground. Pine branches are highly flammable, and the combination of dry conditions and sparks from locomotives set off a series of fires that converged, and ended up destroying Hinckley and other nearby towns. The fires in the BWCA and Canada weren't caused by logging practices but were probably set off by lightning. And forest management has nothing to do with it. Anyone who has ever been to the north woods knows damn well that those are enormous forests that can't be "raked" or otherwise fireproofed. They just can't. Wildfires have always been regular occurrences in forests and they actually help the ecology over the long term, but because of climate change they are becoming more frequent and bigger, and we are likely to see these smoke events every summer from now on.

[31j20b3]

3. Yes, we've been fortunate to not have so many big ones

To most people's surprise, Wisconsin averages over 800 wildfires a year. I would imagine the number is slightly larger in MN.

Thankfully few of them get larger than 5-10 acres. There are 640 acres in a square mile. By way of making that comprehensible, the fires burning in MN have now reached over 55 sq miles.

[Sneederbunk]

4. My great grandfather was a fire acre counter at the time. Very busy.

[MikeyDi]

6. I read a book in it

I think there have been so many stories on how no on remembers it, that it’s now really well remembered.

[mopinko]

8. well, it was never forgotten in chgo.

we live w the resulting rebuilding. building codes here r still based on that fire.
it’s y so much of the city is built of brick/stone.

[MikeyDi]

9. Not that one, the other one

Sheesh

[mopinko]

10. doh.

[mopinko]

7. i believe the theory that it was a meteor that broke up.

huge fires in chgo, peshtigo and in forests in mich, all breaking out at the same time.
the mich fires werent discovered until much later cuz the area was uninhabited. but the researchers who came up w that theory went there and found them.

the fires spread too fast and too far to have started from a single source. they burned so hot, they sucked up all the oxygen. even the ppl who jumped into lake mich died, suffocated.

and it cd happen again tomorrow.