Fire Strikes the Chicago Stock Yards: A History of Flame and Folly in the Jungle

Wade into the endless smoke of Chicago’s Union Stock Yards,the site of nearly three hundred extra-alarm fires before its closure in 1971,including some of the most disastrous conflagrations of a city famous for fire.In 1910, twenty-one firemen and three civilians were killed in a blaze at abeef warehouse-the largest death toll for an organized fire department in thenation prior to 9/11. The meatpackerswho ran the yards considered the constant threat of fire as part of the cost ofdoing business, shrugging it off with an, It’s all right, we’re fullycovered. For the firefighters who were forced to plunge into the flames againand again, it was an entirely different matter.