Fire Prevention Week 10/5/2014 - 10/11/2014

HISTORY OF FIRE PREVENTION WEEK

The Great Conflagration

On Oct. 9, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire started. This tragic fire killed about 300 people, left 100,000 homeless and destroyed more than 17,000 structures.

One popular legend claims that Mrs. Catherine O'Leary was milking her cow when the animal kicked over a lamp, set the O'Leary's barn on fire and started the fiery conflagration. The city of Chicago was fast to rebuild and soon began to remember the event with festivities. The Fire Marshals Association of North America believed the 40th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire should be observed in a way that would keep the public aware of the importance of fire prevention.

On Oct. 9, 1911, was the first National Prevention Day. In 1920, President Woodrow Wilson issued the first national Fire Prevention Day proclamation. By 1925, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the first National Fire Prevention Week, which was Oct. 4-10, 1925. He noted that in the previous year approximately 15,000 lives had been lost to fire in the United States. President Coolidge's proclamation stated, "This waste results from conditions that justify a sense of shame and horror; for the greater part of it could and ought to be prevented.... It is highly desirable that every effort be made to reform the conditions that have made possible so vast a destruction of the national wealth."

National Fire Prevention Week is always the week in which Oct. 9 falls. Each year, a specific theme is chosen and is commemorated throughout the United States.

It was like a snowstorm only the flakes were red instead of white.

Besides the fact that the Great Chicago Fire started around 9 o'clock on Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, somewhere in or very near the O'Leary barn, the exact particulars of its origins are unknown. But, given the dry summer and the careless way the city had been built and managed, a kick from a cow would have been sufficient but by no means necessary to burn Chicago down. As A.T. Andreas, the city's leading nineteenth-century historian, put it, "Nature had withheld her accustomed measure of prevention, and man had added to the peril by recklessness."

For additional information

Siemens Building Technologies-Fire Business Unit

Industry Affairs Team

Dan Finnegan   daniel.finnegan@siemens.com    630.240.4328