To start this article, I want to say that my heart and prayers go out to those affected by the fires in various parts of Los Angeles.  Fire is one of the disasters that you can generally only rebuild and not recover.  Once an item has become ashes it cannot be used again.  The ashes can only be harvested and disposed.

 

My grandfather who sold real estate in Chicago told me that the reason you see very few non-brick buildings in Chicago was a decision made as a result of the Great Chicago Fire. The October 8–10, 1871 fire’s spread and devastation was linked to the drought they had that year, one inch of rain between July 4 and October 9 of rain. Many of the buildings were made of wood and somewhat flimsy.

 

After the fire with a deficient water system to put out the fires and buildings being close together it was needed to create a defense against fire with brick and mortar being less flammable than framed structures. This and many other building rules were strengthened.  

The great LA fires of 2025 share some similarities.  Lack of rain and burnable building materials contributed to the spread.  Also, the water system was overwhelmed and became unusable in many instances.

 

The big difference is that people in California had the history of the Great Chicago Fire to learn and make intelligent decisions.   

 

The first items is prevention to keep fires from happening.  This means when you have dead trees that need to be cleared, clear them. Thanks to misguided environmentalists the tinder was not cleared leaving fire starting to any number of methods, match, cigarette butt disposal, lightning strike, or power line spark to name a few.   

 

Second, water reservoirs were not filled causing the supply in the water system to be far less than needed in the situation.  The decision not to fill these reservoirs fell flat on Governor Newsom. Citing a fish called smelt, water was diverted to the ocean as to not hurt the smelt.  Smelt are not an endangers species.  They are quite plentiful in Minnesota.  The excess rain water that was available was wasted by not routing to reservoirs.  As the population grew more reservoirs were to be built but were not.

 

Third, is the lack of using Ocean water with the planes early in the process.  While salt water is corrosive to the machinery, the fear of killing vegetation with the salt in the water was one of the prime reasons used to avoid this water resource.  However, with proper planning, a filtration system and reservoir could be created to have fresh processed water available for an emergency of this nature.

 

Fourth, the building materials used.  If they had a requirement for less burnable materials, the fire would not have spread in the way it did.  Learning from the Chicago fire example, building wood shingle roofs would not be allowed.  Stucco walls would be less susceptible to fire that wood or vinyl sidings.  Steel two by four and plasterboard construction would also help.

 

President Elect Trump had stated that the decisions made by the California government were a large cause in the fire event.  Trump had warned that not cleaning dead trees and ground cover, not upgrading the water storage and make sure the water infrastructure was sound were and using combustible building materials would lead to fire problems.  Add the electrical infrastructure that is aged and not kept clean of trees, the state of California is susceptible to increased fires that could be prevented or minimized.

 

Trump called out Newsom and the California governments not as apolitical stunt, but as a person trying to analyze and solve problems.  Reminder, Rush Limbaugh once said that Trump was not an idealist but a problem solver.  This is what has confused those that are strictly politicians.  Politicians do not solve problems but guide change to their areas of responsibility.

 

To summarize. There are similarities between the Great Chicago Fire October 8 -10, 1871 and the great Fire of Los Angeles 2025.  The buildings that burned down were made of easily flammable materials.  Also, there were flammable materials near the area of the fires. There was a lack of readily available water to fight the fires. And ironically, both fires were close to a large body of water; the Chicago Fire was by Lake Michigan and the Los Angeles by the Pacific Ocean.

 

Will the powers that be in California have learned their lesson now based upon two great fires that destroyed complete neighborhoods?  It is not political, it was a statement by Trump made to show the problem that had been solved once in Chicago and could have been prevented in California.