The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire Part 3

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 a.s.sistance, 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 a.s.sure 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. .h.i.tched 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 skysc.r.a.per, 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 ma.s.s after ma.s.s 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 impa.s.sable. 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 ma.s.s 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 succ.u.mbed 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociations. 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 inst.i.tution 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al localities to escape being Pacific Heights, a mile west from n.o.b's Hill, on which stood many costly homes of recent construction.

On Friday night the fire that had worked its way from n.o.b'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 Sat.u.r.day 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 princ.i.p.al 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.

CHAPTER III.

Fighting the Flames With Dynamite.

Shaken by earthquake, swept by flames, the water supply cut off by the breaking of the mains, the authorities of the doomed city for a time stood appalled. What could be done to stay the fierce march of the flames which were sweeping resistlessly over palace and hovel alike, over stately hall and miserable hut? Water was not to be had; what was to take its place? Nothing remained but to meet ruin with ruin, to make a desert in the path of the fire and thus seek to stop its march. They had dynamite, gunpowder and other explosives, and in the frightful exigency there was nothing else to be used. Only for a brief interval did the authorities yield to the general feeling of helplessness. Then they aroused themselves to the demands of the occasion and prepared to do all in the power of man in the effort to arrest the conflagration.

While the soldiers under General Funston took military charge of the city, squads of cavalry and troops of infantry patrolling the streets and guarding the sections that had not yet been touched by the flames, Mayor Schmitz and Chief of Police Dinan sprang into the breach and prepared to make a desperate charge against the platoons of the fire.

This was not all that was needed to be done. From the "Barbary Coast,"

as the resort of the vicious and criminal cla.s.ses was called, hordes of wretches poured out as soon as night fell, seeking to slip through the guards and loot stores and rob the dead in the burning section. Orders were given to the soldiers to kill all who were engaged in such work, and these orders were carried out. An a.s.sociated Press reporter saw three of these thieves shot and fatally wounded, and doubtless others of them were similarly dealt with elsewhere.

A band of fire-fighters was quickly organized by the Mayor and Chief of Police, and the devoted firemen put themselves in the face of the flames, determined to do their utmost to stay them in their course. Cut off from the use of their accustomed engines and water streams, which might have been effective if brought into play at the beginning of the struggle, there was nothing to work with but the dynamite cartridge and the gunpowder mine, and they set bravely to work to do what they could with these. On every side the roar of explosions could be heard, and the crash of falling walls came to the ear, while people were forced to leave buildings which still stood, but which it was decided must be felled. Frequently a crash of stone and brick, followed by a cloud of dust, gave warning to pedestrians that destruction was going on in the forefront of the flames, and that travel in such localities was unsafe.

FIGHTING THE FLAMES.

All through the night of Wednesday and the morning of Thursday this work went on, hopelessly but resolutely. During the following day blasts could be heard in different sections at intervals of a few minutes, and buildings not destroyed by fire were blown to atoms, but over the gaps jumped the live flames, and the disheartened fire-fighters were driven back step by step; but they continued the work with little regard for their own safety and with unflinching desperation.

One instance of the peril they ran may be given. Lieutenant Charles O. Pulis, commanding the Twenty-fourth Company of Light Artillery, had placed a heavy charge of dynamite in a building at Sixth and Jesse Streets. For some reason it did not explode, and he returned to relight the fuse, thinking it had become extinguished. While he was in the building the explosion took place, and he received injuries that seemed likely to prove fatal, his skull being fractured and several bones broken, while he was injured internally. In the early morning, when the fire reached the munic.i.p.al building on Portsmouth Square, the nurses, with the aid of soldiers, got out fifty bodies which were in the temporary morgue and a number of patients from the receiving hospital.

Just after they reached the street with their gruesome charge a building was blown up, and the flying bricks and splinters came falling upon them. The nurses fortunately escaped harm, but several of the soldiers were hurt, and had to be taken with the other patients to the out-of-doors Presidio hospital.

The Southern Pacific Hospital, at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets, was among the buildings destroyed by dynamite, the patients having been removed to places of safety, and the Linda Vista and the Pleasanton, two large family hotels on Jones Street, in the better part of the city, were also among those blown up to stay the progress of the conflagration.

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FIRE.

The fire had continued to creep onward and upward until it reached the summit of n.o.b Hill, a district of splendid residences, and threatened the handsome Fairmount Hotel, then the headquarters of the Munic.i.p.al Council, acting as a Committee of Public Safety. As day broke the flames seized upon this beautiful structure, and the Council was forced to retreat to new quarters. They finally met in the North End Police Station, on Sacramento Street, and there entered actively upon their duties of seeking to check the progress of the flames, maintain order in the city and control and direct the host of fugitives, many of whom, still in a state of semi-panic, were moving helplessly to and fro and sadly needed wise counsels and a helping hand.

The fire-fighters meanwhile kept up their indefatigable work under the direction of the Mayor and the chief of their department. The engines almost from the start had proved useless from lack of water, and were either abandoned or moved to the outlying districts, in the vain hope that the water mains might be repaired in time to permit of a final stand against the whirlwind march of the flames. The cloud of despair grew darker still as the report spread that the city's supply of dynamite had given out.

"No more dynamite! No more dynamite!" screamed a fireman as he ran up Ellis Street past the doomed Flood building at two o'clock on Friday morning, tears standing in his smoke-smirched eyes.

"No more dynamite! O G.o.d! no more dynamite! We are lost!" moaned the throng that heard his despairing words.

A NEW SUPPLY OF EXPLOSIVES.

So, at that hour, the supply of the explosive exhausted, and not a dozen streams of water being thrown in the entire fire zone, the stunned firemen and the stupefied people stood helpless with their eyes fixed in despair upon the swiftly creeping flames.