The Great Baltimore Fire

By Peter B. Petersen

Book Overview

Early on the bitter cold morning of Sunday, February 7, 1904, a passerby on the nearly deserted streets of Baltimore's business district noticed smoke coming from the fourth floor windows of the John E. Hurst & Co. building. Within hours steady, frigid winds had created a blaze that overwhelmed Baltimore's firefighters and threatened the entire city. Although few died as a result of the flames, the heart of the city, its waterfront and business district -- lay in ashes. The story of Baltimore's trial by fire and ultimate resurgence is now freshly told for the first time in fifty years by Johns Hopkins scholar Peter B. Petersen.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0938420909
• ISBN13: 9780938420903
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Maryland Historical Society
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.5" x 1.0" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A great story of people, management, and politics

An interesting book that's not just about the Baltimore fire. It's about people - how they react to an emergency, how they react when a situation gets out of hand, how they cooperate, how they refuse to cooperate. It's about politics. It's about managing in a crisis. It's about bravery, including the quiet bravery of staying on the job, where you're needed, even if where you're needed is on a freezing street corner. It's about failing to prepare for unthinkable disaster and recovering from that failure. It's about competence and incompetence, followed by finger pointing and second guessing. The pictures alone are worth the price of the book. Imagine a fire that consumes 70 square blocks and over 1500 buildings.