Hell on earth When fire ravaged the town of Peshtigo, Wis., killing 2,200 Archived article from Jan 27, 2003 By Douglas Frank   "Firestorm at Peshigo" by William Lutz and Denise Gess tells the story of a little-known but devastating conflagration in 19th century Wisconsin. The History Channel is considering a program based on the book to shoot next fall, and the authors have an agent in Hollywood exploring possibilities for a movie. Photo by Addison Geary According to legend, Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern on the dark night of Oct. 8, 1871, and started the Great Chicago Fire, which killed 300 and emblazoned itself in our collective memory as America's most famous conflagration. But on that same day, some 260 miles to the north, a five-mile wall of flames propelled by a tornado consumed the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wis., and its environs in less than a half-hour, killing more than 2,200 people. The story of this "hell on earth," until now limited to local lore, has been told by Camden faculty members William Lutz, professor of English, and Denise Gess, novelist and visiting instructor of English, in their new book, "Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History" (Henry Holt and Company). "The Peshtigo Paradigm, as fire experts refer to it, was then and remains the single deadliest fire in the United States and the third deadliest quasi-natural disaster in America," the authors point out. The tale was unearthed from survivors' letters, diaries, interviews, local newspaper articles and scientific reports, including the accounts of newspaper publisher Luther Noyes, lumber baron Isaac Stephenson, parish priest Father Peter Pernin and meteorologist Increase Lapham, the only person who understood the real nature of the fire. It was Lapham, in fact, who later determined that the same weather system and dry conditions were responsible for the fires in Chicago and Peshtigo and for huge prairie fires in Minnesota at the same time. He also determined that the Peshtigo fire was driven by a tornado. Lapham, who published his report on the tornadoes of Wisconsin in 1875, had "understood from the start that fire and weather were inextricably linked, that the Law of Storms and the behavior of fire — wind, topography, and flame — in a specific area under unstable atmospheric conditions would create a hell on earth against which no one could hope to defend himself," the authors write. By late September, fires were burning everywhere in all directions in the scattered settlements, logging camps, railroad camps and towns. Logging and railroad activities in the north woods involved frequent burning and the people of Peshtigo had long lived with choking conditions as a matter of course, the authors explain. Tornadoes, too, are common in Wisconsin, and the loss of houses and barns from either wind or fire was a regular occurrence. But none of the residents expected such a catastrophic event. "A firestorm is called nature's nuclear explosion. Here's a wall of flame, a mile high, five miles wide, traveling 90 to 100 miles an hour, hotter than a crematorium, turning sand into glass. How can you even comprehend that?" asks Lutz. Still harder to understand is the capriciousness of that kind of storm, which destroyed Peshtigo and Menominee in a half-hour, skirted the edges of Marinette and destroyed Birch Creek, all the while leaving Peshtigo Harbor alone. In graphic, gripping and no-holds-barred prose, the book details the fate of many victims whose stories were passed from survivors to descendants and are archived in Wisconsin's libraries and museums. The stories reflect both the indomitable human spirit as well as the despair of the human condition. For example, Karl Lamp, who had earlier lost four children to natural causes, watched in horror as fire consumed his wife and three daughters. He later recovered from his injuries, married a younger woman and fathered seven more children before he died in 1904. The fire destroyed the will of another farmer, Sandy Mac, who never found the bodies of his wife and children, never went back to his farm and did not marry again. When he died in 1926, he was buried in the potter's field near Peshtigo. In the days before the fire, J.G. Clements assured his new mother-in-law that he would take good care of her daughter and, as an afterthought, promised that he would die for his new wife. He kept his promise when he jumped from a wagon to speed her escape from the flames. Burial parties found the dead in root cellars, wells, the smoldering foundations of houses and farm buildings, plowed fields, culverts and gullies, where, thinking only a "gale" was coming, townspeople thought they would be safe. The authors, once married to each other, researched and wrote the book together after Lutz returned from a trip to his native Wisconsin excited by the idea. Gess was skeptical at first, he recalls, but he was persistent and convinced her that the novelistic approach was best. Eventually, she became fascinated with the story. "It's written like a novel," Gess says, "but without the usual amount of dialogue. We wanted to be true to the sources, so none of the dialogue is made up. Much of the book is dramatic narrative." Lutz says he could have written a "very nice scholarly account, but I wanted to bring out the people who were there and the fire itself, which is a character. I couldn't do that, so I turned to my ex-wife and best friend." They were not worried about offending each other and weren't afraid to disagree, Lutz says. "We are divorced. How can you worry about that?" Gess is author of the novels "Good Deeds" and "Red Whiskey Blues," while Lutz has authored 15 books, including the bestseller "Doublespeak," a treatise on how government and institutions use and abuse language. For both veteran writers, however, the Peshtigo story was difficult to tell. "This is chilling, it's breaking my heart to write," Gess told a friend. Lutz, who wrote the piece on Sandy Mac, remembers "sobbing hysterically as I wrote it. I still can't read it today without tears." As if hellfire were not enough, in the aftermath of the conflagration came an invasion of army worms that had erupted from the earth and ran unchecked by the birds and beetles that had been killed or driven off by the flames. The worms were so thick in some places that they could be scooped up by the bucket, although their numbers decreased after a parasitic fly, a natural enemy, appeared. These, however, soon became a worse pestilence because, unlike the worms, they were able to fly everywhere. "For the fire survivors, it appeared that Nature itself, if not God, was determined to drive them from their land," the authors conclude.

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