- [Narrator] The fire had burned a path of destruction four miles long and almost a mile wide.

It had mowed down most everything in its way, creating an open vista from the north side all the way to the south.

- [Sarah] The city was a landscape of utter devastation, really total carnage.

So much of the city had burned away and turned into ash and to dust and was gone.

So, it was this flat leveled, frightening landscape.

- You're seeing rubble in the ground.

You're seeing remnants of things that are melted in perverse and weird ways.

- And now you don't have a street address.

There's no street signs in the city.

It's a strange place.

People wandered around.

They didn't know where they were in the ruins.

It's ghost city, you know.

There's no landmarks.

It was an awful thing - [Narrator] A third of Chicago's 300,000 citizens were homeless.

Survivors, desperate for a blanket and a meal, took shelter in churches and schools.

For families who'd been separated during the fire, a frantic search began for lost loved ones.

- So, people found each other by going to landmarks.

People find each other by putting ads in the newspapers.

Or maybe you never find them because they're dead.

Not everybody gets reunited.

- [Narrator] 120 bodies were recovered, but an estimated 300 relatives, friends, and neighbors had died.

- I think they under counted.

Because a lot of people were just vaporized by the fire or fell off the bridge into the water or drowned in the lake, or people just disappeared.

- [Narrator] Fewer than a dozen buildings survived the path of the inferno between the river and Lincoln Park.

While the fire had destroyed pumps and engines inside the waterworks, the hulking exteriors were undamaged.

They would become enduring symbols of civic pride.

A few north side homes were filled with smoke but otherwise unscathed.

Officer Richard Bellinger was one of the lucky few.

- Was it saved by the extraordinary means of cider?

Probably not.

But I think a good deal of enterprise and possibly the luck of winds and circumstance saved the house.

- [Narrator] On the south side, the cottage that Joseph Hudlin had built with his own hands was spared.

He and his wife, Anna Elizabeth, opened their home to five families who had lost theirs.

- They looked out and saw Blacks and whites in need of help.

And the color of one's skin didn't affect them.

This colored family, which was proving itself to be heroes of the Great Fire.

And they were recognized as such by the white population.

- [Narrator] William Bross' "Tribune" called Anna Elizabeth an "angel of the fire."

Joseph's employers hung his portrait at the Board of Trade in gratitude for saving those crucial documents.