The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918Various
History
The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918
Various
Wisconsin -- History -- Periodicals
One glance and I saw what to do. Wirth and I picked up a couple of
peavies, and climbing down to the apron, ripped up four or five planks
and stuck them on end down under the bed plates, or stringers, leaving
them standing pointing up stream at an angle of forty-five degrees. We
then climbed back upon the dam and raised the gate four or five
inches. When the current struck those planks it threw a spray of water
all over both wings of the dam and inside of ten minutes we had the
fire completely out.
[Illustration: MAP PREPARED BY MR. BRACKLIN TO ILLUSTRATE HIS
NARRATIVE]
We all sat down and rested for about half an hour; then Wirth and I
took a boat and rowed back to camp, a distance of about two miles.
When we reached there, about midnight, the rain set in and it rained
until noon the following day. Miller and Peterson were still unable to
move around much, as their faces and hands were badly blistered and
their eyes pained them terribly. As for myself, aside from being
unable to speak above a whisper, I was in pretty good shape, and
knowing it would only be a couple of days until father, as soon as he
could reach us, would be there to look the situation over--plans for
the coming winter of logging would have to be changed to include all
the timber that had been burned, for in that country a tree though
slightly burned would be worm-eaten inside of a year unless cut--I
started out with Wirth the next morning to find, if we could, just how
far the fire had extended east and west and to look up a site for a
camp to replace the Mulvaney Camp which had burned. We found that the
fire had taken a course similar to that of a cyclone, about three
miles in width and about twenty miles in length, extending from a
point four miles south and west of Cedar Lake Dam, crossing the
narrows between Cedar Lake and Hemlock up the east shore of Cedar Lake
to a point about opposite Stout’s Island, and then north to the shores
of Big Chetak just west of the Aronson Camp in Section 4--in all an
area of about seventeen miles in length and two to four miles in
width.
Father and L. S. Tainter arrived the next day and after looking over
the site for the new camp we came back to the scene of our experience
of a few days before. We had about reached the point when father
turned to me saying, “John, did I understand you to say you were here
during this fire?” I answered “Yes.” He looked at me for a moment
with, you will remember, that peculiar squint of his and then he said,
“John, you lie, for no man could have been here when this fire passed
and lived to tell the tale.” Nevertheless we were there, and are still
living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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