As the immediate fire danger passed and people returned home, they were stunned to see the extent of the destruction. Homes, farms, businesses, and even whole towns were all gone. Many of them were left with only the clothes on their backs.

Survivors were not the only ones to witness the immediate aftermath of the firestorm. People arrived from unaffected areas like Duluth as spectators, while others came to document the ruins or provide assistance. One of the first visitors was Major Weaver of the Minnesota Home Guard based in Duluth. He requested additional help from the National Guard, and they soon set up emergency headquarters in Cloquet to protect property, assist refugees, and conduct search and rescue operations.

The destruction of the fire could have been worse, but survivors returned to their homes in great need. They had been left without shelter, food, clothing, or bedding. To meet these basic needs, the Red Cross set up headquarters to offer assistance. Both the Home Guard and the National Guard helped by locating additional survivors, burying the dead, and transporting people using the Motor Corps. The second photograph below shows one of the assistance stations set up in the burned out ruins of city buildings in Cloquet, where the Guard distributed free lunches and shared information about employment opportunities.

Those who escaped the fire by train to Duluth and Superior were temporarily housed in public buildings and private residences of those cities. The new Duluth Armory, built 1915 to house Duluth's National Guard and Home Guard units, became the headquarters for fire survivor relief. American Red Cross units from Duluth and Superior set up an emergency hospital there and arranged for doctors and nurses to help the refugees. Red Cross volunteers also provided hot meals, distributed supplies, and recorded the names of survivors to reunite families.

“New Armory” postcard, c. 1920. Duluth Public Library.

Survivors in need of critical medical treatment for their burns or smoke inhalation were sent to local hospitals in Duluth and Superior. Saima Anttila Lumppio and her sister, who had been badly burned by fiery hay while taking shelter in a ditch, went to Duluth’s St. Luke’s Hospital to treat the “gallon-size blisters” on their legs and torsos. They stayed at the hospital for five months.

Communities around the areas affected by the fires and beyond immediately offered support. Some provided places to stay as well as basic food and supplies. Others contributed funds to help their neighbors recover from their staggering losses. The claims ledger below lists the names of people pledging specific amounts of money to support their neighbor, P.C. Milvahill, and his family, who lost everything.

A week after the fires, the newly established Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission took over the temporary relief systems set up by the Red Cross and the military units. The Commission organized the next phase of rebuilding and supporting survivors. With winter coming and thousands of refugees without homes, they knew how important it was to rebuild as soon as possible. Sometimes they cleaned up the rubble first, but other times they rebuilt among the ruins.

The photographs below of ruins in Cloquet also show evidence of clean up and rebuilding, including canvas tents and temporary wooden shacks.

Sheltering the refugees became a main priority of the Fire Relief Commission. Small families who lost their houses received building materials for a 12 ft. by 16 ft. home, while larger families could build a 12 ft. by 20 ft. home. The surviving sawmills provided free lumber to their employees for these shelters. Other families petitioned the Commission for building supplies distributed by the Red Cross. Although the “fire shacks” were thin, covered in tar paper, with no insulation, they provided a place for residents to start the rebuilding process. One such structure is being built in the picture below.

Most families had no choice but to rebuild on the land they already owned. The painting below depicts the first Pera family home in Thomson Township, built in 1900 but destroyed by the 1918 forest fire. Also pictured is a photograph of the Pera family's second home, rebuilt after the fire.

Miraculously, not all of Cloquet’s industrial companies were destroyed. The mills and factories of the Cloquet Lumber Company, the Northwest Paper Mill, the Johnson-Wentworth Lumber Mill, and the toothpick factory were still standing. After the fires, the managers of these companies realized the best way to help their communities was to restore the jobs of all their employees. They asked their workers to return shortly after the fires, and they soon started sawing logs, supplying lumber, developing new wood products, feeding their neighbors, and rebuilding the city.

Almost immediately, people began to wonder what caused such a disastrous firestorm. They identified and debated various reasons for the fire, including many of the fire conditions previously mentioned in this exhibit. Others claimed it was an “act of God” with no explanation.

The State Forester of 1918, William T. Cox, included an analysis of the disaster in his annual report. He disputed the claim that the fires were a supernatural event or something mysterious and unavoidable. Instead, he pointed out several of the obvious causes and claimed that with a larger and better trained force of patrolmen, he could have been more effective at preventing them.

Read Cox's full report below:

"The Recent Forest Fires" in the Annual Report of the State Forestry Board of Minnesota For the Year 1918 by State Forester William T. Cox, Nov. 1918

Even if the fires were sheer coincidence, everyone could see that the railroads were at least partially responsible, because their trains provided the literal spark that ignited the blazes of the fall. As early as 1919, both white and Ojibwe fire survivors started to bring lawsuits against the railroads. In September 1920, the district court in Duluth decided that the fire that destroyed Cloquet was in fact caused by the Great Northern Railroad, and fire survivors began to hope they might receive some money.

But the railroads refused to pay the claims and brought the cases to the Supreme Court, looking for a reversal. By 1921, the Railroad Administration offered a settlement to pay 50% of the claims made by those who won their court cases, and 40% of the claims that had not yet been tried in court. Some survivors accepted the settlement as better than nothing, but others fought for full compensation. Fire survivor and well-known speaker Anna Dickie Oleson made this speech before Congress, testifying on behalf of her neighbors:

Unfortunately, even this speech did not convince members of Congress to make the railroads pay at that time. But eventually, after years of hard work, President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally signed a bill to give all fire survivors the rest of the money they were owed in 1935, seventeen years after the fires.

To this day, the Cloquet-Moose Lake Fires of 1918 remain the state’s worst natural disaster in loss of life as well as property destruction. Although much has changed since 1918, the stories of tragedy, resistance, survival, and rebuilding are timeless. They inspire us to come together in the face of any future disasters in our communities.

And we should never forget that forest fires remain a threat when conditions are right, as Smokey the Bear always says:

Learn more about this exhibit and find a list of resources on this topic using the page link below.