Great Bales of Fire
Great Bales of Fire

Author: Malcolm Castle

Publisher: Orion

Published: 2013-03-21

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1409134407

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More tales of a country fireman, from the author of ALL FIRED UP. Perfect for fans of Heartbeat or Last of the Summer Wine. It's the early 1980s and rookie fireman Malcolm Castle is set to take on the biggest challenge of his life. After three years bouncing around in the back of the country fire-engine, he's about to start driving it! At just 22-years-old - less than half the age of many of his colleagues - he's set to thunder through the narrow streets of one of England's most beautiful medieval towns and speed out across the glorious Shropshire countryside. But while his responsibilities are changing fast, almost everything else in Malcolm's life stays the same. Despite facing his fair share of car accidents, house and farm fires, he still seems to spend an awful lot of time answering a string of unlikely and unexpected emergency calls. He rescues shortsighted dogs from frozen lakes, newborn lambs from flooded golf-courses, a pair of angry cows from a busy dual carriageway - and even a hot-footed hamster from a burning cage. Backed up by a heartwarming cast of fellow firemen, Malcolm's enthusiasm for his job and his life are as infectious as ever. So whether it is cats up trees or trees on cars, follow Malcolm as he takes to the wheel for another crazy year in the country fire brigade. Told with the same gentle humour as his first book, ALL FIRED UP, and full of even more extraordinary real-life anecdotes, Shropshire's longest-serving fireman is back - a little older, a little wiser, and even more convinced he has the best job in the world.

The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow

Author: Richard F. Bales

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1476604762

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The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 swallowed up more than three square miles in two days, leaving thousands homeless and 300 dead. Throughout history, the fire has been attributed to Mrs. O'Leary, an immigrant Irish milkmaid, and her cow. On one level, the tale of Mrs. O'Leary's cow is merely the quintessential urban legend. But the story also represents a means by which the upper classes of Chicago could blame the fire's chaos on a member of the working poor. Although that fire destroyed the official county documents, some land tract records were saved. Using this and other primary source information, Richard F. Bales created a scale drawing that reconstructed the O'Leary neighborhood. Next he turned to the transcripts--more than 1,100 handwritten pages--from an investigation conducted by the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, which interviewed 50 people over the course of 12 days. The board's final report, published in the Chicago newspapers on December 12, 1871, indicates that commissioners were unable to determine the cause of the fire. And yet, by analyzing the 50 witnesses' testimonies, the author concludes that the commissioners could have determined the cause of the fire had they desired to do so. Being more concerned with saving their own reputation from post-fire reports of incompetence, drunkenness and bribery, the commissioners failed to press forward for an answer. The author has uncovered solid evidence as to what really caused the Great Chicago Fire.