This chapter outlines the nature of the nineteenth-century urban fire problem around the Pacific Rim, considers why it diminished in significance in some places but not others, and examines the economic costs of recurrent fire risk and damage. Before the nineteenth century, most of the Pacific Rim's major cities were Asian ones. During the 1850s the total population of the Pacific Rim states of California, Oregon, and Washington increased from 106,000 to 444,000, and that of the colony of Victoria rose from 76,000 to 540,000. City governments attempted to bring this about by tightening up fire regulations for new construction and improving infrastructure. The Pacific Rim is a useful arena for studying such problems, because during the nineteenth century several cities grew rapidly and shared the same vulnerability to fire disasters. The chapter concludes with the implications of these findings for the general issue of how well societies can cope with city growth.