The Great Fire(s) of St. John's

Something I talked about in a previous blog on generosity was that St. John's had so many great fires that if you googled "Great Fire of St. John's," Google would respond with "Pfft, which one?" While this may sound like tomfoolery, it's actually quite true. Between the years of 1816 and 1892, St. John's burnt down five times, or at least large parts of it.

The first three fires of St. John's were in 1816, 1817, and 1819. Not much is known about these three fires. I am uncertain as to if this is because of records being destroyed or simply because we never knew much about them, but either way not much is known as to how they started, how much burnt down, and the such. All I can really say about those three with confidence was that clearly they were doing something right in 1818.

A map of downtown St. John's. I highlighted the ground zeroes of both Great Fires.

The two later fires had extremely similar circumstances, which I find very interesting because I appreciate studying natural disasters. Both the fire of 1846 and 1892 were preceded by a month with little to no rain fall, which dried the wooden buildings of downtown St. John's out quite nicely into the perfect kindling for a Great Fire. The dryness mixed with the usual high winds of Newfoundland made the 'perfect storm' of opportunities for a fire to catch and spread, as the dry wood was highly flammable and the winds helped to spread burning embers all over St. John's.

A photo of the ruins after the Great Fire of 1892.

The Great Fire of 1846 was caused by a glue pot boiling over in a cabinetmaker's workshop. This fire would go on to destroy around 2,000 buildings, causing around $1,300,000 dollars in damage and leaving over 12,000 people homeless. Oddly enough, only three people died, despite the carnage. The Great Fire of 1892 was even more devastating. The fire started in someone's barn when they were smoking and dropped their pipe. This fire would spread, creating $13,000,000 worth of damage, killing three.


Something that I learned that I found was interesting was that every time St. John's burnt down it was built back better. The fires caused the government to make specific jobs to guard against problems such as fires, they built schools to teach women skills so that they could learn how to make products to earn a living, and they learned new types of architecture and construction so as to defend against further fires.