SAN FRANCISCO A ROARING FURNACE.
=Flames Spread in a Hundred Directions and the Fire
Becomes the Greatest Conflagration of Modern
Times--Entire Business Section and Fairest Part of
Residence District Wiped Off the Map--Palaces of
Millionaires Vanish in Flames or are Blown Up by
Dynamite--The Worst Day of the Catastrophe.=
Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage saw not such a sight as
presented itself to the afflicted people of San Francisco in the dim
haze of the smoke pall at the end of the second day. Ruins stark
naked, yawning at fearful angles and pinnacled into a thousand
fearsome shapes, marked the site of what was three-fourths of the
total area of the city.
Only the outer fringe of the city was left, and the flames which swept
unimpeded in a hundred directions were swiftly obliterating what
remained.
Nothing worthy of the name of building in the business district and
not more than half of the residence district had escaped. Of its
population of 400,000 nearly 300,000 were homeless.
Gutted throughout its entire magnificent financial quarters by the
swift work of thirty hours and with a black ruin covering more than
seven square miles out into her very heart, the city waited in a
stupor the inevitable struggle with privation and hardship.
All the hospitals except the free city hospital had been destroyed,
and the authorities were dragging the injured, sick and dying from
place to place for safety.
All day the fire, sweeping in a dozen directions, irresistibly
completed the desolation of the city. Nob Hill district, in which
were situated the home of Mrs. Stanford, the priceless Hopkins Art
Institute, the Fairmount hotel, a marble palace that cost millions of
dollars and homes of a hundred millionaires, was destroyed.
It was not without a struggle that Mayor Schmitz and his aides let
this, the fairest section of the city, suffer obliteration. Before
noon when the flames were marching swiftly on Nob Hill, but were still
far off, dynamite was dragged up the steep debris laden streets. For a
distance of a mile every residence on the east side of Van Ness avenue
was swept away in a vain hope to stay the progress of the fire.
After sucking dry even the sewers the fire engines were either
abandoned or moved to the outlying districts.
There was no help. Water was gone, powder was gone, hope even was a
fiction. The fair city by the Golden Gate was doomed to be blotted
from the sight of man.
The stricken people who wandered through the streets in pathetic
helplessness and sat upon their scattered belongings in cooling ruins
reached the stage of dumb, uncaring despair, the city dissolving
before their eyes had no significance longer.
There was no business quarter; it was gone. There was no longer a
hotel district, a theater route, a place where Night beckoned to
Pleasure. Everything was gone.
But a portion of the residence domain of the city remained, and the
jaws of the disaster were closing down on that with relentless
determination.
All of the city south of Market street, even down to Islais creek and
out as far as Valencia street, was a smouldering ruin. Into the
western addition and the Pacific avenue heights three broad fingers of
fire were feeling their way with a speed that foretold the destruction
of all the palace sites of the city before the night would be over.
There was no longer a downtown district. A blot of black spread from
East street to Octavia, bounded on the south and north by Broadway
and Washington streets and Islais creek respectively. Not a bank
stood. There were no longer any exchanges, insurance offices,
brokerages, real estate offices, all that once represented the
financial heart of the city and its industrial strength.
Up Market street from the Ferry building to Valfira street nothing but
the black fingers of jagged ruins pointed to the smoke blanket that
pressed low overhead. What was once California, Sansome, and
Montgomery streets was a labyrinth of grim blackened walls.
Chinatown was no more. Union square was a barren waste.
The Call building stood proudly erect, lifting its whited head above
the ruin like some leprous thing and with all its windows, dead,
staring eyes that looked upon nothing but a wilderness. The proud
Flood building was a hollow shell.
The St. Francis Hotel, one time a place of luxury, was naught but a
box of stone and steel.
Yet the flames leaped on exultantly. They leapt chasms like a
waterfall taking a precipice. Now they are here, now there, always
pressing on into the west and through to the end of the city.
It was supposed that the fire had eaten itself out in the wholesale
district below Sansome street, and that the main body of the flames
was confined to the district south of Market street, where the oil
works, the furniture factories, and the vast lumber yards had given
fodder into the mouth of the fire fiend.
Yet, suddenly, as if by perverse devilishness, a fierce wind from the
west swept over the crest of Nob Hill and was answered by leaping
tongues of flames from out of the heart of the ruins.
By 8:30 o'clock Montgomery street had been spanned and the great
Merchants' Exchange building on California street flamed out like the
beacon torch of a falling star. From the dark fringe of humanity,
watching on the crest of the California street hill, there sprang the
noise of a sudden catching of the breath--not a sigh, not a
groan--just a sharp gasp, betraying a stress of despair near to the
insanity point.
Nine o'clock and the great Crocker building shot sparks and added
tongues of fire to the high heavens. Immediately the fire jumped to
Kearney street, licking at the fat provender that shaped itself for
consuming.
Then began the mournful procession of Japanese and poor whites
occupying the rookeries about Dupont street and along Pine. Tugging at
heavy ropes, they rasped trunks up the steep pavements of California
and Pine streets to places of temporary safety.
It was a motley crew. Women laden with bundles and dragging reluctant
children by the hands panted up the steep slope with terror stamped on
their faces.
Men with household furniture heaped camelwise on their shoulders
trudged stoically over the rough cobbles, with the flame of the fire
bronzing their faces into the outlines of a gargoyle. One patriotic
son of Nippon labored painfully up Dupont street with the crayon
portrait of the emperor of Japan on his back.
While this zone of fire was swiftly gnawing its way through Kearney
street and up the hill, another and even more terrible segment of the
conflagration was being stubbornly fought at the corner of Golden Gate
avenue and Polk street. There exhausted firemen directed the feeble
streams from two hoses upon a solid block of streaming flame.
The engines pumped the supply from the sewers. Notwithstanding this
desperate stand, the flames progressed until they had reached Octavia
street.
Like a sickle set to a field of grain the fiery crescent spread around
the southerly end of the west addition up to Oak and Fell streets,
along Octavia. There one puny engine puffed a single stream of water
upon the burning mass, but its efforts were like the stabbing of a
pigmy at a giant.
All the district bounded by Octavia, Golden Gate avenue, and Market
street was a blackened ruin. One picked his way through the fallen
walls on Van Ness avenue as he would cross an Arizona mesa. It was an
absolute ruin, gaunt and flame lighted.
From the midst rose the great square wall of St. Ignatius college,
standing like another ruined Acropolis in dead Athens.
Behind the gaunt specter of what had once been the city hall a
blizzard of flame swept back into the gore between Turk and Market
streets. Peeled of its heavy stone facing like a young leek that is
stripped of its wrappings, the dome of the city hall rose spectral
against the nebulous background of sparks.
From its summit looked down the goddess of justice, who had kept her
pedestal even while the ones of masonry below her feet had been
toppled to the earth in huge blocks the size of a freight car.
Through the gaunt iron ribs and the dome the red glare suffusing the
whole northern sky glinted like the color of blood in a hand held to
the sun.
At midnight the Hibernian bank was doomed, for from the frame
buildings west of it there was being swept a veritable maelstrom of
sheet flame that leaped toward it in giant strides. Not a fireman was
in sight.
Across the street amid the smoke stood the new postoffice, one of the
few buildings saved. Turk street was the northern boundary of this
V-shaped zone of the flames, but at 2 o'clock this street also was
crossed and the triumphant march onward continued.
At midnight another fire, which had started in front of Fisher's Music
Hall, on O'Farrell street, had gouged its terrible way through to
Market street, carrying away what the morning's blaze across the
street had left miraculously undestroyed.
Into Eddy and Turk streets the flames plunged, and soon the magnificent
Flood building was doomed.
The firemen made an ineffectual attempt to check the ravages of the
advancing phalanx of flames, but their efforts were absolutely without
avail. First from across the street shot tongues of flames which
cracked the glass in one of the Flood building's upper story windows.
Then a shower of sparks was sent driving at a lace curtain which
fluttered out in the draft. The flimsy whipping rag caught, a tongue
of flame crept up its length and into the window casement.
"My God, let me get out of this," said a man below who had watched the
massive shape of the huge pile arise defiant before the flames. "I
can't stand to see that go, too."
Shortly after midnight the streets about Union Square were barred by
the red stripes of the fire. First Cordes Furniture Company's store
went, then Brennor's. Next a tongue of flames crept stealthily into
the rear of the City of Paris store, on the corner of Geary and
Stockton streets.
Eager spectators watched for the first red streamers to appear from
the windows of the great dry goods stores. Smoke eddied from under
window sills and through cracks made by the earthquake in the
cornices. Then the cloud grew denser. A puff of hot wind came from the
west, and as if from the signal there streamed flamboyantly from every
window in the top floor of the structure billowing banners, as a poppy
colored silk that jumped skyward in curling, snapping breadths, a
fearful heraldry of the pomp of destruction.
From the copper minarets on the Hebrew synagogue behind Union square
tiny green, coppery flames next began to shoot forth. They grew
quickly larger, and as the heat increased in intensity there shone
from the two great bulbs of metal sheathing an iridescence that
blinded like a sight into a blast furnace.
With a roar the minarets exploded almost simultaneously, and the
sparks shot up to mingle with the dulled stars overhead. The Union
League and Pacific Union clubs next shone red with the fire that was
glutting them.
On three sides ringed with sheets of flame rose the Dewey memorial in
the midst of Union square. Victory tiptoeing on the apex of the column
glowed red with the flames. It was as if the goddess of battle had
suddenly become apostate and a fiend linked in sympathy with the
devils of the blaze.
On the first day of the catastrophe the St. Francis escaped. On the
second it fell. In the space of two hours the flames had blotted it
out, and by night only the charred skeleton remained.
As a prelude to the destruction of the St. Francis the fire swept the
homes of the Bohemian, Pacific, Union, and Family clubs, the best in
San Francisco.
With them were obliterated the huge retail stores along Post street;
St. Luke's Church, the biggest Episcopal church on the Pacific coast,
and the priceless Hopkins Art Institute.
From Union square to Chinatown it is only a pistol shot. By noon all
Chinatown was a blazing furnace, the rickety wooden hives, where the
largest Chinese colony in this country lived, was perfect fuel for the
fire.
Then Nob Hill, the charmed circle of the city, the residential
district of its millionaires and of those whose names have made it
famous, went with the rest of the city into oblivion. The Fairmount
Hotel, marble palace built by Mrs. Oelrichs, crowned this district.
Grouped around it were the residences of Mrs. Stanford, and a score of
millionaires' homes on Van Ness avenue. One by one they were buried in
the onrushing flames, and when the fire was passed they were gone.
Here the most desperate effort of the fight to save the city was made.
Nothing was spared. There was no discrimination, no sentiment. Rich
men aided willingly in the destruction of their own homes that some of
the city might be saved.
[Illustration: Copyright 1906, by American-Journal-Examiner. All
rights reserved. Any infractions of this copyright will be prosecuted
to the full extent of the law.
=VIEW FROM VALLEY STREET.=
This is a view from Valley Street looking down Kearney toward Market.]
[Illustration: Copyright 1906, by American-Journal-Examiner. All
rights reserved. Any infractions of this copyright will be prosecuted
to the full extent of the law.
=DESTROYED WHOLESALE HOUSES.=
This photograph shows the wreck and ruin wrought by the earthquake
and fire in the wholesale district.]
But the sacrifice and the labor went for nothing. No human power could
stay the flames. As darkness was falling the fire was eating its way
through the heart of this residential district. The mayor was
forced to announce that the last hope had been dashed.
All the district bounded by Union, Van Ness, Golden Gate, to Octavia,
Hayes, and Fillmore to Market was doomed. The fire fighters, troops,
citizens, and city officials left the scene, powerless to do more.
On the morning of the second day when the fire reached the municipal
building on Portsmouth square, the nurses, helped by soldiers, got out
fifty bodies in the temporary morgue and a number of patients in the
receiving hospital. Just after they reached the street a building was
blown up and the flying bricks and splinters hurt a number of the
soldiers, who had to be taken to the out of doors Presidio Hospital
with the patients.
Mechanics' pavilion, which, after housing prize fights, conventions,
and great balls, found its last use as an emergency hospital. When it
was seen that it could not last every vehicle in sight was impressed
by the troops, and the wounded, some of them frightfully mangled, were
taken to the Presidio, where they were out of danger and found comfort
in tents.
The physicians worked without sleep and almost without food. There was
food, however, for the injured; the soldiers saw to that. Even the
soldiers flagged, and kept guard in relays, while the relieved men
slept on the ground where they dropped.
The troops shut down with iron hands on the city, for where one man
was homeless the first night five were homeless the second night. With
the fire running all along the water front, few managed to make their
way over to Oakland. The people for the most part were prisoners on
the peninsula.
The soldiers enforced the rule against moving about except to escape
the flames, and absolutely no one could enter the city who once had
left.
The seat of city government and of military authority shifted with
every shift of the flames. Mayor Schmitz and General Funston stuck
close together and kept in touch with the firemen and police, the
volunteer aids, and the committee of safety through couriers.
There were loud reverberations along the fire line at night. Supplies
of gun cotton and cordite from the Presidio were commandeered and the
troops and the few remaining firemen made another futile effort to
check the fiery advance.
Along the wharves the fire tugs saved most of the docks. But the
Pacific mail dock had been reached and was out of control; and finally
China basin, which was filled in for a freight yard at the expense of
millions of dollars, had sunk into the bay and the water was over the
tracks. This was one of the greatest single losses in the whole
disaster.
Without sleep and without food, crowds watched all night Wednesday and
all day Thursday from the hills, looking off toward that veil of fire
and smoke that hid the city which had become a hell.
Back of that sheet of fire, and retreating backward every hour, were
most of the people of the city, forced toward the Pacific by the
advance of the flames. The open space of the Presidio and Golden Gate
park was their only haven and so the night of the second day found
them.