... that made it so easily fire prone. The summer of 1871 had been remarkably dry that year and most of the cities 60,000 stables, barns, houses, stores, and other warehouses were made out of wood.2 This made the great city of Chicago susceptible to tremendous damage from a fire. As author Robert Cromie states in his book The Great Chicago Fire; The buildings were like ... an enormous artificial forest, drying out in a sun-heated oven. Not only were most of the buildings made of wood, but even those with more of substantial stuff almost without exception had wooden floors, window and door f...

• Word Count: 2606
• Approx Pages: 10

... to those disasters that cause massive property damage and fantastic images great for our sensationalized media, yet are many times less fatal. Usually news of seven hundred deaths in a week is seen as a major catastrophe, so how then was the person who had the greatest ability to ... or forty years ago is to take into account how the government reacted. Klinenberg makes quite an emotional response at the end of the book when he says, "Hundreds of Chicago residents died alone during the heat wave and were assisted by two potentially life saving interventions - attention from state-sponsor...

• Word Count: 2648
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to those disasters that cause massive property damage and fantastic images great for our sensationalized media, yet are many times less fatal. Usually news of seven hundred deaths in a week is seen as a major catastrophe, so how then was the person who had the greatest ability to ... or forty years ago is to take into account how the government reacted. Klinenberg makes quite an emotional response at the end of the book when he says, "Hundreds of Chicago residents died alone during the heat wave and were assisted by two potentially life saving interventions - attention from state-sponsor...

• Word Count: 2721
• Approx Pages: 11