Michigan Forest Fires—Some of the Homeless.
While in Duluth on October 16, the National Director of the Red Cross learned of a disastrous forest fire, which had occurred in the northern part of the southern peninsula of Michigan on the preceding day. He hurried to the scene, reaching there on the 17th, and for two weeks devoted his time to the work of relief in that State. Following are extracts from the report of the National Director covering this work:—Editor.
“The summer and fall had been excessively dry here, as elsewhere, and there had been little wind. Farmers had been clearing up their lands, burning logs and stumps and accumulated rubbish, as is their custom at the end of the summer. In thousands of places fire was smouldering in log heaps, and in the roots of stumps and in the peaty soil which, when dry, will burn without flame and with little smoke until extinguished by rain.
“Early in the afternoon of October 15, a strong wind from the southwest sprang up and almost in a moment these smouldering fires burst into flames. The effect was as though the entire country had taken fire at once. The wind, whose velocity is estimated to have been fifty miles an hour, carried a vast wave of flame which destroyed everything combustible in its path. Several men whose homes were destroyed assured me, with entire seriousness, that the air was on fire. The area damaged extends approximately seventy-five miles along the northeastern shore of the lower peninsula and reaches back inland from fifteen to twenty-five miles. The center and worst of the fire covered an area perhaps twenty-five miles long and ten miles wide. Within this smaller area were the villages of Metz, Posen and Bolton, surrounded by an agricultural country occupied by Polish and German families in moderate circumstances. The Detroit and Mackinac Railroad passes through this district and each of the villages named is upon the line of the road.
“The village of Metz was completely destroyed, not a structure of any character remaining. The village of Bolton was also completely destroyed with the exception of a small church. Posen was saved by a desperate fight. The open farming country offered little hindrance to the progress of the fire, which in many instances leaped across treeless spaces of a quarter of a mile or more, destroying all buildings and fences between. The number of homes destroyed in an area ten miles square was 177. The number of persons made homeless and temporarily destitute by the fire in an area twenty-five miles long and ten miles wide was about 2,000.
Ruins of Chisholm.