Sargans city fire in 1811
The Sargans city fire occurred on December 8, 1811 in st. Gallic Sargans .
Course and damage
The fire started shortly after 4 a.m. at the Torkelhaus in Untergasse and spread rapidly, benefiting from the wind. At 6 o'clock all of Sargans was on fire. 79 houses and 42 stables and thus almost all buildings burned down. Only the baroque parish church from 1711 and the associated chaplaincy from 1734 could be saved from the flames. There were no human lives to complain about. But 358 residents lost all their possessions and were destitute. The damage totaled 84,000 guilders . The cause of the fire could never be clarified. Negligence in heating with wood or arson were suspected.
A contemporary witness
“Dearest son! No longer to frighten you, but only to satisfy your curiosity, or rather your participation in the misfortune which Sargans had suffered on the 8th, I have now taken up my pen. It was a quarter past 4 in the morning that a fire broke out in the Christian bertschen house, which otherwise belongs to the governor Gallaty, in which 3 parties lived. As they say, a careless woman is said to have taken the wood that was put in the oven out of the oven and placed it in a chamber that evening. Probably there must have been a fire on the wood in question, and then ignited towards the morning. The moment when the air was undone, the fire spread very quickly and in half an hour it took hold of all the towns and houses in the Untergass up to the Upper Thoor. Now the wind turned quickly, igniting the adjoining haylofts from the upper thoor in the obergass. From there the stream of flames drove quickly over the poor shingles. At 6 o'clock the whole place was in full flames from one door to the other "
reconstruction
At the beginning of 1812, the reconstruction of the completely destroyed town was tackled. The rapid construction was made possible financially by the 1807 under the impression of major fire disasters and the like. a. st. founded in Walenstadt and Bad Ragaz Gallische Gebäudeversicherungsanstalt (GVA) and donations from the whole Swiss Confederation in the amount of 20,000 guilders, so that the city of Sargans only had to pay 1/4 of the damage itself. The lead was in the hands of the canton, which enforced new fire protection guidelines in building and street planning - especially so-called "fire gaps". The construction of stables in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings was also prohibited.
The plan of the mayor Johann Baptist Ludwig Gallati (1771–1844) was used. The new Sargans was built around the hill and not, as actually requested by the canton, on the plain. The new town was therefore almost on the same territory as the medieval one.