Fire Prevention Week

Fire Prevention Week commemorates the Great Chicago Fire, a fire that devastated the city of Chicago by burning down over 1,000 buildings, leaving over 100,000 homeless and 300 killed in October of 1871. The story that everyone tells of the Great Chicago Fire is that “Mrs. O’ Reily’s cow kicked over the lantern” and that’s what started the fire. Although the fire was started in that area, historians aren’t sure that how it began. However, what they do know is that the Great Chicago Fire kept spreading because the firefighters could not control the embers blowing in the wind. All of the building during that time were made of wood, the city was suffering a massive drought, and many of the firefighters were drained of resources due to previous fires weeks before.

Thus, in 1922, the National Fire Protection Association, which began in 1896 as a response to these fires, sponsored Fire Prevention Week as a way to prevent events like this from happening. President Calvin Coolidge then proclaimed Fire Prevention Week a national observance in 1925, officially declaring it a national holiday. Today, because of the event, Chicago has strict guidelines on how buildings are built and how roads are expanded and given maintenance. Fire Prevention Week thus is taught and observed in schools all over the country, especially for younger children, so that way they can be able to handle what to do when a fire starts.