 On a mild November weekend in 1872, Boston burned down. An otherwise insignificant spark in a downtown basement turned into a firestorm. Boston s great fire reduced the city s commercial center to sixty-five acres of rubble and ranks with the Chicago Fire of 1871 as one of the country s worst. Yet Boston averted Chicago s fate of 300 dead and 100,000 homeless with the heroic defense directed by John Damrell, Boston s Fire Chief. Against all odds, he saved the city s densely-populated neighborhoods from the Chicago-scale tornado of fire. Fires in the decade after the Civil War caused more urban destruction than the war itself did. After Portland burning, then Chicago, then Boston, the nation did not need another conflagration to make the case for fire prevention. It needed leadership. It needed someone who understood firefighting technologies, fire resistant buildings, and fire safety to persuasively influence moribund state and local governments. Elevated into national prominence by the 1872 fire, Damrell launched his crusade to stop cities from burning down. His vision, energy, skill, and dedication over the next thirty years would spare 20th century urban America, and countless thousands, from the flames that terrorized his times.