Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The alarm
Speaker 1: rang out at two a m. Bostonians, aware of how
Speaker 1: fast fires spread through on clothing, grabbed buckets and hurried outside.
Speaker 1: Spring hadn't yet arrived as of March twenty seventeen sixty,
Speaker 1: and those who hadn't dressed warmly felt the cold. Generally,
Speaker 1: when the call went out, people searched the sky for
Speaker 1: smoke or flames, trying to get a sense of how
Speaker 1: close the danger was to their home or business. This time,
Speaker 1: the source was easy to see. A house on Cornhill,
Speaker 1: which is now Washington Street had caught fire, and it
Speaker 1: had spread before the alarm out. No one knew exactly
Speaker 1: how the fire started, maybe an ember from a fireplace
Speaker 1: or an unattended candle. Every able bodied man, woman and
Speaker 1: child raced to the area buckets in hand. The incentive,
Speaker 1: other than a sense of community, was how flammable buildings
Speaker 1: were and how easily fires escalated. They formed a brigade
Speaker 1: in an attempt to put out the blaze and damp
Speaker 1: in nearby buildings in hopes that the flames wouldn't spread further,
Speaker 1: but the fire proved too aggressive and was soon out
Speaker 1: of control. It traveled both north and south, taking out
Speaker 1: every home, stable, and business along the way. Then the
Speaker 1: wind shifted, changing the course of the fire with it.
Speaker 1: The blaze burned homes on what was once King Street.
Speaker 1: The bunch of Grapes tavern burned to ash. Warehouses full
Speaker 1: of flammable merchandise became additional fuel. Before long, the fire
Speaker 1: raced towards Long Wharf. Both docks and ships and all
Speaker 1: the cargo aboard them were in danger. Along the southeastern
Speaker 1: front near Water Street, flames lapped at the homes there.
Speaker 1: The blaze spread toward the Bitter March in Fort Hill Areas,
Speaker 1: burning wildly, It headed towards South Battery and citizens began
Speaker 1: to panic. You see, the warehouses in South Battery contained
Speaker 1: a large amount of gunpowder. Volunteers raced to remove as
Speaker 1: much as they could. They dragged bags and barrels, spilling
Speaker 1: powder in their rush. Meanwhile, the fire licked dangerously close.
Speaker 1: There just wasn't enough time to remove all the gunpowder.
Speaker 1: At the last second, the men fled with their lives
Speaker 1: from both the fire and the explosion. People from as
Speaker 1: far away as Hampton, New Hampshire, said that heard the
Speaker 1: blast for over ten hours. Bostonians battled the flames. By
Speaker 1: the time the blaze was under control, a hundred seventy
Speaker 1: four homes and a hundred and seventy five businesses had
Speaker 1: burned to the ground. More than a thousand people were
Speaker 1: left unhoused. Despite the loss, no one died. Considered the
Speaker 1: worst fire in the city's history, the damage came to
Speaker 1: fifty three thousand, three hundred and thirty four pounds sterling.
Speaker 1: That's more than ten million pounds today. The destruction couldn't
Speaker 1: have come at a worse time. The French and Indian
Speaker 1: War had strapped the city for cash. Charitable contributions poured in,
Speaker 1: some from as far away as England. The Massachusetts legislature
Speaker 1: gave the city three thousand pounds. New York and Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: agreed to send some of their own relief money too,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough, and while Boston was under British rule,
Speaker 1: no support arrived from King George the Third, even after
Speaker 1: Bostonians sent a petition. Some say that Boston held a
Speaker 1: grudge that lasted into the Revolution. Firefighters urged citizens to
Speaker 1: boycott British goods, The city was rebuilt, and life went
Speaker 1: on over the next hundred years. The fire became part
Speaker 1: of the past. As the saying goes, those who don't
Speaker 1: learn from history are destined to repeat it. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Welcome to American Shadows. In eighteen fifty two, Moses Farmer
Speaker 1: and William Francis Channing invented a revolutionary device in public safety.
Speaker 1: Fire alarm boxes. Boxes on every street corner meant alerting
Speaker 1: the public faster and pulling the levers into telegraph with
Speaker 1: the boxes location to nearby fire stations. In the past,
Speaker 1: people had used wooden rattles, word of mouth, trumpets, and
Speaker 1: church bells to send up the alarm. There was a catch, though,
Speaker 1: The boxes were locked and only police, firef ters or
Speaker 1: other city officials had a key, and that meant any
Speaker 1: citizen who noticed a fire still had to track down
Speaker 1: someone who could pull the lever. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: this meant a delay in summoning firefighters, defeating much of
Speaker 1: the alarms intent. Still, policemen walked the streets at night,
Speaker 1: and the city felt safer for it. If one of
Speaker 1: them spotted a fire, an alarm box wouldn't be far.
Speaker 1: Other advancements had been made as well. A few years
Speaker 1: after the boxes were installed, fire pumps, the precursor to
Speaker 1: fire engines, had replaced bucket brigades. Horses pulled most fire
Speaker 1: pumps or engines. Others were pulled by the strongest men
Speaker 1: within the fire companies, but even those pulled by horses
Speaker 1: often didn't have riding room for firefighters who would run
Speaker 1: alongside the horses, meaning that by the time the men
Speaker 1: reached a fire they were worn down already. The addition
Speaker 1: of running boards helped carry a few men with the pumps,
Speaker 1: but not enough to fight larger fires. Motorized engines didn't
Speaker 1: become common until the early nineteen hundreds. Fighting fires became
Speaker 1: quicker once the city installed municipal water sources, and more
Speaker 1: departments switched to horses to haul the pumps. The invention
Speaker 1: of riveted leather hoses designed to fit early fire hydrants,
Speaker 1: made fighting blazes easier as well, but the addition of
Speaker 1: men and heavy hoses meant more weight for the horses
Speaker 1: to pull, and so to prevent the animals fatigued, the
Speaker 1: city added more horse companies, that is, fire stations that
Speaker 1: included stables. With so many advances Boston had put the
Speaker 1: memory of the seventeen sixty blaze behind them. The population
Speaker 1: swelled to over a hundred and seventy seven thousand by
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty. Buildings that were once two or three stories
Speaker 1: tall gave way to eight story wooden A frame structures.
Speaker 1: The rooftops were answered style, wooden and rectangular, double sloped
Speaker 1: on each side, and those slopes steeply hitched ladders couldn't
Speaker 1: reach windows above four stories much less the rooftops. Warehouses
Speaker 1: cropped up downtown due to a tax loophole. Any merchandise
Speaker 1: stored in attics wasn't taxable. Wooden structures, wooden roofs, warehouses
Speaker 1: full of merchandise items crammed into attics and it didn't
Speaker 1: stop there. Warehouse owners often carried insurance to offset any loss.
Speaker 1: In fact, insurance fraud involving arson wasn't uncommon with such insurance.
Speaker 1: Sun business owners didn't care if they were house burned
Speaker 1: or not, and Boston's streets were narrow and crooked. The
Speaker 1: water infrastructure was ancient, and pipes leaked badly, resulting in
Speaker 1: a lack of water pressure even at their best. The
Speaker 1: hydrants had never been designed to have enough pressure to
Speaker 1: reach beyond a couple of stories where you and I
Speaker 1: see a disaster waiting to happen. Most citizens did not most,
Speaker 1: but not all. John Stanhope dam Roll had been born
Speaker 1: in Boston then lived there his whole life. While he
Speaker 1: owned a construction business, he had also devoted his time
Speaker 1: to the city, serving as a volunteer fireman. With his
Speaker 1: drive and dedication, Damrell rose through the city's ranks. After
Speaker 1: becoming an elected official on the Boston Common Council in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty seven, he worked on legislation to improve fire
Speaker 1: safety and enhance building codes. His suggestions didn't go over
Speaker 1: well with city officials, who insisted that the current safety
Speaker 1: precautions were more than enough. In eighteen sixty six, he
Speaker 1: was elected as the city's chief engineer. He warned officials
Speaker 1: about the issues that would spell a disaster during another
Speaker 1: major fire. His warnings again fell on deaf ears had
Speaker 1: gone over a hundred years without a major fire. They
Speaker 1: didn't see the value and costly upgrades to building codes,
Speaker 1: pipe repairs, and installation of newer and more hydrants when
Speaker 1: what they had seemed to be working just fine. Undaunted,
Speaker 1: Damiel advocated for the creation of a building department and
Speaker 1: inspection service. Finally, in eighteen seventy one, Boston passed regulations
Speaker 1: for building inspections. Later in that same year, Chicago suffered
Speaker 1: their worst fire in history, killing three hundred and turning
Speaker 1: three square miles of the city to ash and rubble.
Speaker 1: Daniel headed to Chicago to learn more about the fire.
Speaker 1: He interviewed officials and firefighters. What he learned was a
Speaker 1: wake up call. Like Boston, buildings in Chicago were mostly
Speaker 1: constructed of wood. Densely packed areas with buildings in close
Speaker 1: proximity had allowed the fire to spread quickly. Hoping to
Speaker 1: create fire breaks, officials had used gunpowder to detonate some buildings,
Speaker 1: but flying debris and flammable gunpowder only made the fires worse.
Speaker 1: When Dameriell returned to Boston, he lobbied to make repairs
Speaker 1: to the city's pipes and to add more hydrants. Officials
Speaker 1: scoffed what had happened to Chicago surely wouldn't happen to them.
Speaker 1: In late October of that year, an equine virus swept
Speaker 1: to the northeast. The city's horses became too weakened and
Speaker 1: ill to pull the fire pumps to replace them. Dam
Speaker 1: Wil hired five hundred men to do the backbreaking work instead.
Speaker 1: On November nine, Bostonians spent the day enjoying the mild temperatures.
Speaker 1: Winter would come all too soon, and many stayed out
Speaker 1: well after the street lamps came on. Dam Will was
Speaker 1: sitting in his Beacon Hill home enjoying the RESTful and
Speaker 1: quiet evening when the alarms went off around seven pm.
Speaker 1: He listened carefully. Five dings, a pause, and then two more,
Speaker 1: indicating box number fifty two. Dam Will knew what that meant.
Speaker 1: The box sat at the corner near Summer, Lincoln and
Speaker 1: Bedford Streets the Warehouse district. There couldn't be a worse
Speaker 1: place for a fire to wake out. He threw on
Speaker 1: a jacket and shoes and headed towards the scene. He
Speaker 1: hadn't gone far when his worst fears were realized. The
Speaker 1: night sky was a light with an orange glow. The
Speaker 1: entire district was burning. The fire had probably already started
Speaker 1: when the only patrolman in the area passed the warehouse
Speaker 1: around seven o'clock. Since it started in the basement, there
Speaker 1: were no telltale flames or detectable smoke, Having seen nothing
Speaker 1: suspicious had moved on to the rest of his beat.
Speaker 1: After burning through the contents of the basement, the fire
Speaker 1: traveled up the wooden elevator shaft. From their clothing and
Speaker 1: other dry goods fueled the flames as it raced through
Speaker 1: the other three floors to the cedar roof. Given the
Speaker 1: flammability of the merchandise, the fire became intensely hot, but
Speaker 1: no one noticed it until the windows blew out from
Speaker 1: the heat. By that point, the flames had already jumped
Speaker 1: to the neighboring building's rooftops. It took twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: find someone with a key to the alarm box, and
Speaker 1: it took longer for the fireman to reach the district
Speaker 1: since the horses were sidelined. The hired men were strong,
Speaker 1: but considerably less so than the horses and a lot slower.
Speaker 1: By the time exhausted firefighters arrived forty five minutes later,
Speaker 1: the fire had completely consumed the building. To the gathering onlookers,
Speaker 1: the granite warehouse resembled a giant furnace. Three of the
Speaker 1: fire companies had arrived just before damn Roll. He joined them,
Speaker 1: helping to position the heavy leather hose toward the inferno.
Speaker 1: He shouted for them to hold the corner. The weak
Speaker 1: water pressure from the hose couldn't reach the upper floors,
Speaker 1: and the fire continued to rage. A large piece of
Speaker 1: granite fell directly on the hose, cutting it in half.
Speaker 1: The men set to work with equipment from another engine,
Speaker 1: while the flames continued to leap from one building to
Speaker 1: the next, setting the roofs ablaze. Within minutes, more firefighters
Speaker 1: and civilians arrived to assist. Three more boxes sounded the
Speaker 1: alarm in the span of half an hour. The fireman
Speaker 1: looked to damn Roll for direction. Also vying for his
Speaker 1: attention were city leaders who wanted to plan out a
Speaker 1: strategy for not only fighting the fire, but also the
Speaker 1: political fallout that would surely follow. Amidst all of this,
Speaker 1: a young boy tugged on damroll sleeve, begging for help.
Speaker 1: His parents were trapped into building a few doors down.
Speaker 1: One glance at the blaze told damn Role that the
Speaker 1: boy was now an orphan, and if he couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out a way to contain the fire, more people would die.
Speaker 1: They needed to establish a perimeter. To do that, he
Speaker 1: had to see what direction the fire was heading. He
Speaker 1: needed a better viewpoint than standing in the smoke filled street.
Speaker 1: Dismissing the officials, damn Rol ran three locks over to
Speaker 1: Milk Street, smashed in the tallest building's door with an axe,
Speaker 1: and raced upstairs to the rooftop. His heart sank. The
Speaker 1: fire had spread in multiple directions. There weren't enough men
Speaker 1: or engines, not enough water pressure. He had to choose.
Speaker 1: Stables made of wood containing an abundance of hay were
Speaker 1: plentiful on the south side. If the fire reached there,
Speaker 1: he reasoned, there would be no stopping it. He returned
Speaker 1: to the men battling the blaze, pleased that at least
Speaker 1: the officials had given up and left him to do
Speaker 1: his job. All but a few of Boston's twenty one
Speaker 1: fire companies had arrived at the scene. He learned that
Speaker 1: fire companies across the river in Cambridge and Charlestown had
Speaker 1: also sent every available fireman and engine. Others from as
Speaker 1: far away as Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire had also
Speaker 1: pledged to help. Some were sending steam driven fire engines
Speaker 1: by railroad. Daniel hoped that would be enough. They had
Speaker 1: been fortunate to get the help they had most telegraph
Speaker 1: offices had either closed for the evening or for the
Speaker 1: entire weekend. He gathered a few of the firemen and
Speaker 1: formed a plan with what they had. By ten p m.
Speaker 1: The fire had spread three additional blocks and three different directions.
Speaker 1: An alarm went up from boxes forty eight and one
Speaker 1: twenty three. While some citizens had rolled up their sleeves
Speaker 1: and tried to help, looters darted in and out of buildings,
Speaker 1: often finding themselves in need of subsequent rescue. Those had
Speaker 1: lost their homes wandered aimlessly. An ever growing number of onlookers,
Speaker 1: over a hundred thousand according to first hand accounts, also
Speaker 1: filled the now crowded and narrow streets, adding to the
Speaker 1: fire fighter's difficulties. And when damwel thought it couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: get much worse, it did. The wind picked up, ushering
Speaker 1: the flames farther and faster. The blaze took on a
Speaker 1: life of its own, but comming a firestorm, the buildings
Speaker 1: that housed the Boston Globe and the Herald both burned
Speaker 1: to the ground. Gas lines erupted, popping street lights. Between
Speaker 1: the fire and the explosions, the city glowed like a
Speaker 1: white hot ember, turning night into day. Sailors off the
Speaker 1: coast in Maine reported seeing the fire around eleven pm.
Speaker 1: The fire spread to the harbor, setting a schooner a flame.
Speaker 1: A tugboat crew acted as a fireboat and managed to
Speaker 1: save a few bridges. Those fighting the fire on land
Speaker 1: didn't have the same luck. The weak water pressure couldn't
Speaker 1: reach the highly flammable rooftops. The fire leapt and danced
Speaker 1: from rooftop to rooftop, just out of the fireman's reach.
Speaker 1: The strong wind spread dust, debris, and flaming embers over
Speaker 1: the city. In South Abington, some twenty miles from Boston,
Speaker 1: a local found of slightly burned fifty dollar bill. By midnight,
Speaker 1: the fire had consumed five city blocks. Damn Roll and
Speaker 1: the firefighters continued holding back the flames as best they could.
Speaker 1: By six am, Washington Street was ablaze, with the fire
Speaker 1: continuing to spread through the town center. Meanwhile, city officials
Speaker 1: had gathered without dam Roll, and by the time the
Speaker 1: sun rose that Sunday morning, they had come to a decision.
Speaker 1: They summoned dam Roll once more. When he arrived after
Speaker 1: a long night of fighting the fire, they filled him
Speaker 1: in on their plan. He had heard this tactic before.
Speaker 1: It hadn't worked for Chicago. It would be a disaster.
Speaker 1: Nothing he said convinced them to change their minds. The
Speaker 1: city officials had decided to create a firebreak using gunpowder,
Speaker 1: and even worse, they ordered him to do it. Everything
Speaker 1: was chaos as businesses burned. More and more shopkeepers arrived
Speaker 1: to salvage what they could. Looters ran in after them,
Speaker 1: taking whatever the owners couldn't carry. All except for one
Speaker 1: Hovey's Department store. With the firing croaching, employees and volunteers
Speaker 1: determined to save something ran inside. They grabbed garments and
Speaker 1: other cloth goods, using the stores faucet to wet the items.
Speaker 1: When the faucets ran dry, they formed a bucket brigade
Speaker 1: from outside hydrants to the top floor, soaking anything flammable.
Speaker 1: Their goal was to keep the fire at bay until
Speaker 1: firefighters arrived. Soaked clothing and rugs hung from the windows.
Speaker 1: A few brave employees stayed inside, stamping out small fires outside.
Speaker 1: Cheers went up as firefighters arrived with hoses, dousing the building.
Speaker 1: While Hovey's was saved, others were not. Fires burned with
Speaker 1: such intensity that they prevented fire fighters from getting close
Speaker 1: enough to do much good. Their efforts seemed futile. All
Speaker 1: they could manage to do was slow the fire down.
Speaker 1: Those in the historic district watched helplessly as the fire
Speaker 1: crept closer. At City Hall, damn World continued to argue
Speaker 1: with the other officials. In the end, Postmaster General William
Speaker 1: Burt convinced the mayor that gunpowder was their only hope.
Speaker 1: Seeing he had no alternative, damn World tried to at
Speaker 1: least convince them that they should be selective in which
Speaker 1: buildings to detonate, but Bert saw no value in the
Speaker 1: city engineer's warnings and remained confident that he should be
Speaker 1: allowed to level buildings without approval. With new orders to
Speaker 1: use gunpowder as a firebreak, Damrol left eager to in
Speaker 1: any case get back to his men and the fire.
Speaker 1: His warnings unheard, he followed through with the Mayor's orders,
Speaker 1: taking precautions as best he could. First, the gas lines
Speaker 1: had to be shut down. After detonating two buildings and
Speaker 1: barely escaping with his life, dan Will defied the mayor
Speaker 1: and halted the use of gunpowder. It put lives at
Speaker 1: risk and only fueled the fire. Bert, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: didn't bother shutting off the gas valves. As you might expect,
Speaker 1: the combination of fire, gunpowder and gas did more than
Speaker 1: level the intended building. Massive fireballs shot into the air,
Speaker 1: high enough that residents in New Hampshire saw the flames. Now.
Speaker 1: Firefighters were busy putting out additional fires while dealing with
Speaker 1: gas leaks and explosions on the corner of Somewhere in Holly,
Speaker 1: the reverend and staff at Trinity Church spent hours saving
Speaker 1: the church's valuables before the fire made it too dangerous
Speaker 1: to re enter. Then they stood and watched the flames
Speaker 1: consume everything else. The priceless and rare books were destroyed
Speaker 1: when Copley's Library burned to ash, and several publishing houses
Speaker 1: were also just droid. The fire was threatening centuries old landmarks.
Speaker 1: The Old South Meeting House was one of the last
Speaker 1: few colonial buildings still standing. Built in seventy nine, the
Speaker 1: meeting Hall had hosted countless church sermons and public meetings.
Speaker 1: Some of the most historic events leading to the American
Speaker 1: Revolution had happened within its walls. African American poet Phyllis
Speaker 1: Wheatley had been one of the many enslaved members of
Speaker 1: the hall's Puritan congregation. William Dawes attended covert meetings there
Speaker 1: before riding with Paul Revere. A young Benjamin Franklin attended
Speaker 1: church sermons the meeting house, and it was there that
Speaker 1: Sam Adams planned the Boston Tea Party. Bostonians still met
Speaker 1: at the Hall to discuss and debate the city's crucial
Speaker 1: concerns and sure the building itself was a mere symbol,
Speaker 1: but an important one to many people. With the fire eminent,
Speaker 1: the bells in the tower were run one more time
Speaker 1: at six am. As the last bell chimed, New Hampshire
Speaker 1: firefighters arrived in a steam powered fire engine. After hosing
Speaker 1: down a building across the road, they stopped the fire
Speaker 1: at Washington Street, saving the historic meeting house. The old
Speaker 1: South Meeting House still stands today on State Street. Forty
Speaker 1: more New Hampshire firemen in steam fire engines set up
Speaker 1: a position ahead of the blaze, posing down buildings to
Speaker 1: prevent the flames from spreading. By one pm, the fires
Speaker 1: began to dwindle. At two pm, the men put out
Speaker 1: the last of them to a cheering crowd. After a
Speaker 1: long day, the tired men climbed back onto their steam
Speaker 1: fire engines and headed home. Bostonians, feeling the worst was over,
Speaker 1: continued to gather downtown to assess the damage. Most of
Speaker 1: the buildings there had burned to the ground. The rest
Speaker 1: were ruined beyond repair. Almost everything inside them had been
Speaker 1: reduced to ash. Owners and on kers picked through the
Speaker 1: sooty debris. There was nothing left to do now except
Speaker 1: start over. Those who had businesses on the other side
Speaker 1: of the fire line felt lucky. While they may have
Speaker 1: had some water damage, they were still standing, but not
Speaker 1: for long. At ten o'clock that evening, and explosion started
Speaker 1: another fire. For reasons unknown, the gas lines still hadn't
Speaker 1: been turned off. A building on the corner of Summer
Speaker 1: in Washington had the misfortune of being above one of
Speaker 1: those gas lines, and it exploded. When another gas line
Speaker 1: running under the street went up, it sent a manhole
Speaker 1: cover sailing through the air. Other nearby buildings that had
Speaker 1: survived the previous night's disaster were leveled or severely damaged.
Speaker 1: Firefighters once again raced to fight the fires before they spread.
Speaker 1: Around midnight, with the gas lines finally shut down, firefighters
Speaker 1: extinguished the last of the flames. Damrol and his crews
Speaker 1: continued to oak buildings and streets before officially determining the
Speaker 1: blaze was out for good. Dirty tired their eyes and
Speaker 1: lungs burning, they finally went home. Damiel returned to his
Speaker 1: own house on Beacon Hill, feeling secure that at last
Speaker 1: the ordeal was over. But sadly, he couldn't have been
Speaker 1: more wrong. The city lay in ruins. What the fire
Speaker 1: hadn't destroyed, explosions and water damage had. The flames had
Speaker 1: spread over sixty acres, burning seven hundred and sixty seven buildings.
Speaker 1: The financial damage was great. In today's money, it would
Speaker 1: be well over a billion dollars. The claims people filed
Speaker 1: actually bankrupted close to thirty three insurance companies. It had
Speaker 1: taken seventeen hours and fironman from twenty seven towns to
Speaker 1: stop the siege. Nine firefighters from Boston, Cambridge, Malden and
Speaker 1: Wooster died fighting the blaze. Two more died days later
Speaker 1: from wounds and burns. Sixteen civilians, including two children, had
Speaker 1: also died. The military arrived to keep peace in order.
Speaker 1: Some people had lost everything, and with their insurance companies bankrupt,
Speaker 1: many took to drinking. Ministers preached on people's sins. In
Speaker 1: the aftermath, city officials formed a commission to investigate the
Speaker 1: cause of what they now called the Great Boston Fire.
Speaker 1: So much of the city's population was now out of
Speaker 1: work financially, it was one of the most expensive fires
Speaker 1: in history. Rebuilding the city in the harbor would take
Speaker 1: time and extensive funding. Everything Dambriel had told them could
Speaker 1: happen did, but the commission was torn, admitting that would
Speaker 1: be accepting blame for not listening to advanced warning year's worth.
Speaker 1: In the end, the commission highlighted exactly what the engineer
Speaker 1: had noted, problems with infrastructure, lack of building codes, and
Speaker 1: poor construction practices. They blamed the leaky water pipes for
Speaker 1: allowing the fire to spin out of control. There was
Speaker 1: one person at fault, they said, the city engineer, damn Roll.
Speaker 1: The mayor and committee interrogated dam Role repeatedly using any
Speaker 1: potentially conflicting words against him. They told the press that
Speaker 1: the hero behind the fire had been burnt for his
Speaker 1: use of gunpowder. Newspapers quickly retold the story. Fireman rallied
Speaker 1: behind dam Roll. They pointed out that the use of
Speaker 1: gunpowder had caused more fires, and that surely they knew
Speaker 1: more about fires than the Postmaster general. The committee turned
Speaker 1: on them to questioning their every decision, their every move
Speaker 1: during the blaze. No amount of evidence seemed proof enough
Speaker 1: that they or the City engineer had done their jobs properly. Anything,
Speaker 1: it seemed, was better than conceding that officials had long
Speaker 1: ignored the warnings. In the end, Damrol was dismissed from
Speaker 1: his post. It took two years to rebuild the city.
Speaker 1: While that let Damil go, they did use his suggestions,
Speaker 1: wide and straight streets, more stone buildings, less flammable materials.
Speaker 1: The city had more and newer fire hydrants installed, and
Speaker 1: Damrell rebuilt as well. He may not have been the
Speaker 1: city engineer any longer, but he certainly wasn't going to
Speaker 1: stop trying to make Boston safer. In eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: he founded the National Association of Fire Engineers and now
Speaker 1: called the International Association of Fire Chiefs. As the foundation's president,
Speaker 1: he published articles on fire safety and building codes. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, the city appointed him as the new
Speaker 1: building commission there, and he served for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Daniel retired in three confident the next building commissioner would
Speaker 1: pick up where he left off. That man was Daniel's son.
Speaker 1: There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief
Speaker 1: sponsor break to hear all about it. It all started
Speaker 1: with an attempt to clean up the landfill. The small
Speaker 1: town of Centralia had once been a booming coal town
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds. When it came to power,
Speaker 1: coal was king, and the small Pennsylvania town had an
Speaker 1: abundance a very dense coal called anthracite. The land purchased
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty two by Locust Mountain Coal and Iron,
Speaker 1: brought in workers like Alexander Ray. Mining engineer Ray saw
Speaker 1: a vision for the down and planned an entire community
Speaker 1: from the streets to the home lots. Two years later,
Speaker 1: the Mine Run Railroad moved coal out of the valley
Speaker 1: to other states. The population continued to grow over the years.
Speaker 1: More minds opened and more families moved in. The mines
Speaker 1: provided a seemingly endless source of revenue and jobs, and
Speaker 1: the town flourished in The town population grew to two thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and sixty one, pushing the limits of how
Speaker 1: many people could live in the sixty acre stretch of land.
Speaker 1: Life was good, though, and the money flowed for nearly
Speaker 1: forty years. More. Then coal production slowed and the Great
Speaker 1: Depression hit. The town didn't have the same wash of
Speaker 1: funds that once enjoyed. In ninety nine, state law allowed
Speaker 1: for the Centralia Council to acquire all rights to the
Speaker 1: coal beneath the town. A year later, the population had
Speaker 1: dwindled to just one thousand, nine hundred and eighty six residents. Still,
Speaker 1: the town continued to export a lesser amount of coal
Speaker 1: into the nineteen sixties, when most mining companies in the
Speaker 1: town closed. Meanwhile, in nineteen sixty two, the officials and
Speaker 1: residents agreed something had to be done with the current landfill.
Speaker 1: Over the years, local firefighters would do a controlled burn
Speaker 1: of a landfill in one location while a new landfill
Speaker 1: was started elsewhere. The Centralia Borough Council hired a handful
Speaker 1: of the town's firefighters to dispose of the trash. The
Speaker 1: current landfill location was an abandoned strip mine pit next
Speaker 1: to the cemetery, and like they've done in the past,
Speaker 1: the firefighters set the heap on fire, but unlike before,
Speaker 1: they let this particular fire burn longer, and some even
Speaker 1: debate whether the fire was ever fully extinguished. Though coal
Speaker 1: bootleggers insist the fire had been snuffed out or they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to continue their work and abandoned
Speaker 1: mine shafts. No one had paid attention to the Burrows
Speaker 1: law that a fire resistant clay barrier be placed between
Speaker 1: each layer and the landfill, the sure that started at
Speaker 1: some point but then stopped or forgotten. Complicating the issue
Speaker 1: was the fact that the pit hadn't been sealed before
Speaker 1: piling on years worth of trash, nor had anyone noted
Speaker 1: that the landfill was situated over open areas in the
Speaker 1: coal mines. No regulations about that existed then. But even
Speaker 1: if legal mining hadn't created chasms underneath the landfill, bootleggers
Speaker 1: over the years had been taken coal from the pillars
Speaker 1: that held up the mines. The hot and long burning fire,
Speaker 1: along with the proximity to an open pit, caused a
Speaker 1: collapse into the mine. The flames found extra fuel in
Speaker 1: the dense coal the air, and the labyrinth of tunnels
Speaker 1: provided the right amount of oxygen. It was the perfect
Speaker 1: storm that June firefighters were called to extinguish two separate
Speaker 1: fires in the area. Both were put out above ground,
Speaker 1: extinguishing the flames below ground proved impossible. Some residents began
Speaker 1: to report health issues and moved away. A few houses
Speaker 1: suffered foundation issues as the ground beneath them shifted, but
Speaker 1: as a whole, much of the community stayed for as
Speaker 1: long as the job stick. Then they moved on as well,
Speaker 1: leaving the population ever smaller. Seventeen years later, in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, a gas station owner who also happened to
Speaker 1: be the mayor, checked the fuel level in his tanks.
Speaker 1: When he withdrew the dipstick, he found it too hot
Speaker 1: to touch. After lowering a thermometer into the tank, he
Speaker 1: discovered the temperature of the gas had reached a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy two degrees fahrenheit. That's almost seventy eight celsius.
Speaker 1: Engineers determined that some areas underground may have reached nine
Speaker 1: hundred degrees. The people still living in the borough stayed
Speaker 1: vigilant about potential fire hazards for three years. Their luck held.
Speaker 1: Many convinced to themselves that the fires had burnt themselves out,
Speaker 1: or that whatever remained was contained below ground, and that
Speaker 1: either way, if the mines were really dangerous, they would
Speaker 1: have already caused a bigger problem in the ground beneath
Speaker 1: twelve year old Todd Dombowski's feet gave way and a
Speaker 1: sinkhole opened up in his backyard four ft wide by
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet deep. Fortunately for Todd, he had
Speaker 1: managed to cling to the edge and his fourteen year
Speaker 1: old cousin pulled him to safety. Not only would the
Speaker 1: drop have killed him, the steam rising from the sinkhole
Speaker 1: contained a lethal amount of carbon monoxide. Despite the evidence,
Speaker 1: the community became even more divided on whether the fires
Speaker 1: remained a threat. Federal investigators felt differently, and in three
Speaker 1: Congress approved of forty two million dollar budget for relocating
Speaker 1: the remaining residents. A thousand residents moved, sixty three stayed.
Speaker 1: The government had over five hundred businesses and homes demolished
Speaker 1: to prevent anyone from occupying them. In In an attempt
Speaker 1: to get the remaining residents to leave, the governor invoked
Speaker 1: eminent domain for the entire borough and condemned every building.
Speaker 1: Perhaps surprisingly, the residents filed a legal action to overturn
Speaker 1: the ruling, though that eventually failed. As a further deterrent,
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, the post office began refusing to
Speaker 1: service the borough's only zip code, But despite the dangers
Speaker 1: and diviction notices, seven residents refused to move and filed
Speaker 1: another counter suit, though they were allowed to stay in
Speaker 1: court orders prevent them from including the property in their
Speaker 1: wills or from selling their homes. The mines beneath Centralia
Speaker 1: still burn raining ash over the land and will likely
Speaker 1: continue to do so for another two hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 1: And they aren't the only minds that still aren't in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: As of this recording. There are thirty eight others. American
Speaker 1: Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by
Speaker 1: Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit Grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.