A short series on the history of firefighting
Somebody had to invent every way we survive a fire.
Two thousand years of people watching cities burn and building something so it wouldn't happen again. It ends with a Cleveland inventor who walked into a tunnel fifty feet under Lake Erie wearing a hood he made himself.
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The whole story is one line going down
Fire used to be the thing that ended cities. Then people invented their way out of it — pumps, brigades, codes, hydrants, hoods. Every episode is one point on this line.
Shape shown is schematic — verified figures to be sourced from NFPA and the U.S. Fire Administration.
Latest episodes
Season One runs from the first fire pump in Alexandria to the night two American cities burned at once.
THE DEADLIES FIRE NOBODY REMEMBERS
Chicago burned on October 8, 1871. So did Peshtigo, Wisconsin — on the same night, with far more dead. You've heard of one of them.
Same night · Two fires
When firefighters fought each other
Rival volunteer companies raced to the hydrant, and sometimes brawled over it while the building burned behind them.
Volunteer era · New York
Franklin's other invention
Before the lightning rod, Ben Franklin organized Philadelphia's first fire company — and wrote the line about an ounce of prevention to sell people on it.
Union Fire Company
Watch the short film
The Inventor
Garrett Morgan built a hood to help people breathe in smoke. Nobody would buy it. Then a tunnel under Lake Erie exploded with men still inside, and he went down after them.
This is the short we made first. The feature is next.