Chapter 2. The Demon Of Fire Invades The Stricken City

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_ CHAPTER II. The Demon of Fire Invades the Stricken City.

The terrors of the earthquake are momentary. One fierce, levelling shock and usually all is over. The torment within the earth has passed on and the awakened forces of the earth's crust sink into rest again, after having shaken the surface for many leagues. Rarely does the dread agent of ruin leave behind it such a terrible follower to complete its work as was the case in the doomed city of San Francisco. All seemed to lead towards such a carnival of ruin as the earth has rarely seen. The demon of fire followed close upon the heels of the unseen fiend of the earth's hidden caverns, and ran red-handed through the metropolis of the West, kindling a thousand unhurt buildings, while the horror-stricken people stood aghast in terror, as helpless to combat this new enemy as they were to check the ravages of the earthquake itself.

Why not quench the fire at its start with water? Alas! there was no water, and this expedient was a hopeless one. The iron mains which carried the precious fluid under the city streets were broken or injured so that no quenching streams were to be had. In some cases the engine houses had been so damaged that the fire-fighting apparatus could not be taken out, though even if it had it would have been useless. A sweeping conflagration and not an ounce of water to throw upon it! The situation of the people was a maddening one. They were forced helplessly and hopelessly to gaze upon the destruction of their all, and it is no marvel if many of them grew frantic and lost their reason at the sight. Thousands gathered and looked on in blank and pitiful misery, their strong hands, their iron wills of no avail, while the red-lipped fire devoured the hopes of their lives.

In a dozen, a hundred, places the flames shot up redly. Huge, strong buildings which the earthquake had spared fell an unresisting prey to the flames. The great, iron-bound, towering Spreckles building, a steeple-like structure, of eighteen stories in height, the tallest skyscraper in the city, had resisted the earthquake and remained proudly erect. But now the flames gathered round and assailed it. From both sides came their attack. A broad district near by, containing many large hotels and lodging houses, was being fiercely burnt out, and soon the windows of the lofty building cracked and splintered, the flames shot triumphantly within, and almost in an instant the vast interior was a seething furnace, the wild flames rushing and leaping within until only the blackened walls remained.

 

THE RESISTLESS MARCH OF THE FLAMES.

This was the region of the newspaper offices, and they quickly succumbed. The Examiner, standing across Third Street from Spreckles, collapsed from the earthquake shock. A flimsy edifice, it had long been looked upon as dangerous. Another building in the rear of this alone resisted both flames and smoke. Across Market Street from the Examiner stood the Chronicle building, a dozen stories high. Firmly built, it had borne the earthquake assault unharmed, but the flames were an enemy against which it had no defense, and it was quickly added to the victims of the fire-fiend.

Farther down Market Street, the chief business thoroughfare of the city, stood that great caravansary, the Palace Hotel, which for thirty years had been a favorite hostelry, housing the bulk of the visitors to the Californian metropolis. Its time had come. Doom hovered over it. Its guests had fled in good season, as they saw the irresistible approach of the conquering flames. Soon it was ablaze; quickly from every window of its broad front the tongues of flame curled hotly in the air; it became a thrice-heated furnace, like so many of the neighboring structures, adding its quota to the vast cloud of smoke that hung over the burning city, and rapidly sinking in red ruin to the earth.

All day Wednesday the fire spread unchecked, all efforts to stay its devouring fury proving futile. In the business section of the city everything was in ruins. Not a business house was left standing. Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames swept to ruin that queen city of the Great Lakes.

When night fell and the sun withdrew his beams the spectacle was one at once magnificent and awe-inspiring. The city resembled one vast blazing furnace. Looking over it from a high hill in the western section, the flames could be seen ascending skyward for miles upon miles, while in the midst of the red spirals of flame could be seen at intervals the black skeletons and falling towers of doomed buildings. Above all this hung a dense pall of smoke, showing lurid where the flames were reflected from its dark and threatening surface. To those nearer the scene presented many pathetic and distressing features, the fire glare throwing weird shadows over the worn and panic-stricken faces of the woe-begone fugitives, driven from their homes and wandering the streets in helpless misery. Many of them lay sleeping on piles of blankets and clothing which they had brought with them, or on the hard sidewalks, or the grass of the open parks.

 

THE CARE OF THE WOUNDED.

Through all the streets ambulances and express wagons were hurrying, carrying dead and injured to morgues and hospitals. But these refuges for the wounded or receptacles for the dead were no safer than the remainder of the city. In the morgue at the Hall of Justice fifty bodies lay, but the approach of the flames rendered it necessary to remove to Jackson Square these mutilated remnants of what had once been men. Hospitals were also abandoned at intervals, doctors and nurses being forced to remove their patients in haste from the approaching flames.

There is an open park opposite City Hall. Here the Board of Supervisors met, and, with fifty substantial citizens who joined them, formed a Committee of Safety, to take in hand the direction of affairs and to seek safe quarters for the dying and the dead. Strangely enough, Mechanics' Pavilion, opposite City Hall, had escaped injury from the earthquake, though it was only a wooden building. It had the largest floor in San Francisco, and was pressed into service at once. The police and the troops, working in harmony together, passed the word that the dead and injured should be brought there, the hospitals and morgue having become choked, and the order was quickly obeyed, until about 400 of the hurt, many of them terribly mangled, were laid in improvised cots, attended by all the physicians and trained nurses who could be obtained.

The corpses were much fewer, the workers being too busy in fighting the fire and caring for the wounded to give time and attention as yet to the dead. But one of the first wagons to arrive brought a whole family--father, mother and three children--all dead except the baby, which had a broken arm and a terrible cut across the forehead. They had been dragged from the ruins of their house on the water front. A large consignment of bodies, mostly of workingmen, came from a small hotel on Eddy Street, through the roof of which the upper part of a tall building next door had fallen, crushing all below.

 

FIRE ATTACKS THE MINT.

To return to the story of the conflagration, the escape of the United States Mint was one of the most remarkable incidents. Within the vaults of this fine structure was the vast sum of $300,000,000 in gold and silver coin and a value of $8,000,000 in bullion, and toward this mighty sum of wealth the flames swept on all sides, as if eager to add the reservoir of the precious metals to their spoils. The Mint building passed through the earthquake with little damage, though its big smokestacks were badly shaken. The fire seemed bent on making it its prey, every building around it being burned to the ground, and it remaining the only building for blocks that escaped destruction.

Its safety was due to the energy and activity of its employees. Superintendent Leach reached it shortly after the shock and found a number of men already there, whom he stationed at points of vantage from roof to basement. The fire apparatus of the Mint was brought into service and help given by the fire department, and after a period of strenuous labor the flames were driven back. The peril for a time was critical, the windows on Mint Avenue taking fire and also those on the rear three stories, and the flames for a time pouring in and driving back the workers. The roof also caught fire, but the men within fought like Titans, and efficient aid was given by a squad of soldiers sent to them. In the end the fire fiend was vanquished, though considerable damage was done to the adjusting rooms and the refinery, while the heavy stone cornice on that side of the building was destroyed. The total loss to the Mint was later estimated at $15,000.

Late on Wednesday evening the fire front crept close up to Mechanics' Pavilion, where a corps of fifty physicians and numerous nurses were active in the work of relief to the wounded. Ambulances and automobiles were busy unloading new patients rescued from the ruins when word came that the building would have to be vacated in haste. Every available vehicle was at once pressed into service and the patients removed as rapidly as possible, being taken to hospitals and private houses in the safer parts of the city. Hardly had the last of the injured been carried through the door when the roof was seen to be in a blaze, and shortly afterward the whole building burst into a whirlwind of flame.

At midnight the fire was raging and roaring with unslacked rage, and at dawn of Thursday its fury was undiminished. The work of destruction was already immense. In much of the Hayes Valley district, south of McAllister and north of Market Street, the destruction was complete. From the Mechanics' Pavilion and St. Nicholas Hotel opposite down to Oakland Ferry the journey was heartrending, the scene appalling. On each side was ruin, nothing but ruin, and hillocks of masonry and heaps of rubbish of every description filled to its middle the city's greatest thoroughfare.

Across an alley from the Post Office stood the Grant Building, one of the headquarters of the army. Of this only the smoke-darkened walls were left. On Market Street opposite this building the beautiful front of the Hibernian Savings Bank, the favorite institution of the middle and poorer classes, presented a hideous aspect of ruin. At eleven o'clock of Wednesday night the north side of Market Street stood untouched, and hopes were entertained that the great Flood, Crocker, Phelan and other buildings would be spared, but the hunger of the fire fiend was not yet satiated, and the following day these proud structures had only their blackened ruins to show. On both sides of Market Street, down to the ferry, the tale was the same. The handsome and gigantic St. Francis Hotel, on Powell Street, fronting on Union Square, was left a ruined shell. This was one of the lofty steel structures that bore unharmed the earthquake shock, but quickly succumbed to the flames. Among the other skyscrapers north of Market Street that perished were the fourteen-story Merchants' Exchange, and the great Mills Building, occupying almost an entire block.

One section of the city that went without pity, as it had long stood with reprobation, was that group of disreputable buildings known as Chinatown, the place of residence of many thousands of Celestials. The flames made their way unchecked in this direction, and by noon on Thursday the whole section was a raging furnace, the denizens escaping with what they could carry of their simple possessions. On the farther western side the flames cut a wide swath to Van Ness Avenue, a wide thoroughfare, at which it was hoped the march of the fire in this direction might be checked, especially as the water mains here furnished a weak supply.

In the Missouri district, to the south of Market Street, the zone of ruin extended westward toward the extreme southern portion, but was checked at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets by the wholesale use of dynamite. At this point were located the Southern Pacific Hospital, the St. Francis Hospital and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In order to save these institutions, buildings were blown up all around them, and by noon the danger was averted. It later became necessary to destroy the Southern Pacific Hospital with dynamite, the patients having been removed to places of safety.

 

THE PALACES ON NOB'S HILL.

In the centre of San Francisco rises the aristocratic elevation known as Nob's Hill, on which the early millionaires built their homes, and on which stood the city's most palatial residences. It ascends so abruptly from Kearney Street that it is inaccessible to any kind of vehicle, the slope being at any angle little short of forty-five degrees. It is as steep on the south side, and the only approach by carriage is from the north. To this hill is due the pioneer cable railway, built in the early '70's.

Here the "big four" of the railroad magnates--Stanford, Hopkins, Huntington and Crocker--had put millions in their mansions, the Mark Hopkins residence being said to have cost $2,500,000. These men are all dead, and the last named edifice has been converted into the Hopkins Art Institute, and at the time of the fire was well filled with costly art treasures. The Stanford Museum, which also contains valuable objects of art, is now the property of the Leland Stanford University. The Flood mansion, which cost more than $1,000,000, was one of the showy residences on this hill, west of it being the Huntington home and farther west the Crocker residence, with its broad lawns and magnificent stables. Many other beautiful and costly houses stood on this hill, and opposite the Stanford and Hopkins edifices the great Fairmount Hotel had for two years past been in process of construction and was practically completed. On the northeastern slope of this hill stood the famous Chinatown, through which it was necessary to pass to ascend Nob's Hill from the principal section of the wholesale district.

This region of palaces was the next to fall a prey to the insatiable flames. Early Thursday morning a change in the wind sent the fire westward, eating its way from the water front north of Market Street toward Nob's Hill. Steadily but surely it climbed the slope, and the Stanford and Hopkins edifices fell victims to its fury. Others of the palaces of millionairedom followed. Huge clouds of smoke enveloped the beautiful white stone Fairmount Hotel, and there was a general feeling of horror when this magnificent structure seemed doomed. To it the Committee of Safety had retreated, but the flames from the burning buildings opposite reached it, and the committee once more migrated in search of safe quarters. Fortunately, it escaped with little damage, its walls remaining intact and much of the interior being left in a state of preservation, warranting its managers to offer space within it to the committees whose aim it was to help the homeless or to store supplies. Some of the woodwork of the building was destroyed by the fire, but the structure was in such good condition that work on it was quickly resumed, with the statement that its completion would not be delayed more than three months beyond the date set, which was November, 1906.

In the district extending northwestwardly from Kearney Street and Montgomery Avenue, untouched during the first day, the fire spread freely on the second. This district embraces the Latin quarter, peopled by various nationalities, the houses being of the flimsiest construction. Once it had gained a foothold there, the fire swept onward as though making its way through a forest in the driest summer season.

An apochryphal incident is told of the fire in this quarter, which may be repeated as one example of the fables set afloat. It is stated that water to fight the fire here was sadly lacking, the only available supply being from an old well. At a critical moment the pump sucked dry, the water in the well being exhausted. The residents were not yet conquered. Some of them threw open their cellar doors and, calling for assistance, began to roll out barrels of red wine. Barrel after barrel appeared, until fully five hundred gallons were ready for use. Then the barrel heads were smashed in and the bucket brigade turned from water to wine. Sacks were dipped in the wine and used for fighting the fire. Beds were stripped of their blankets and these soaked in the wine and hung over exposed portions of the cottages, while men on the roofs drenched the shingles and sides of the houses with wine. The postscript to this queer story is that the wine won and the firefighters saved their homes. The story is worth retelling, though it may be added that wine, if it contained much alcohol, would serve as a feeder rather than as an extinguisher of flame.

A striking description of the aspect of the city on that terrible Wednesday is told by Jerome B. Clark, whose home was in Berkeley, but who did business in San Francisco. He left for the city early Wednesday morning, after a minor shake-up at home, which he thus describes:

 

A VIVID FIRE PICTURE.

"I was asleep and was awakened by the house rocking. With the exception of water in vases, and milk in pans being spilled, and one of our chimneys badly cracked, we escaped with nothing but a bad scare, but I can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying experience to feel that old house rocking, jolting and jumping under us, with the most terrible roar, dull, deep and nerve-racking. It calmed down after that and we went back to bed, only to get up at six o'clock to find that neighbors had suffered by having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked around, tiles knocked out of grates and scarcely a chimney left standing. We thought that we had had the worst of it, so I started over to the city as usual, reaching there about eight o'clock, and it is just impossible to describe the scenes that met my eyes.

"In every direction from the ferry building flames were seething, and as I stood there, a five-story building half a block away fell with a crash, and the flames swept clear across Market Street and caught a new fireproof building recently erected. The streets in places had sunk three or four feet, in others great humps had appeared four or five feet high. The street car tracks were bent and twisted out of shape. Electric wires lay in every direction. Streets on all sides were filled with brick and mortar, buildings either completely collapsed or brick fronts had just dropped completely off. Wagons with horses hitched to them, drivers and all, lying on the streets, all dead, struck and killed by the falling bricks, these mostly the wagons of the produce dealers, who do the greater part of their work at that hour of the morning. Warehouses and large wholesale houses of all descriptions either down, or walls bulging, or else twisted, buildings moved bodily two or three feet out of a line and still standing with walls all cracked.

"The Call building, a twelve-story skyscraper, stood, and looked all right at first glance, but had moved at the base two feet at one end out into the sidewalk, and the elevators refused to work, all the interior being just twisted out of shape. It afterward burned as I watched it. I worked my way in from the ferry, climbing over piles of brick and mortar and keeping to the centre of the street and avoiding live wires that lay around on every side, trying to get to my office. I got within two blocks of it and was stopped by the police on account of falling walls. I saw that the block in which I was located was on fire, and seemed doomed, so turned back and went up into the city.

"Not knowing San Francisco, you would not know the various buildings, but fires were blazing in all directions, and all of the finest and best of the office and business buildings were either burning or surrounded. They pumped water from the bay, but the fire was soon too far away from the water front to make any efforts in this direction of much avail. The water mains had been broken by the earthquake, and so there was no supply for the fire engines and they were helpless. The only way out of it was to dynamite, and I saw some of the finest and most beautiful buildings in the city, new modern palaces, blown to atoms. First they blew up one or two buildings at a time. Finding that of no avail, they took half a block; that was no use; then they took a block; but in spite of them all the fire kept on spreading.

"The City Hall, which, while old, was quite a magnificent building, occupying a large square block of land, was completely wrecked by the earthquake, and to look upon reminded one of the pictures of ancient ruins of Rome or Athens. The Palace Hotel stood for a long time after everything near it had gone, but finally went up in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built frame buildings. The former lost some of the outside shell, but the frame stood all right, and in some cases after fire had eaten them all to pieces, the steel skeleton, although badly twisted and warped, still stood.

"When I finally left the city, it was all in flames as far as Eighth Street, which is about a mile and a quarter or half from the water front. I had to walk at least two miles around in order to get to the ferry building, and when I got there you could see no buildings standing in any direction. Nearly all the docks caved in or sheds were knocked down, and all the streets along the water front were a mass of seams, upheavals and depressions, car tracks twisted in all shapes. Cars that had stood on sidings were all in ashes and still burning."

Wednesday's conflagration continued unabated throughout Thursday, and it was not until late on Friday that the fire-fighters got it safely under control. They worked like heroes, struggling almost without rest, keeping up the nearly hopeless conflict until they fairly fell in their tracks from fatigue. Handicapped by the lack of water, they in one case brought it from the bay through lines of hose well on to a mile in length. Yet despite all they could do block after block of San Francisco's greatest buildings succumbed to the flames and sank in red ruin before their eyes.

 

THE LANDMARKS CONSUMED.

On all sides famous landmarks yielded to the fury of the flames. For three miles along the water front the ground was swept clean of buildings, the blackened beams and great skeletons of factories, warehouses and business edifices standing silhouetted against a background of flames, while the whole commercial and office quarter of Market Street suffered a similar fate. We may briefly instance some of these victims of the flames.

Among them were the Occidental Hotel, on Montgomery Street, for years the headquarters for army officers; the old Lick House, built by James Lick, the philanthropist; the California Hotel and Theatre, on Bush Street; and of theatres, the Orpheum, the Alcazar, the Majestic, the Columbia, the Magic, the Central, Fisher's and the Grand Opera House, on Missouri Street, where the Conried Opera Company had just opened for a two weeks' opera season.

The banks that fell were numerous, including the Nevada National Bank, the California, the Canadian Bank of Commerce, the First National, the London and San Francisco, the London, Paris and American, the Bank of British North America, the German-American Savings Bank and the Crocker-Woolworth Bank building. A large number of splendid apartment houses were also destroyed, and the tide of destruction swept away a host of noble buildings far too numerous to mention.

At Post Street and Grant Avenue stood the Bohemian Club, one of the widest known social organizations in the world. Its membership included many men famous in art, literature and commerce. Its rooms were decorated with the works of members, many of whose names are known wherever paintings are discussed and many of them priceless in their associations. Most of these were saved. There were on special exhibition in the "Jinks" room of the Bohemian Club a dozen paintings by old masters, including a Rembrandt, a Diaz, a Murillo and others, probably worth $100,000. These paintings were lost with the building, which went down in the flames.

One of the great losses was that of St. Ignatius' Church and College, at Van Ness Avenue and Hayes Street, the greatest Jesuitical institution in the west, which cost a couple of millions of dollars. The Merchants' Exchange building, a twelve-story structure, eleven of whose floors were occupied as offices by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, was added to the sum of losses.

 

THE FIRE UNDER CONTROL.

For three long days the terrible fire fiend kept up his work, and the fight went on until late on Friday, when the sweep of the flames was at length checked and the fire brought under control. The principal agent in this victory was dynamite, which was freely used. To its work a separate chapter will be devoted. When at length the area of the conflagration was limited the wealthiest part of the city lay in embers and ashes, one of the principal localities to escape being Pacific Heights, a mile west from Nob's Hill, on which stood many costly homes of recent construction.

On Friday night the fire that had worked its way from Nob's Hill to North Beach Street, sweeping that quarter clean of buildings, veered before a fierce wind and made its way southerly to the great sea wall, with its docks and grain warehouses. The flames reached the tanks of the San Francisco Gas Company, which had previously been pumped out, and on Saturday morning the grain sheds on the water front, about half a mile north of the ferry station, were fiercely burning. But the fire here was confined to a small area, and, with the work of fireboats in the bay and of the firemen on shore, who used salt water pumped into their engines, it was prevented from reaching the ferry building and the docks in that vicinity.

The buildings on a high slope between Van Ness and Polk Streets, Union and Filbert Streets, were blazing fiercely, fanned by a high wind, but the blocks here were so thinly settled that the fire had little chance of spreading widely from this point. In fact, it was at length practically under control, and the entire western addition of the city west of Van Ness Avenue was safe from the flames. The great struggle was fairly at an end, and the brave force of workers were at length given some respite from their strenuous labors.

During the height of the struggle and the days of exhaustion and depression that followed, exaggerated accounts of the losses and of the area swept by the flames were current, some estimate making the extent of the fire fifteen square miles out of the total of twenty-five square miles of the city's area. It was not until Friday, the 27th, that an official survey of the burned district, made by City Surveyor Woodward, was completed, and the total area burned over found to be 2,500 acres, a trifle less than four square miles. This, however, embraced the heart of the business section and many of the principal residence streets, much of the saved area being occupied by the dwellings of the poorer people, so that the money loss was immensely greater than the percentage of ground burned over would indicate. _

Read next: Chapter 3. Fighting The Flames With Dynamite

Read previous: Chapter 1. San Francisco And Its Terrific Earthquake

Table of content of San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire


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