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Appendix #28: Fires in New York 1777 – 1783

Illustration 28: Fires in New York 1777 – 1783

For the first year and a half after the Great Fire of 1776, the frequency and severity of the fires was similar to the pre-war years. In 1777, for example, the City had five blazes, two were discovered early and amounted to little damage. The department’s response to the other three fires confined each fire to one structure. (The damage number in the graph above is the number of houses or house-size buildings, such as stables, destroyed.)

The damage to houses in the large fire of 1778 was literally off the charts (64+) and when added to the other fires that year was about 70 houses. This does not include any warehouses or stores, which are accounted for separately in Appendix #27. The frequency and severity of fires in later years again ‘regressed to the mean’ of the pre-war City. The effectiveness of the fire department in those years seems to indicate that it was comparable in firefighters, training, equipment, and motivation as it had been before the war. See below for references.