FIGHTING FIRE WITH DYNAMITE.
=San Francisco Conflagration Eventually Checked by the
Use of Explosives--Lesson of Baltimore Heeded in Coast
City--Western Remnant of City in Residence Section Saved
by Blowing Up Beautiful Homes of the Rich.=
The remnant of San Francisco that escaped destruction in the four days
conflagration owes its existence largely to the equally destructive
force of dynamite. For four days one agent of destruction was employed
against another.
The San Francisco conflagration was the second great fire in the
United States at which dynamite was the chief agency of the fire
fighters. Immediately following the first earthquake crash flames
burst forth in numerous places, chiefly in the business section of the
city. The fire department responded as promptly as possible under the
circumstances for a new difficulty presented itself to the firemen.
When the clang of the alarm sounded it was found that many of the
engine houses had been damaged by the quake and so twisted that it was
only with difficulty that the apparatus could be gotten out of the
buildings. Upon arriving at the several scenes of the fire a worse
calamity confronted them. The engines were attached to the hydrants
and then followed the alarming cry:
"No water!"
The mains had been bursted, twisted and torn asunder by the violence
of the shock, and only in rare instances could water be found
wherewith to combat the rapidly spreading flames.
Then it was that the new method of checking conflagrations was
brought into use, and the order was given to fight the flames with
dynamite. Doubtless the officials of the department had freshly in
mind the great Baltimore fire in which the city was saved only from
total destruction by the use of an immense amount of explosives. Fire
chief Denis Sullivan and his wife had both been injured by the
earthquake, the former having been fatally hurt, so that in addition
to the hopeless situation which confronted the firemen they were
without the guidance of their principal leader.
There was little dynamite available in the city, but what was on hand
was immediately brought into use and soon the terrific explosions
added to the terror of the panic stricken people fleeing from the
flames.
At 9 o'clock on the first day of the fire Mayor Schmitz sent a tug to
Pinole for several cans of the explosive. He also sent a telegram to
Mayor Mott of Oakland. He received this reply to his Oakland message:
"Three engines and hose companies leave here immediately. Will forward
dynamite as soon as obtained."
All outside nearby places were appealed to for dynamite and as fast as
the explosive was received it was directed against large buildings in
the path of the fire. The crash of falling walls mingled with the
reverberations of the explosions, led many to believe that the
earthquake shocks were being repeated. Here and there a fireman went
down beneath the ruins as some huge building tumbled to the ground
shattered by the destructive explosive. In the downtown districts the
efforts of the dynamiters were wholly unavailing. The fire had gained
such headway that it swept with a roar over every vacant space made by
the explosive and continued its consuming way in every direction.
Better success was obtained in the residence district west on the
second day of the fire. The widest thoroughfare in the city is Van
Ness avenue in the heart of the fashionable residence section. There
it was decided that an effort should be made to check the spread of
the flames westward and save the many beautiful homes in the district
between that avenue and the water line.
The co-operation of the artillery was secured and huge cannons were
drawn to the avenue by the military horses to aid the dynamiters in
blowing up the mansions of the millionaires on the west of Van Ness
avenue in order to prevent the flames from leaping across the highway
and starting on their unrestraining sweep across the western addition.
Every available pound of dynamite was hauled to that point and the
sight was one of stupendous and appalling havoc as the cannons were
trained on the palaces and the shot tore into the walls and toppled
the buildings in crushing ruins. At other points the dynamite was
used, and house after house, the dwellings of millionaires, was lifted
into the air by the bellowing blast and dropped to the earth a mass of
dust and debris.
The work was necessarily dangerous and many of the exhausted workers
who kept working through a stretch of forty-eight hours without sleep
and scarcely any food through force of instinctive heroism alone were
killed while making their last desperate stand.
Many of the workers in placing the blasts, took chances that spelled
injury or death. The fire line at 6 o'clock extended a mile along the
east side of Van Ness avenue from Pacific street to Ellis. All behind
this excepting the Russian Hill region and a small district lying
along the north beach had been swept clean by the flames and the steel
hulks of buildings and pipes and shafts and spires were dropped into a
molten mass of debris like so much melted wax.
The steady booming of the artillery and the roar of the dynamite above
the howl and cracking of the flames continued with monotonous
regularity. Such noises had been bombarding the ears of the
panic-stricken people since the earthquake of forty-eight hours
before. They ceased to hear the sound and rush pell-mell, drowning
their senses in a bedlam of their own creation. There seemed to be an
irresistible power behind the flames that even the desperately heroic
measures being taken at Van Ness avenue could not stay.
Hundreds of police, regiments of soldiers, and scores of volunteers
were sent into the doomed district to inform the people that their
homes were about to be blown up, and to warn them to flee. They
heroically responded to the demand of law, and went bravely on their
way trudging painfully over the pavements with the little they could
get together.
Every available wagon that could be found was pressed into service to
transport the powder from the various arsenals to the scene of the
proposed destruction.
Then for hours the bursting, rending sounds of explosions filled the
air. At 9 o'clock block after block of residences had been leveled to
the ground, but the fire was eating closer and closer.
Then the explosives gave out. Even the powder in the government
arsenals was exhausted long before noon. From that hour the flames
raged practically unhindered.
Lieut. Charles C. Pulis, commanding the Twenty-fourth company of light
artillery, was blown up by a charge of dynamite at Sixth and Jessie
streets and fatally injured. He was taken to the military hospital at
the Presidio. He suffered a fractured skull and several bones broken
and internal injuries.
Lieut. Pulis placed a heavy charge of dynamite in a building on Sixth
street. The fuse was imperfect and did not ignite the charge as soon
as was expected. Pulis went to the building to relight it and the
charge exploded while he was in the building.
The deceased officer was a graduate of the artillery school at
Fortress Monroe, Va. He was 30 years of age.
The effectiveness of dynamite was proved on the fourth and last day of
the conflagration, when the flames were finally checked by the use of
that explosive.
Three heroes saved San Francisco--what was left of it. They were the
dynamite squad that threw back the fire demon at Van Ness avenue.
When the burning city seemed doomed and the flames lit the sky
further and further to the west, Admiral McCalla sent a trio of his
most trusted men from Mare Island with orders to check the
conflagration at any cost of life or property.
With them they brought a ton and a half of gun cotton. The terrific
power of the explosion was equal to the maniac determination of the
fire. Captain MacBride was in charge of the squad. Chief Gunner
Adamson placed the charges, and the third gunner set them off.
The thunderous detonations to which the terrified city listened all
that dreadful Friday night meant the salvation of 300,000 lives. A
million dollars' worth of property, noble residences and worthless
shacks alike were blown to drifting dust, but that destruction broke
the fire and sent the raging flames over their own charred path.
The whole east side of Van Ness avenue, from Golden Gate to Greenwich,
was dynamited a block deep, though most of the structures stood
untouched by sparks or cinders. Not one charge failed. Not one
building stood upon its foundations.
Every pound of gun cotton did its work, and though the ruins burned,
it was but feebly. From Golden Gate avenue north the fire crossed the
wide street in but one place. That was the Claus Spreckels place, on
the corner of California street. There the flames were writhing up the
walls before the dynamiters could reach it. The charge had to be
placed so swiftly and the fuse lit in such a hurry that the explosion
was not quite successful from the trained viewpoint of the gunners.
But though the walls still stood, it was only an empty victory for the
fire, as bare brick and smoking ruins are poor food for flames.
Captain MacBride's dynamiting squad realized that a stand was hopeless
except on Van Ness avenue. They could have forced their explosive
further in the burning section, but not a pound of gun cotton could be
or was wasted. The ruined block that met the wide thoroughfare formed
a trench through the clustered structures that the conflagration,
wild as it was, could not leap.
Engines pumping brine through Fort Madison from the bay completed the
little work that the gun cotton had left, but for three days the
haggard-eyed firemen guarded the flickering ruins.
The desolate waste straight through the heart of the city is a mute
witness to the squad's effective work. Three men did this. They were
ordered to save San Francisco. They obeyed orders, and Captain
MacBride and his two gunners made history on that dreadful night.