On the web search, "Paradise" seems to have a constant low-level value probably from people searching about the afterlife, whereas "Lahaina" is only searches about the town.

I compiled the "search interest" (web) data for 17 days starting on the day of the incident, as that brings us up to the latest available data for Lahaina searches, then compared that to 20 days before the start.

Paradise: 47.4 after, 6.4 before, 41.1 difference
Lahaina: 40.8 after, 1.4 before, 39.4 difference

That seems pretty insubstantial a difference to me.

Same calculation for news doesn't adjust nearly as much, and there Paradise got a bit more of a bump

Paradise: 30.8 after, 2.4 before, 28.5 difference
Lahaina: 25.2 after, 0.4 before, 24.8 difference

The lesson of the Peshtigo fire is that to be remembered more than any competing fires that happen the same day you need a catchy children's song.

Yes, I made the mistake of teaching the very loud children that very song this weekend.

I am not seeing the version that I learned online, where the second verse goes:

One dark night, when safe in bed was I,
Mrs. O'Leary put the shed in the lantern.
When the kick cowed it over,
she eyed her wink and said,
"It'll be a time hot, in the town old, tonight. FIRE FIRE FIRE!"

My dad being from rural Wisconsin (though a fair bit south and west of Peshtigo) we grew up with Unfair Overshadowing of the Peshtigo Fire narrative.

The trouble is that urban fires have a spectacular quality in collective memory that keeps the terror at bay, like fireworks over the city skyline, whereas the Peshtigo fire is just the purest stuff of nightmares and, furthermore, "Peshtigo" sounds waaaaayyy too much like "Wendigo" for comfort. Bad shit all around. No one wrote cute songs about the Peshtigo fire for obvious reasons.

There was a book about some fire tornado or something that Megan recommended here, and I bought it and started it, and remembered how dainty and brittle my heart is, and unequipped for reading such things.

Mossy, your Kulturkritik is complicated by the fact that literally everyone in California other than us has vacationed in Hawaii in the past 12 months, and so Hawaii has high salience for Californians at the moment. I don't entirely understand it.

I had been given to understand that there are Americans dwelling in places other than California and Hawaii?

And yet, you posted about California and Hawaii! What am I missing?

Glenn Frey and Don Henley with the double-play

You can leave it all behind
Sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did
So many years ago

They even brought a neon sign
"Jesus is coming"
Brought the white man's burden down
Brought the white man's reign

Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here

We satisfy our endless needs
And justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny
And in the name of God

And you can see them there
On Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about
What it's like up there

They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise
Kiss it goodbye

The 1910 Great Burn would have given Peshtigo a run for its money on deadliness, but there were tunnels in the mountains people could use, including a train with 1,000 passengers.

Presumably Americans outside California and Hawaii are also permitted to use Google and Wikipedia?

14: not if the GOP wins the other 48 states.

I'm pretty sure Google news searches rank recent results higher because some years ago they had problems with people getting years-old results when searching for something that just happened.

Dude, why are you like this? It was a completely frivolous remark and it feels like all you ever want to do is fight and shower people with contempt. You are very much not alone in this on Unfogged, unfortunately. I was reading a thread someone linked from around 2010 and was just so struck by the unfamiliar sense that people actually liked one another. I genuinely do think I should make good on my 1000 failed threats to leave because I am part of the problem -- I snarled at that "nope" guy and he actually seems to have disappeared -- but the problem is not going to go away with me.

I am again in awe of the learned commenters here. I had never heard of the Peshtigo Fire! What a thing!

I think it's just another example of sophisticated city folk disrespecting Real America.

17: My comments were also meant totally frivolously. I didn't intend to fight or to contemn at all.

And I'm sorry I came across that way.

19: Alas, two people separated by a common habit of excessive deadpan; or, a calm guy impersonating a belligerent guy impersonating a calm guy? No worries.

18.1, 6: yeah, you do hear about it as local history, so vast erudition isn't required.

At one point I thought I heard that William Cronon was working on a book about Peshtego but last I checked it hadn't come out. That was, like, almost two decades ago.

Or Peshtigo, I guess. IIRC it gets a mention in the logging chapter of Cronon's Nature's Metropolis.

22: Cronon has been working on a book about Portage, WI, for ages. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? Or maybe he's doing both, beats me.

I've only been to Portage in Ohio.

25: To see the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent?

I've been to Portage in Ohio, but I've never portaged to me.

26: I didn't realize that was an option.

24: Probably, I'm remembering maybe one part of a wider conversation about Nature's Metropolis from 15+ years ago

36: Jim Rhodes?

They're worse than the Brownshirts, and the Communist element, and also the Night Riders, and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America.
--- Rhodes on the day before the shootings

Thanks to modern air transportation, you no longer have to carry a canoe to get past Ohio.

Also, it's quite weird that a lot of the Lahaina coverage in the local papers is repackaged national stuff. The local paper basically seems to be treating its subscriber base as a wasting asset at this point (and yet I still keep paying more for it than I do for the NYT and WaPo together; I'm either doing my part for local journalism or just not very bright).

26 Lately he's been eating candy in Mayfair.

The story of the Peshtigo fire sounds like a gritty "The Lorax" reboot.

I think those illustrations would look more like Lahaina, sadly. Dr. Seuss ended up in La Jolla and I think it really (sub)tropicalized his imaginary landscapes.

Other historical disasters: the terrible, terrible hurricane season of 1780. I was reading a monograph about Caribbean hurricanes and after detailing the wreckage on island #4 in the series, the author mentions that this was probably equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane, in case there was any remaining doubt. It seems unlikely that we'll avoid knocking this unconquered destruction-champion off the podium in the 21st century, but there's always room for hope.

I have never heard of the Peshtigo fire. On the other hand, my great-grandfather helped rebuild Campbellton, New Brunswick, after the great fire in 1910. He was a carpenter and a contractor.