Basic Information : Synopsis : Characters : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References
Basic Information:
Author: Daniel James Brown
Edition: epub on Libby from the Los Angeles Public Library
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
ISBN: 006123625X (ISBN13: 9780061236259)
Start Date: June 1, 2022
Read Date: June 6, 2022
304 pages
Genre: History, Osher
Language Warning: Low
Rated Overall: 3 ½ out of 5
History: 4 out of 5
Synopsis:
Two small fires combines. A powerful wind drives the flames and towns are caught unaware. Several trains converge on Hinckley in time to rescue many people. But there is wholesale destruction and death as well. Tells a story of ignorance and heroics, with generosity from those unaffected.
Cast of Characters:
- Bill Grissinger-Boy survivor
- Clara Anderson-teenage girl
- Emil Anderson-young minister, from Sandstone
- Evan Hansen-Worked in the mill in Hinckley
- Marie Hansen-Evan’s wife, spoke mostly Swedish
- Angus Hay-editor of the Hinckley Enterprise
- Andrew Stumvoll-general store
- Harry Coffin-laundry
- Xavier Bone-Jeweler
- Joseph Kronenberg-liquor store/bar
- Ernest Stephan-doctor, younger doctor in partnership with Cowen
- Wellington Cowen-doctor, coroner
- John Currie-manager of pharmacy
- Amy Currie-wife of John Currie
- Hans Nelson-lived in Pokegama with his wife and children. Worked on the railroad
- Tom Dunn-telegraph operator
- Mollie McNeil-school teacher
- Lee Webster-mayor
- Father Lawler-Catholic priest
- James Root-train engineer of the Duluth to Saint Paul train
- William Bennet Best-train engineer on another train
- William Vogel-engineer of a freight train
- W.W. Braman-saves several Pokegama people by getting them into the mill pond
- Olive Brown-Rush City telegraph operator
- Dave Williams-Duluth station manager
- John Blair-black porter on Root’s train, hero
- Date Became Aware of Book: March 25, 2022 - Saw the book when writing up the author page on Daniel James Brown
- Why do I want to read this book: I volunteer as a fire lookout. Sounds like a book to help me understand how fires behave.
- What do I think I will get out of it? More information on fire behavior.
Thoughts:
This was Brown’s first published book.
Preface
Evidently Brown has a personal connection to this story as he starts off talking about how his grandfather woke up screaming about this fire. Does Brown only take on stories where he has a connection with? Such as with the Donner Party, his great uncle had a house which one of the Donner Party survivors lived in. Or concerning the Japanese-American, he was associated with a group in Seattle which told their story.
This book is the result of my efforts to understand what happened to him that day and, by extension, to understand what happened to the more than 1,200 other people who had the misfortune to find themselves in Hinckley, Minnesota, on the morning of September 1, 1894. … As horrific as the fire itself was, though, it was the human story that emerged from my research that surprised me the most. …. It reminds us, in the starkest possible terms, how closely death always shadows us, and how terrible it can be in achieving its ends. … But it also reminds us that—at least sometimes—we do have the capacity to look death in the face, to take its measure, to spit at it and deny it its will. I usually do not copy so much at one time-or in this case, pieces from several paragraphs. But the description Brown gives is both horrific and fascinating-sort of like a moth drawn to a flame.
Prologue
Brown lays out that soot and ash were normal at this time of year-sort of like here in Fresno, it is not unusual for us to get smoke from fires anyplace in the Sierra. It was no shock to anyone that hundreds of small fires burned in the north woods of Minnesota and Wisconsin that summer, as they did every summer.
Location: Phillips, Wisconsin-sawmills and doing well. Start of the fire.
Described the effects of the fire on Phillips, including trying to save themselves in a lake and on boats.
Then talks about how in a remote town in Minnesota, people were doing their business, planning for the future and were about to die.
Chapter One: Night Music
Date: SEPTEMBER 1, 1894
Location: Hinckley, Mn
This predates the Big Burn in Idaho which was in 1910
Small fires burning did not bother people as they happened all the time. Tells how four people started their day.
Chapter Two: Morning
Morning in Hinckley. The town was a lumber town, milling white pine.
Angus Hay had been warning all summer of the fires in the areas both close and a bit distant which were burning.
The
National Weather Service started on November 1, 1870. First only
taking in readings and collecting old sayings to do the weather
forecast. By 1894 NWS could do short term forecasts. Also the data
they collected showed a considerable amount of possible fire issues
as things were drying out. Little rainfall, hot temperatures.
Logging usually left a lot of fuels on the ground.
Talks about the sling psychrometer. I use this in a fire lookout to measure the relative humidity.
Peshtigo, Wisconsin-previously had a major fire in 1871.
General Christopher Columbus Andrews was advocating that we use practices like the Swedish used to manage forests.
Two fires in the Beroun, Quamba, Mission Creek, Pokegama areas had started to burn.
Chapter Three: Home Sweet Home
Continuing on with the same day. Hot with a hot wind. Continued description of the happenings in Hinckley and around it.
Beroun and Quamba fires moved slowly north and east. Description of the path of the fire.
Chapter Four: Something Wicked
Nature works out its complexities. God suffers
the world’s necessities along with us, and suffers
our turning away, and joins us in exile.
—Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
Brown starts off the chapter with a lesson in how wildfires are classed: FIRE SCIENTISTS DIVIDE WILDLAND FIRES INTO THREE GENERAL classifications:
- ground fires, which progress slowly by creeping through the litter on forest floors or underground by way of smoldering roots;
- surface fires, which move more rapidly through brush and undergrowth and produce flames of moderate height; and
- crown fires, which erupt into the forest canopy and move through the tops of the trees very rapidly and violently
He then notes that large fires, particularly those which have fire in the forest's crowns, will create their own weather, usually with a convection column. Locally this was observed during the Creek Fire. In the Mammoth Pool area it had enough of a weather pattern, it generated its own violent weather, complete with lightning.
The fires were advancing towards Hinckley. The mill had its workers stationed to protect the years worth of lumber on the grounds. By 1:30pm, the fire was starting to spray embers onto the mill.
Mollie McNeil tried to convince her mother and sister to leave town on the 2pm train. Other families were making preparations to leave. Even the volunteer fire department was getting prepared for something.
More discussion of the Peshtigo fire. We talk about climate change, but what about these large fires which occurred before the effects of climate change was noticed?
Four trains were on the tracks that afternoon
- A train between Duluth and Saint Paul. At 1:55pm, 125 passengers had been loaded to go from Duluth to Saint Paul.
- A second train
- A third train, a freight train, coming into Hinckley. When it reached Hinckley Barry saw that the town was burning. How to turn around? Did he have enough time? Even the ties were starting to burn.
- Lastly a train was heading south out of Hinckley with only a few passengers. This one met the fire head on. It got over a bridge, but hit a section of track which was warped and ran off the track. The train was trying to burn.
By now Hinckley was starting to get the brunt of the fire. Houses were catching faster than firefighters could put them out.
By 2pm, the Quamda fire had taken out Pokegama completely. There were a mile wide flames with superheated air. The two Hansen girls put wet cloth over their mouth-this is a big no-no as the water evaporates iot scalds the lungs. Braman gets several people into the mill pond.
Mission Creek was overwhelmed by the Beroun fire around 2:30. A group ran to the center of a potato patch. None of this group were killed and for the most part did not suffer serious injury beside the pain of the heat.
The Hinckley fire fighters were making a stand. The fire hose was burnt through and all was lost.
The trains started figuring out the plan about how to tackle the problem of not being able to move forward and how to avoid running into the trains behind them.
Chapter Five: The Cauldron
An appropriately named chapter.
Starts off talking about the Sundance Fire which he labels as a mass fire, about 50,000 acres. He then talks about how it made its own weather. He explains what happens when two big fires come together and why it is so destructive. These days that would be considered a smaller fire compared to some of the local large fires we have had: Rough, Creek and KNP Complex. The Creek Fire became much more massive and created its own weather.
In this case, Hinckley would be the place where the two fires would converge. The fire chief saw that the town could not be saved. All were running to the train station. Brown describes the chaos of people trying to save each other, themselves.
One of the train stations caught fire. Many just ran north along the tracks. Others were confused and ran any which way. Description of the confusion and the heroics.
One of the trains leaves Hinckley with 500 people on board, just in time. Houses were exploding all around them. People were running away. But the fire was racing faster. One family got lucky and found a wagon with barrels of water. They got into the water. Others were burnt, screaming. Fifty yards away, Al Fraser—crouched among the water barrels on his wagon—heard them. Years later he would still hear them, never able to forget the sound—the long wailing that rose to a crescendo of dry, brittle shrieks and then died out in less than a minute.
I suspect a lot of this description, the particulars especially, is speculation.
Chapter: Six: Ragnarok
Talks about the preparations the Hansen family made for Evan Hansen’s return to get them out of the inferno. Evan could not make it to them. They left everything behind.
Brown goes into how fire kills:
- CO, a silent and painless death
- Scorched lungs, humans want 21% oxygen, but can live with 9%. As the fire comes along, the superheated air is breathed in and you burn your lungs.
- heat, radiates far out beyond the fire. Most painful and slowest death.
This last one is how the people in the Grindstone River died.
Root’s train to Saint Paul was approaching Hinckley. He continued on through Hinckley to Skunk Lake, despite advice to the contrary. Why? I suspect that he did not recognize the magnitude of the fire. There is only so much which the human mind can deal with. Brown also thinks their training was focused on schedules and orders, not on evaluating dangers. Only desperation would ultimately lead both of them [Root and Best] to throw out their schedules, violate their standing orders, and take things into their own hands.
A few months back, railroad workers had lost a strike. They had lost the best chance their generation would know of improving their working conditions and advancing their meager fortunes. Now they were at the mercy of the men in white collars who owned and operated the railroads, and they knew. So they knew their jobs were in peril. It was a lesson that must have been fresh in the minds of Bill Best and Jim Root as they sat in their locomotive surrounded by flames, trying to figure out how they were going to get out of this with their jobs, and their lives.
Brown talks about a huge blast which rocked Root’s train. It’s possible to piece together what must have happened-looks like speculation to me. I wonder if Brown is saying everything else is as it happened, or things he has put together.
Brown speculates that the lumber yard must have suddenly gone up in flames. The almost instantaneous combustion sucked air out of the area.
The train became filled with smoke and flame. People were being burnt. Chaos in the cars. They came to Skunk Lake and evacuated the train and went into the water. Even here the air was so hot, the clothing was catching on fire. There were many heroics recounted.
Chapter Seven: Under the Stone
A very long chapter.
The Best/Barry train was heading towards Sandstone, nine miles from Hinckley. The fire was about 15 minutes behind them, but spot fires were burning and it was hot. They came to burning bridges and chanced going over the bridge.
In Sandstone, life seemed normal. The people on the train tried to warn Sandstone, but there was disbelief. The refusal of Sandstone’s residents to believe that they were in peril was not as unusual as it might seem. …. that fires and other disasters often reveal the extent to which, without realizing it, we live our lives according to internal scripts. When thinking outside of the box would benefit, most people revert back to what seemed their most “natural” thing to do.
The bridge just out of Sandstone collapsed just as the Best/Barry train cleared it. Emil Anderson understood what was going to happen a few minutes before the fire hit and tried to convince people to go to the river. Nobody was in a hurry. At 5:15pm, it hit Sandstone and demolished it. The fire was 10 miles wide.
Those who could not make water tried to bury themselves in fresh plowed fields or in mud. stifling and nearly devoid of oxygen. Gasping for air, he [Oliver Dubois] found that he could just barely breathe by excavating a small hole in the damp earth at the bottom.
By 5:50pm, the fire had passed through Sandstone.
The train stopped six miles away at Partridge (Askov), MN for water and fuel. Only one person from this town got on board. Some tried to get away down the tracks. But The largest group, though, remaining remarkably clearheaded, set out on a road toward a logging camp where a hundred acres had previously been burned over by another fire-the same principle of a prescribed burn.
Back in Pokegama around 6pm, people started emerging, finding nothing left of their town. But there were also many dead, over twenty.
Same with Sandstone, over 50 bodies were found on the town’s streets.
A telegram was sent by a person from Root’s train to Duluth with a cryptic message of devastation.
Chapter Eight: Into the Ring
The Duluth station master was alarmed and now took action. Finding any trains in the area to seek out Root’s train to rescue what could be rescued.
Back at the burn area, survivors started appearing. Being badly burned is just about the worst thing that can happen to a body short of immediate dismemberment and death. No other type of injury creates the same kind of long-lasting physiological mayhem, the same potential for pain, the same degree of uncertainty about the outcome, the same kind of disfigurement for those who manage to survive.
Words Brown defines various things which happens after a person is badly burned:
One more town in the fire’s path-Finlayson. Town destroyed, but all survived by jumping in a pond.
After about 6:30pm, a low pressure system came in and helped cool and calm the fire which then burnt into small fires. The fire was about 34 miles long and 16 miles wide. The Creek fire was about 30 miles long and 30 miles wide over what it burned. But during the Saturdday before Labor Day, it burned about the same as the Hinckley Fire.
Another telegram arrived in Duluth from the Best/Barry train saying they would be arriving around 9pm with 500 people on board.
Rescue trains now made their way down, but were stopped by burnt out bridges.
Mission Creek was leveled, but all the people survived and pretty much had a good meal afterwards-potatoes and deer. Railroad workers doing minor repair work were surprised that the town was now missing as they thought it was just some small fires.
Angus Hay and a group of men ended up at Mission Creek and told what had happened to Hinckley.
The Best/Barry train made it to Duluth about 9:30pm.
The railroad maintenance train with Angus Hay on it made it to Pine City a little after 10:30pm. With that came the news that Hinckley was no more. A rescue effort was initiated. By 11:30pm, a train headed out of Pine City to bring supplies to Hinckley. The newspaper corresponded in Pine City wrote: Poor Root! He ought to live, such men are always heroes in time of need
The next good size town south was Rush City where Root’s wife was also a telegraph operator. She saw the message sent above.
September 2, 1894
The Duluth rescue found the people at Skunk Lake. Root was barely alive. They did what they could, leaving doctors and taking a few people back to the train so they could tell Duluth the true situation.
Chapter Nine: Out of the Ashes
The rescue train from Pine City made it into Hinckley from the south at 12:30am. They found a town almost completely leveled with the smell of burnt meat everywhere. Beyond Hinckley, the tracks were totally destroyed. But they also found survivors. The train returned at 1:00am. But there were those who stayed behind to continue the search. They made their way north to Skunk Lake, which they made by 4:30.
Sandstone realized how cut off they were-isolated by two burnt out bridges. But multiple prongs of rescue occurred.
Some of the survivors and rescuers had what we know as PTSD. The startling bottom line is that an estimated 7.8 percent of Americans will suffer from PTSD during their lifetimes. PTSD will manifest itself in four ways:
- intrusive recollection
- avoidance symptoms
- psychic numbing
- dissociation
those who played the role of hero were among the most likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders. Research suggests that people who act heroically in a disaster often carry a special burden later—foisted upon them by an admiring public that holds them to a higher standard.
Brown talks about the Horejs Brothers Bakery supplying 2,300 loaves of bread for the rescue effort. I do not think they exist anymore.
The Kinney train reached Sandstone after 10pm. Found one survivor. Then many more dead.
September 3, 1894
Emil Anderson is found with other survivors. They need to walk five miles to the train. Many have no shoes. Many have burnt feet. It was slow traveling. After 1am, they reached the 250 survivors in the pit. Most were able to walk to the train, 28 were in too bad of shape.
4:45am, another train left Duluth with the explicit instructions from the head of the railroad to help in any way they could.
To the south, all of the Hinckley survivors were in Pine City. Another train was being stocked to do repairs on the railroad. Root was at home, bandaged up.
Emil Anderson made it to Duluth, then promptly left on the next train back to Sandstone to assist in any way he could.
Care for the burnt did little for them, but at least it was something.
Gruesome descriptions of the dead and where they were finding the victims. The 28 people, which was less now due to some dying, were being carried across a river, up a cliff and then nine miles to the train. Except for the last part-the railroad had laid enough track to get hand cars to the cliff. Hinckley was almost completely razed. People were trying to recognize people who they loved or knew. Most were unsuccessful.
Chapter Ten: The Broken Season
Not all people who came to the fire scene were altruistic. There were newspaper men doing their job on a story. And a newspaper woman-Nellie Bly. And then there were those who were looting, both the dead and their properties. And then the tourists came to gawk.
Most of the relief came from private aid. Later a little bit of government aid came.
The dead continued to be found for months afterwards.
People started to recover.
Chapter Eleven Drifting Embers
The conditions which made the Hinckley fire possible were present in Western Wisconsin as well. There was a great destruction of property there.
Great fires often come to us in the company of other fires, and the same pattern of catastrophic… These fires were repeated again and again.
Epilogue
Modern day Hinckley. There is a Hinckley Fire Museum where the train depot was. Many street names are given from those of the heroes of the fire. 314 identified victims; 99 bodies which could not be identified. Plus the 23 native Americans who did not make the list plus any body trapped out in the woods who did not have anybody to report them missing.
Brown goes through what happened to the notable survivors.
John Blair, the porter was asked why didn’t he panic. His response which is a wise statement:“I just resolved I would not lose my head, and if I had to die, I would do it without making a fool of myself?’
If the Hinckley firestorm left us any kind of positive legacy, it may be that it began the slow, creeping process of ushering in an era of better forest management across the country. This is still developing. It has gone from putting out all fires to the current if it is not destroyed and we can control the spread, let it burn. I wonder what the next phase of fire and forest management will be.
Increase A. Lapham—one of the pioneers of both weather science and fire science—had published a study titled Report of the Disastrous Effects of the Destruction of Forest Trees Now Going on So Rapidly in the State of Wisconsin.
It seems like unless there is an economic loss, there is not a push to regulate things. In 1895, largely over the objections of the lumber interests, the Minnesota legislature passed a limited set of forest-use laws. But they had little teeth and very limited oversight. It took the fires of 1908, 1910, 1918, and 1925 to change that.
Brown notes that most people do not see what is coming until it is too late. And those who do, it is hard for them to take action over the objections of the majority.
Chapter Notes
Over 2,000 people were involved with the fires. in order to present the larger tale in a coherent fashion, I have necessarily had to focus on a sampling of those stories. That is not to say, however, that I have disregarded the thousands of details revealed in the stories I have not retold. I have isolated and correlated those details—located them in time and place—and then built as many of them as possible into an overarching, minute-by-minute narrative of what happened. Indicates a lot of research went into this book. He lists the important sources.
Evaluation:
In 1894, a large fire devastated several towns in Minnesota, going through them leaving nothing but a few things standing. This included Hinckley. That is what this book is about: the fire, the devastation, the loss of life and the heroics of those who were there. Once the outside world hears of the disaster, there is wholesale generosity.
Brown does extensive research as well as being able to tell a good story. This combination makes for good reading. His style is to start and end with how a story is personal to him. In this case, his grandfather was a survivor. Read this book, but prepare to for how gruesome a disaster like this can be.
Notes from my book group:
What is Brown’s personal connection to this story? How does it influence the telling of the story?
Brown notes that it was the human story that emerged from my research that surprised me the most. What stories drew you in the most? Why?
The beginning of this story was that several small fires were burning throughout the region. Why did this make a difference? How do small nuisances create an illusion of normalcy? What implications does this have?
Talk about the experiences of the trains. What part did they play in rescuing people? What actions would you consider heroic? What do you think would have happened if the timing of the trains was different?
fires and other disasters often reveal the extent to which, without realizing it, we live our lives according to internal scripts. Many people were warned about the fire, but ignored the warnings. Why do you think they felt they could ignore the warnings?
What did you learn about wildfires? What were you surprised by? Do you think you could outrun a wildfire? What would you do to protect yourself if you encountered a strong/mass wildfire?
What is the most intense emergency you have experienced? What was it like? How did you react? Were you given warning?
Once word got out about the magnitude of the disaster, the towns around the area responded. How did they respond? When disaster happens today-Katrina, Creek Fire, … what kind of response is there? How is it the same?? How is the response different? What does a response say about how we picture the relationships between people?
Where do you think Brown got his detailed information, including conversation and thoughts?
How do you want your life to change because you read this book?
Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.
Why the title of Under a Flaming Sky?
Does this book works as a history?
Did the ending seem fitting? Satisfying? Predictable?
Which character was the most convincing? Least?
Which character did you identify with?
Which one did you dislike?
Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?
In what context was religion talked about in this book?
Was there anybody you would consider religious?
How did they show it?
Was the book overtly religious?
How did it affect the book's story?
Why do you think the author wrote this book?
What would you ask the author if you had a chance?
What “takeaways” did you have from this book?
What central ideas does the author present?
What implications for you, our nation or the world do these ideas have?
Are these idea’s controversial?
To whom and why?
Are there solutions which the author presents?
Describe the culture talked about in the book.
How is the culture described in this book different than where we live?
What economic or political situations are described?
How did this book affect your view of the world?
Of how God is viewed?
What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?
Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
What was memorable?
Other
places which have study questions:
Galesburg
Library
New Words:
- Lindens: Common lime; European lime; Lime tree; Tilia cordata; Tilia platyphyllos. Linden is an herb that comes from various species of Tilia, or lime tree. It has been used in European folk medicine for centuries to treat a wide range of health problems.
- Fire in America by Stephen J. Pyne
- Bum Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames by Barbara Ravage
- Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
- Memorials of the Minnesota Forest Fires by Reverend William Wilkinson
- A History of the Great Minnesota Forest Fires by Elton T. Brown
Good Quotes:
- First Line: FORTY YEARS AFTER THE HINCKLEY FIRESTORM, MY GRANDFATHER still sometimes awoke in the night, screaming.
- Last Line: I turned and walked back out through the gate, swung it closed behind me, climbed into the car and pulled out onto the dark highway following the cones of light from my headlights, letting them lead me back down the dark road to the casino, to take my chances.
- I just resolved I would not lose my head, and if I had to die, I would do it without making a fool of myself? Chp Epilogue, quoting John Blair
Nature works out its complexities. God suffers
the world’s necessities along with us, and suffers
our turning away, and joins us in exile.
—Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
- Preface
- Prologue
- Chapter One: Night Music
- Chapter Two: Morning
- Chapter Three: Home Sweet Home
- Chapter Four: Something Wicked
- Chapter Five: The Cauldron
- Chapter: Six: Ragnarok
- Chapter Seven: Under the Stone
- Chapter Eight: Into the Ring
- Chapter Nine: Out of the Ashes
- Chapter Ten: The Broken Season
- Chapter Eleven Drifting Embers
- Epilogue
- Author Notes
References:
- Publisher's Web Site for Book
- Author's Web Site
- Wikipedia-Author
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- Barnes and Noble
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- Publishers Weekly
- Crown River Media Company
- Best North Shore
- Williamsport Sun-Gazette
