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Great Fire of London: Burning down the house

We Are History

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The History of Disaster Capitalism

There were no fire brigades or fire hundreds back in those days. So people would throw buckets of water, but obviously it's been a long hot summer. People don't have running water in their houses. The wells are dry. There just wasn't a lot of water to hand. And nor was there a means to get up high to throw the water on to the roofs. It's amazing this hadn't happened before. Soon people were abandoning their homes and heading for quiet rural villages like Islington and Hackney. They hired porters or people with carts to take their belongings to safety. But do you know what happened? Surge pricing. Just like Uber.

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