Great Miami Fire of 1912

Sixteen years after its incorporation and fifteen years before the famous devastation wreaked by the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, the new city of Miami, Florida was devastated by a large fire that started in a railway worker's shack in "Colored Town." (today called Overtown). The sleepy tranquility of this Edwardian Era Miami was shaken badly on the night of 21 October 1912 when large areas were consumed by this inferno.

The whole of the north downtown area north of North Third Street was reduced to smouldering ash in this conflagration. Being a largely poor and overlooked canton of the city, insurance was negligible, and many of the new citizens of Miami lost everything they owned.

Henry Flagler himself took alarm at this destruction and soon cancelled his annual Miami trip that year, instead vacationing at his hotel The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida.

Disasters like this cause many hardships on the lives of the people involved. Private businesses were lost and homes were destroyed. The business owners were not able to reopen and families were cast out into the streets. Because of this the economy of Miami went down, because there was no where to spend any money, and even if there was some place to spend money spare currency would go towards repairs for damages.

It was especially hard for on the citizens with low incomes because their problems are not regarded as important. Citizens new to the Miami area were quickly on the receiving end of a heart breaking situation that could not be reversed. The only thing that was left to do was to move forward, but for many that was not possible. Many of the people were not able to recover from all of the damages and were left to fend for themselves. This was due to the fact that the victims were not insured and had no money to spare, coming from a low income part of the town.

These kinds of incidences are unfortunate and at times can be very common among disaster victims such as the individuals who had to endure the tragedy in New Orleans with regards to Hurricane Katrina. No aid was given to these people as well and they were left to deal with their problems on their own for years to come.

This was extremely hard for Miami in general because at this point in time it was still a brand new city in the act of building up itself from nothing and this incident almost destroyed the entire process. Damages, injuries, and death is something that could be better understood by others in a warlike situation, but with a natural disaster such as the Great Fire in the city of Miami it is harder to grasp the reasoning.

References_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Fradkin, Philip. The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco nearly Destroyed Itself. Los Angeles/London: Berkele, 2005

2. Hoffer, Peter. Seven Fires: The Urban Infernos that Reshaped America. New York: Public Affairs, 2006