{"id":52823,"date":"2020-07-07T18:15:35","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T00:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bayfield-author-draws-eerie-similarities-between-1918-and-2020\/"},"modified":"2020-07-08T00:15:35","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T00:15:35","slug":"bayfield-author-draws-eerie-similarities-between-1918-and-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bayfield-author-draws-eerie-similarities-between-1918-and-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Bayfield author draws \u2018eerie\u2019 similarities between 1918 and 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Bayfield
Bayfield resident Curt Brown\u2019s book, \u201cMinnesota 1918: When Flu, Fire and War Ravaged the State.\u201d<\/span>Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Curt Brown, author of \u201cMinnesota 1918: When Flu, Fire and War Ravaged the State,\u201d has spent most of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic with his family in his home near the Pine River in Bayfield.<\/p>\n

When the book was published in 2018, Brown drew similarities between the Minnesota fire and the 416 Fire during book talks<\/a> at the Pine River Library. Two years later, the similarities are even closer: a pandemic, the summer season\u2019s first wildfires and social conflicts painting \u201cwarlike scenes\u201d across the U.S., he said. For Brown, the lessons from the past aren\u2019t all about calamity \u2013 they are about resiliency, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you spend a lot of time writing a book about this combination of a pandemic and fires from 102 years ago, then you see Durango having fires out of control in past years \u2026 history repeats itself,\u201d said Brown, who spent his career writing for the Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/em>. \u201cWe can certainly learn things from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Curt
Curt Brown says there are a lot of parallels between his book, &#x201c;Minnesota 1918: When Flu, Fire and War Ravaged the State,&#x201d; to the current times, including the coronavirus pandemic, the 416 Fire and racial unrest.<\/span>Courtesy of Tom Wallace\/Star Tribune<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cMinnesota 1918\u201d chronicles a wildfire, sparked by a train, that killed 453 people. Escapees were housed together. There, they were at increased risk for contracting the influenza virus spreading around the world, in part, because of soldiers traveling to fight World War I.<\/p>\n

Most experts say the influenza virus likely originated in Kansas, but it erroneously became known as the Spanish flu, Brown said. There were laws censoring what newspapers could say, and anything that could hurt the war morale was illegal. Spain, neutral in the war, did not have the same censoring laws and began publishing stories of thousands of deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of like what the president calls the China virus \u2026 it\u2019s always blame someone else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The 1918 and 2020 pandemics have some key differences. In 1918, people did not know what a virus was. They thought it was a bacterial infection. Communities did not have high-quality protective equipment or intensive care units.<\/p>\n

The death tolls were higher. About 675,000 Americans died of the flu or secondary illnesses related to the flu, such as pneumonia, in 1918. Compared with today\u2019s population, that would be about 2 million people, Brown said.<\/p>\n

In La Plata County, 200 people died<\/a> of the flu in 1918 with an approximate population of 11,000. That equals about 1,000 people today, considering the county\u2019s population of about 56,200 people.<\/p>\n

\"A
A massive fire in Cloquet, Minnesota, in October 1918 left the town in ruins. Dry conditions and sparks from the railroad caused the fire. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of Minnesota.<\/span>Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

But there were also some similarities. The anti-mask leagues of the 20th century reflect the anti-mask protests in the 21st. First responders in fire-prone areas like Southwest Colorado are battling small wildfires in a dry season on top of the coronavirus. Brown found letters from 1918 in which people talked about business closures in response to the influenza. They are \u201ceerily similar\u201d to the digital messages about closures in 2020, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe comparison to the war is this internal George Floyd reckoning. Clearly, there are warlike scenes across America, especially back in my former state of Minnesota,\u201d Brown said. \u201c(It) isn\u2019t the same as World War I, but it\u2019s kind of a third prong of disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials minimized the severity of the influenza virus in 1918, partially because censorship laws restricted them from saying otherwise. Early in the current crisis, officials from the White House all the way down said the pandemic would go away with warm weather; we\u2019d be back to normal soon, Brown said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s scary to think \u2026 if it runs in three waves like it did 102 years ago, that\u2019s pretty dire,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, my book is full of stories of people who got through this.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1918, letters and journals described how families, couples and communities dealt with the crises of their time. Brown said he feels optimistic reading those documents because he sees how resilient people were.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey somehow got through it and charged on. That gives me some hope that we can get through this, too,\u201d Brown said. \u201cOne day these will all be memories. \u2026 We just have to let history play out.\u201d<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018History, of course, repeats itself,\u2019 says Curt Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[731,639,685,28,198,29,668],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield","tag-book","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-history","tag-newsletter","tag-public-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52823"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}