Feature
Fire and Flu
A fire in northeastern Minnesota at the height of the 1918 flu pandemic tested the state’s disaster-response mettle.
By Tim Brady
The summer of 1918 had been long and dry in northeastern Minnesota, and autumn brought little relief. Even the bogs in Carlton County were baked by the time September gave way to October. It was perfect weather for a forest fire, and ever since the first of the great Minnesota conflagrations struck near Hinckley in 1894, residents of the north had been wary of just these conditions.
At the same time, most people in this part of the state lived in or near the woods, and fires were a fact of life. It was a rare fall when the smell of burning slash or cutover timberland didn’t drift in from the countryside to be sniffed in Cloquet, Moose Lake, and even Duluth.
Besides which, there were other things to worry about that October. World War I was entering its final, brutal days. As the Allies pushed German forces back through the Argonne Forest toward the Meuse River, the U.S. Army, which had come late to the war, was now leading the fighting and suffering badly for the privilege. Hometown newspapers across Minnesota and the nation, which had pictured handsome young men heading off to war a year earlier, were now using those same photos above stories of violent deaths in distant places such as St. Mihiel and Belleau Wood.
Also insinuating itself onto the pages of the local papers was another story with an ominous feel. Throughout September, an outbreak of influenza had been reported, first in Army camps on the East Coast and then among the general populace, as it spread westward across the country. Given all the violent happenings in the world, the tone of the stories was cautious, as if authorities didn’t want to create any undo anxiety for a people already shell-shocked by war. But as the month progressed, and the epidemic approached Minnesota, there was little good news to report. In fact, the news coming from cities such as Boston and Philadelphia was downright alarming. Hundreds were dying by the day. Young people in particular—soldiers and doctors and nurses; those who were typically least susceptible to the ravages of influenza—were being killed by this virus in unprecedented numbers. And the fact that the nation was in the midst of war, that the transport of soldiers hadn’t stopped, and the military was unwittingly carrying the virus from camp to camp across the country, meant that there would be little chance of containing the epidemic.
The Flu Comes to Minnesota
On Sept. 25, Rupert Blue, the Surgeon General of the United States and head of the federal Public Health Service, announced to the Associated Press that the first cases of influenza had been discovered in Minnesota. This was news to Henry Bracken, M.D., who headed the Minnesota State Board of Health, an agency whose duties included the collection of reports of infectious disease, which were to be passed on to Blue. Bracken shot off a telegram to the Surgeon General inquiring about his sources; but the question quickly became academic. Two days later, the state board of health had its first officially reported case, from Wabasha. On Sept. 28, a flood of cases came pouring into state offices: There were reports of flu in Minneapolis, North Branch, and the village of Wells, near Albert Lea, in southern Minnesota. Soldiers stationed at Fort Snelling and sailors staying at Dunwoody Institute were hit, then a large number of student recruits, who were boarded at the University of Minnesota, became ill as well.
Less than a week after the first report drifted into the state health board, more than a thousand cases of “The Spanish Flu” were reported in Minneapolis alone. The University of Minnesota decided to postpone the start of its fall semester until the virus abated. Edward Slater, M.D., working at University Hospital in Minneapolis, was stricken and died on Oct. 6. He was one of the first of eight victims reported in the state. Two days later, the Red Cross mobilized to aid those who had succumbed to the virus.
The State Board of Health met that same day. Despite a general nervousness about the widening epidemic among its members, Bracken was reassuring. “I think we are in rather good shape to handle the epidemic,” he told them. “Congress has appropriated a million dollars for the handling of communicable diseases [and the] U. S. Public Health Service and the American Red Cross are lined up.”
Some local health offices were less sanguine. On Oct. 11, H. M. Guilford, M.D., head of the Minneapolis Department of Health, shut down the city. All schools, churches, theaters, dance halls, and billiard parlors were to be closed for the duration of the epidemic. “In Boston,” he told the city council, “there are thousands of cases of [the flu], and there have been 3,100 deaths. Thousands of soldiers are stricken with it at Camp Dodge [in Iowa]. There are 2,000 cases here. I do not want to be alarmist, but the disease is not controllable by ordinary measures.”
Fanning the Flames
Up in northeastern Minnesota, the flu had yet to hit. Nonetheless, the region had intense worries of its own. The drought had continued into October, and fire dangers escalated. On the morning of Oct. 12, a stiff, westerly wind began blowing through the woods. Several small fires burning around the town of Brookston, in the northwest part of Carlton County, were joined by the wind into a single intense blaze. As the morning gave way to an even windier afternoon, a firestorm, fed by the tinder-dry conditions, began bearing down upon the town. The 500 residents of Brookston barely had time to escape with their lives before the flames reached the village and cremated it. In a matter of minutes, the fire had moved on, still gathering steam, and headed toward Cloquet. By early evening, that city vanished, too, as did virtually every home and hamlet between.
Meanwhile, more little fires, combined and fueled by the wind, were turning other parts of the northeastern Minnesota woods into separate infernos. A second giant blaze formed and, as evening came, raced toward Moose Lake, southwest of Duluth. Some Moose Lake citizens dove into the water while others drove their automobiles into the lake to escape the flames. More than 200 didn’t make it to safety.
“The night was one of horror,” Col. H.V. Eva wrote in a report on the incident. Eva was stationed in Duluth and would soon head relief efforts in the area. “The flames raged, sweeping down on the homes of settlers and on populous communities, destroying property and taking lives. Settlers fleeing from their doomed homes were stricken on the road; the wind having reached a velocity of 60 miles per hour. Automobiles driven before the fire were overtaken, their occupants perishing. No effort could stem the sweep of the disaster—the fire took what it would.”
On the morning of Oct.13, daylight revealed a scene as bleak as any battlefield landscape in Europe. The towns of Arnold, Automba, Brookston, Cloquet, Kalevala, Kettle River, Lawler, Lester Park, Moose Lake, and Woodland were burned to the ground. A half-dozen other communities were 50 percent destroyed and 10 more suffered severe damage. Fifteen hundred square miles were burned, and more than 50,000 people were displaced. Scores were severely burned, and 453 people were killed outright. More than 4,000 houses were lost, and another 6,000 barns were taken, with livestock dead in the tens of thousands.
Huddled in shelters in Duluth and Superior, thousands of victims sat shivering in shock and dismay. “The Awfullest Fire Horror in State’s History!” was the simple, yet accurate headline in the Carlton County Vidette the next week.
Relief
Although there have been few more disastrous days in Minnesota history, the state had never been better prepared to deal with such a brutal conflagration. The American Red Cross had grown exponentially during World War I and was as fully staffed as it would ever be. The patriotic fervor that gripped the nation at the start of the war helped create and maintain enthusiastic units in virtually every small town in the state. Among other duties, they provided a link between military personnel and their families, and helped supply Red Cross units in Europe with bandages and other battlefield necessities.
Although a great many of the state’s National Guard units had been called to active duty during the war, the state had created its own paramilitary organization, the Minnesota Home Guard, to handle necessary duties within the state. Included in this organization was a Motor Corps Battalion—a novel unit for a military organization in these early years of the automobile’s history. Organized by a Minneapolis auto dealer named Winfield Stephens, the battalion had more than 2,000 automobiles at its disposal at the time of the fire, giving, in the words of one historian, “a mobility that few other military forces had at the time.”
Finally, the state’s experience with earlier disastrous forest fires—at Hinckley in 1894, at Chisholm in 1908, and at Baudette in 1910—helped lead to a quickly organized relief effort. The Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission was formed days after the fire by Gov. Joseph Burnquist and was given authority over the relief efforts.
In Duluth and Superior, “Halls, schools, churches, clubs, and public buildings were thrown open to house the homeless,” wrote Col. Eva, “and hundreds of homes were opened to as many as could be accommodated without crowding. Merchants, wholesale and retail, placed their stocks at the disposal of those who were directing the relief, and cots, blankets, and clothing were obtained in tremendous quantities without question as to payment, then or in the future.”
Before the fires were out, the Motor Corps Battalion was racing into the woods to bring supplies to both firefighters and victims, and to haul refugees away from the inferno.
Red Cross units from the Twin Cities and elsewhere headed to the stricken region to aid local Red Cross staff. The Armory in Duluth was turned into an emergency hospital with 75 beds. The Courthouse, Masonic Temple, Shrine Auditorium, and YMCA buildings were similarly employed. According to one account, 438 “serious” cases were treated in the first 24 hours after the relief began.
Out in the burned-over region, a dispensary was opened in Cloquet, and teams of doctors and nurses managed to get out to help those stricken in the countryside. In all, 29 physicians, 15 nurses, and 21 “helpers” were employed in the region in the immediate aftermath of the fire.
“People Are Dying Up Here”
But for all the things that worked to relieve the suffering in northeastern Minnesota, the magnitude of the disaster remained daunting. To compound problems, the flu arrived there during the week following the fires. It hit hard and spread quickly, as unsuspecting refugees in Duluth carried the virus back to damaged homes and communities across 8,500 square miles of northeastern Minnesota. With just 29 physicians and 15 nurses to serve the region, getting to every desperately ill patient in such a vast district was an impossibility.
As head of the state public health service in St. Paul, Bracken had the power to enlist medical personnel into the service and distribute them to necessary posts across the state. But finding doctors and nurses who weren’t already swamped by the flu epidemic in their own communities was a challenge. On Oct. 22, he sought help from Surgeon General Blue in Washington: “Conditions in Minnesota very bad indeed,” he wired. “Influenza prevailing in many places. A great fire involving the northern part of the state is taxing the state to its utmost . . . Am trying through all sources to secure doctors for influenza service in Minnesota.”
Not only did Blue have no one to send to Minnesota, he was trying to get a handle on a pandemic that was now everywhere in the nation. Much to Bracken’s irritation, Blue seemed more interested in getting an accurate count of how many flu victims there were in Minnesota and making sure appropriate papers were filed for any emergency appointments Bracken might make than he was in looking for help to send to Minnesota.
There were also coordination problems between Bracken’s office and the Northern Division of the Red Cross, which was assigning physicians during the crisis without consulting with Bracken’s office. Again Blue became the object of Bracken’s ire. The Surgeon General had promised, according to Bracken, that he would ensure coordination between the Red Cross and the various state health organizations. “I wish to file objection to such action,” he wrote. Two health organizations shifting medical personnel during the crisis was one too many.
There would be more frustrations to come for Bracken as October slipped into November, and the epidemic continued. In his ongoing effort to find doctors to send to northeastern Minnesota, Bracken hit upon the idea of contacting senior medical students from local universities and sending them to Duluth to provide assistance. He tried the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University and Rush Medical College in Chicago. Unfortunately, all of the available medical students had been drafted into one of two branches of the service, a fact that left him in a bureaucratic maze that he outlined in a pleading telegram to the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army: “Blue gives me authority to employ senior medical students. [But] Blue advises me that I cannot use med students unless released by Army. You tell me that if the students are in the Medical Reserve Corps, I can have them for temporary service. If they are in the Student Army Training Corps, you have no authority ... For three weeks [I have been] trying to get senior medical students and I have not got a single one and people are dying up here from lack of attention.”
Armistice
On Nov. 18, seven days after an armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany, ending the first World War in Europe, six doctors finally arrived in Duluth from Chicago to help tend to the sick. By then, the influenza epidemic had already peaked. The virus would wax and wane through the winter of 1918–1919 in Minnesota, and return in a slightly altered, but still deadly, form the following year. But for most people in the state, the sense of apocalypse ended sometime in November.
The war was over, and the relentless newspaper stories detailing the horrors of gassings and trench warfare were finally at an end. Even in the fire-stricken areas, life went on. Emergency shelters started going up within days of the blazes. And although it would take years of hard work and effort to rebuild the lost communities and homes of the region, the act of reconstructing a lost town was itself a sign of hopefulness.
It was harder to find a silver lining in the pandemic; harder to assess the damages, too. With so many young people—the prime victims of the flu—serving in far-flung places, it was almost impossible to get a precise handle on how many Minnesotans died during the outbreak. In the burned region of Minnesota, there were 106 deaths from the flu in addition to the 453 that were caused by the fires.
Worldwide, the number who died from the pandemic ranged from a very conservative 20 million, upward to 100 million. In the United States, the figure is usually given as around 650,000. Minnesotans died at a rate far less than that in many other areas, particularly on the Eastern seaboard. In the years following 1918, the disasters of that fall were often remembered discretely by witnesses as separate cataclysms that they had had the good luck to survive: There was a war in Europe; there was a horrible flu epidemic; and there was a terrible fire in northeastern Minnesota. It was probably as good a way as any to digest the combined tragedies of those horrible months. Better than imagining them coming together again. MM
Tim Brady is a St. Paul writer.
A Note on the Sources
The Fires of Autumn: The Cloquet-Moose Lake Disaster of 1918, Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, 1918, by Francis M. Carroll and Franklin R. Raiter, provided much of the background detail for this article. The correspondence between Henry Bracken and Rupert Blue can be found in the archives of the state’s Department of Health at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), filed under “Influenza, 1918.” The Final Report of the Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission, Duluth, 1921, which provides most of the gruesome statistics about the fire and its devastating damages, and the Records of the Red Cross Northern Division, 1915-1921, can also be found at the MHS. For more information, write Tim Brady at tbrady01@sprynet.com.