Ah, the good old days before CO2 made everything so flammable: 1871 Peshtigo fire only killed over a thousand people; burned only 1.2 million acres; wall of flame only a mile high

Peshtigo Fire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The October 8, 1871 Peshtigo Fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was a firestorm which caused the most deaths by fire in United States history, killing as many as 1,500.^[1] Occurring on the same day as the more infamous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire is mostly forgotten.^[2][3] On the same day as the Peshtigo and Chicago fires, the cities of Holland and Manistee, Michigan, across Lake Michigan, also burned, and the same fate befell Port Huron at the southern end of Lake Huron.

...On the day of the fire, a cold front moved in from the west, bringing strong winds that fanned smaller fires and escalated them to massive proportions.^[4] By the time it was over, 1,875 square miles (4,860 km² or 1.2 million acres) of forest had been consumed, an area approximately twice the size of the state of Rhode Island. Some sources list 1.5 million acres (6,100 km²) burned. Twelve communities were destroyed. An accurate death toll has never been determined since local population records were destroyed in the fire. Between 1,200 and 2,500 people are thought to have lost their lives. The 1873 Report to the Wisconsin Legislature listed 1,182 names of deceased or missing residents.

...The fire was so intense it jumped several miles over the waters of Green Bay and burned parts of the Door Peninsula, as well as jumping the Peshtigo River itself to burn on both sides of the inlet town. Surviving witnesses reported that the firestorm generated a tornado that threw rail cars and houses into the air. Many of the survivors of the firestorm escaped the flames by immersing themselves in the Peshtigo River, wells, or other nearby bodies of water. Some drowned while others succumbed to hypothermia in the frigid river.

...National Fire Protection Week in October was started to commemorate the Chicago fire, which was ironically dwarfed by the unremembered Peshtigo conflagration. In the words of one author, "A firestorm is called nature's nuclear explosion. Here's a wall of flame, a mile high, five miles (8 km) wide, traveling 90 to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), hotter than a crematorium, turning sand into glass." ^[7]