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On that frigid morning of Dec. 22, 1910, the men arrived at the windowless "hog house" and were met with an overwhelming firefighting challenge. The only way to attack the fire was to hop on a 4-foot-tall loading dock covered by a rickety wooden canopy, leaving them little space to maneuver, said Bill Cosgrove, a retired Chicago firefighter who recently wrote a book about the fire titled "Chicago's Forgotten Tragedy."