The city devasted by fires

Birches are a very common tree in the nature lands along Sweden. But even though it, Umea is very well known in Sweden and other parts of the world as the City of Birches. Everywhere you walk in the city you will find them in the streets and parks. Silver birches, with its white trunk and its hanging branches, have a beautiful appearance. But the main reason of the amount of these streets is not due to their beauty. So what is the reason? If we look briefly to its history we will realize or the cause easily. Several high fires have burnt the city along the history. One of the bigger fires was in 1888, when the eastern part of the city was completely burnt again due to a fires that started in a brewery. In this fire, over 2300 of the 3000 habitants of the city became homeless. So when it was rebuilt, people tried to do it to avoid new fires. With the aim of preventing the spread of fires from one building to the other wide avenues where constructed and silver birch was planted in all of them. Nowadays, the n umber of birches in the city centre is more that 3000!