Analysis of the Impact Theory
(continued from previous page)
Waskin's
book ultimately falls short because it fails to address even the
basic questions relative to his theory. How could a comet
streaking across the sky above Chicago go unnoticed by the
city's 334,000 inhabitants? If this comet did strike Chicago,
why didn't anyone report seeing it flash overhead or hearing an
explosion when it struck the earth? The post-fire newspapers are
silent as to any such extra-terrestrial visitor -- until December
13, when the Republican reported that "a very brilliant
meteor was seen at about 10:45 o'clock last night." For
these reasons, more than anything else, Mel Waskin's comet is,
to use his own words, merely "icy slush"; it sheds not
one candlepower of light on the cause of the Great Chicago Fire.
So what did cause the Peshtigo Fire?
The northeastern part of Wisconsin had been dotted
with dozens of fires since September. By the first week of
October, the situation had become a crisis, with even the Chicago
newspapers running lengthy articles featuring headlines such as
"Wisconsin Ablaze." Most of these fires had been set by
farmers for the purpose of clearing land, but other fires had
been started by hunters, lumberjacks, railroad workers, and
locomotives. In his book Fire at Peshtigo, Robert W. Wells
theorizes that on the night of October 8, winds fanned these
small blazes into bigger ones. Heat radiation from these separate
fires may have ignited nearby underbrush, logging debris, and
other combustible material, creating even larger fires as the
individual blazes merged together. Wells suggests that above the
heavier, smoke-laden air of northeastern Wisconsin was a layer of
colder air. This cold air mass initially suppressed the
convection whirls that these original smaller fires generated,
causing them to burn sluggishly. When the swirling, overheated
air of the combined convection whirls finally broke through the
blanket of cooler air above it, it was as if a giant furnace
damper had been opened. The hot air rushed skyward and the colder
air swept in from all sides towards the column of rising air.
This updraft created a firestorm that ravaged approximately one
thousand square miles. It incinerated the village of Peshtigo and
other settlements and farms in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
~Richard Bales
