A City Tossed and Broken (15 page)

Those who were awake and outside reported that sidewalks rolled like rough ocean waves, and deep cracks appeared in the street only to close up again. Some buildings fell in a thundering crash, and others remained intact but were knocked off their foundations, tilting crazily over the street. The Valencia Hotel collapsed like an accordion, and those on the fourth story stepped over the debris and walked straight out into the street. Those in the lower floors were not so lucky. An estimated one hundred people lost their lives in that hotel, some in the initial collapse, some drowning as the water mains burst and flooded the layers beneath the street.

There was no system of measurement for earthquakes in 1906, but today’s geologists estimate the quake at anywhere between 7.9 and 8.2 on the Richter scale: a catastrophic event.

Those who survived the shock had no way to know that the worst was yet to come. Together, the quake and ensuing three-day firestorm were one of the worst natural disasters in United States history. More than fifty fires began in the first hours after the quake, some growing to join others until there was a solid wall of flame a mile and a half long.

Volcanoes smoke and storms build, but earthquakes give no warning. The day before the earthquake was fair and sunny, the first day of delightful weather after a damp and chilly spring. If a city can have a collective mood, San Francisco was in a cheerful frame of mind. The world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso was in town, and all of society turned out to see his performance in the opera
Carmen
. San Franciscans were proud of their city, the biggest and most important metropolis west of Chicago. With a population of about four hundred thousand, it was the nation’s ninth-largest city. It was a busy port, the gateway to Asia and the Pacific, and a center for business and manufacturing. It had the largest population of Chinese in any American city — estimated at 14,000 in 1905 — most of them living in the densely populated blocks of Chinatown.

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 had brought fortunes not only to the men who built the railroads — the owners of those mansions on top of Nob Hill known as the Big Four: Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker — but others who profited from the continuing expansion of the rails and the explosion in population.

Travel on the railroads became easier and more comfortable with the innovations of George Pullman, inventor of the Pullman sleeper car. More and more people began to consider a trip to California something they could do, and once they arrived they could stay in hotels such as the Palace, which promised luxury and refinement. A trip out West was no longer considered dangerous and uncomfortable, but a relatively easy week-long journey that even the most apprehensive Easterner could contemplate.

In 1906, business was booming, the rich were getting richer, and new inventions promised to make life more pleasant even for the poor. Most of the major advances in technology of the twentieth century had already been invented: the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, moving pictures, the electric light, the phonograph. These marvels would, over the years, be streamlined, improved, made easier to operate or more pleasing to look at — but they already existed in 1906, and there was a general feeling that they would soon be a part of everyday life, and the world was changing for the better.

With change and growth came opportunity, especially for the rich men who ran things. The government of San Francisco operated on a system of bribes and payoffs, thanks to a corrupt city council and a mayor, Eugene Schmitz, who was controlled by the political boss Abe Ruef. There were systems to be built and expanded — the pipes, rails, wires, and cables that would bring water, electricity, telephones, and public transportation to the people of San Francisco. All required permits and contracts, and politicians were happy to do favors for the right amount of cash. The situation in San Francisco had grown so corrupt that the reform effort reached all the way to the White House and President Theodore Roosevelt. After the quake, a federal investigation into graft and corruption continued, and political boss Abe Ruef was convicted and jailed. Mayor Schmitz was also convicted, but his sentence was overturned. The mayor had been hailed as a decisive leader during the crisis, and did rise to the occasion, so many San Franciscans did not want to see him imprisoned.

A city of wooden houses, narrow streets, steep hills, and gusty winds, San Francisco was especially vulnerable to fire. The reservoirs that fed water to the city used wooden trestles for their pipelines, often crisscrossing over the San Andreas Fault, which was known as the Tomales-Portolá Fault at the time of the quake. In 1905 the National Board of Fire Underwriters concluded that the water distribution system was inadequate and faulty and would most likely fail in the event of an emergency.

San Francisco was lucky enough to have a dedicated and visionary fire chief engineer, Dennis Sullivan. Even before the report, he was concerned about the fire department’s ability to fight a major citywide fire, catastrophes that had already occurred in Chicago in 1871 and Baltimore in 1904. For years he had warned the city council of the vulnerability of San Francisco to fire. He had proposed that the city badly needed a high-pressure water system, as well as a salt water auxiliary backup. He also proposed identifying and mapping the old cisterns that dotted the city. He had trained and organized an excellent firefighting department, but even the bravest and most skilled can’t fight fires without water.

The city council rejected Sullivan’s proposals without giving a reason, setting the city up for a spectacular failure.

On the morning of the quake, one of the victims of a building collapse was Chief Sullivan. The chimneys from the hotel next door crashed through the bedrooms in the firehouse. He struggled to get to his wife and fell to the first floor below, where he was scalded by a boiler. Seriously injured, he was carried out by his men.

Instead of Dennis Sullivan, many of the decisions about fighting the massive firestorm were made jointly by General Frederick Funston and Mayor Schmitz. General Funston took charge of the city almost immediately after the quake. He left his house on Sacramento Street and walked to the crown of the hill. He saw the fires beginning and then quickly walked downtown to find the mayor. It was Funston who suggested that the only course open to them was dynamiting buildings in order to create firebreaks — areas of open space wide enough so that the fire could not spread. He took over the strategic dynamiting of much of downtown San Francisco, as well as areas of Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Chinatown, and the east side of Van Ness Avenue.

The process of creating a firebreak by dynamiting buildings has its origin in logic. If the fire has nothing to feed on, it will die. Unfortunately, this process was carried out in many cases by workers who had no experience with explosives. Also, it is necessary to hose down nearby buildings so that they won’t catch fire if sparks or chunks of the dynamited building fall on them. In many cases, the fire spread because of the careless use of explosives. People were ordered to leave their homes or businesses even though they were ready to fight to save them.

Some homeowners — such as a valiant and stubborn group on Russian Hill — refused to leave their homes and managed to defeat the fires. Many beautiful homes on the top of the hill were saved — you can still see them today. But most homeowners in the eastern part of the city could not save their homes from the fire, or the dynamite. They had to gather whatever they could carry and then join the stream of refugees heading westward toward the squares and parks out of range of the fire. In survivors’ accounts, many mention the eerie quiet, the way the walkers communicated in whispers, and the mournful sound of trunks being dragged through the streets.

The terror of the earthquake was quick — it was over in a little over a minute. The terror of the fire began slowly. Photographs taken that day show people standing about in downtown San Francisco, watching the buildings burn. Oddly, there seems to be no alarm or distress on their faces. There is no blur of panicked movement.

By midday on Wednesday, seven hours after the quake, the fifty or so small fires that had begun with the first shock had leaped and spread into three main fires: the fire south of the Slot, which extended from Market Street to the waterfront; the fire north of Market Street, which encompassed Chinatown, the financial district, and eventually would spread up to Nob Hill and then be halted at Van Ness; and the “ham and eggs fire” — so named because it was reportedly begun by a woman cooking breakfast with a broken chimney above her stove. This last fire in Hayes Valley would grow and spread with frightening speed, taking out City Hall and then heading for the Mission.

Hospitals were evacuated and the injured moved to the ferries or the Army hospital in the Presidio. The mayor moved his central command three times as again and again the fires took over whole sections of the city.

A firestorm is so powerful that it generates its own wind, which helps to further feed it. In some sections the pavement was so hot it caused people’s feet to blister. The superheated air raised the temperatures into the eighties. The smoke cloud rose two miles high over the city.

The firemen of San Francisco faced an impossible task. There were no telephones or fire alarms operating. Messages had to be carried by foot, by car, or by horseback. The fire trucks were pulled by horses. Without functioning hydrants, the firemen had no way to fight the massive blazes. They used everything they had — water from abandoned cisterns, salt water if they could get it, sand, even soda water — to tamp down what they could. They dragged by hand a heavy hose from San Francisco Bay all the way up to Sacramento Street — a trip more than a mile long, and possibly the longest stretch of fire hose in firefighting history, according to historian and former firefighter Dennis Smith. By the time the final firefight took place to hold back the fire at Dolores Street, some of them had been on duty for three days straight. Man and beast fought past the limits of exhaustion.

Personal heroism counted. In two major institutions — the U.S. Mint and the U.S. Post Office — the workers refused to leave. They were brave men who fought the flames with cistern water on the roof of the Mint, and for the post office, with whatever they had on hand. Because of their heroism, after the fire the financial situation in San Francisco remained stable despite the burning of the banks, and the mail continued to be delivered — and nobody had to buy a stamp. For two years, the mail was free.

The writer Jack London, author of
The
Call of the Wild
, left his ranch north of the city with his wife, Charmian, shortly after the quake. They traveled as quickly as they could to San Francisco. There he gathered material for his firsthand account of the aftermath of the quake. They walked the city that night until the soles of their feet blistered from the hot sidewalks, and finally slept in a doorway. London later wrote an article for
Collier’s Weekly
, telling of the awful beauty of the orange sky and the tremendous wind generated by the firestorm. He told a story of a millionaire on Nob Hill calmly telling him that everything he owned would burn in fifteen minutes and render him penniless.

By the time the fires went out on Saturday, half of the city had been destroyed. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were gone and 225,000 people were homeless. An estimated five hundred city blocks had been incinerated. Whole sections of the city looked as though they’d been wiped out by a massive bomb.

Fire chief Dennis Sullivan did not see or hear of the firestorm that engulfed the city. He never regained consciousness and died of his injuries the fourth day after the earthquake — after the fires had been defeated at last and a cooling rain fell.

City officials worried about investors being scared of rebuilding a city so vulnerable to earthquakes. They set the official death toll at 498, an obvious attempt to convince the world that San Francisco was a safe place to invest. Historians now believe that at least three thousand people perished, and some scholars place the number even higher.

Money and help poured in from around the United States. In a remarkably short period of time, tent cities were set up in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and the larger squares. People lined up for food and water. Some people lived in the parks for three years.

The prejudice against the Chinese population that already existed reached a boiling point. Chinatown had been completely destroyed by fire. A plan was set in motion to relocate fourteen thousand Chinese to the mudflats south of the city. Those who fled the city during the fires were prohibited from returning. Racism collided with greed, for it certainly occurred to many that the land Chinatown had taken up was a potentially lucrative parcel close to downtown. It took the personal intervention of the Empress Dowager of China, who declared her intention of rebuilding the Chinese embassy in the heart of where Chinatown had stood, to get the city leaders of the plan to back down.

San Francisco did rebuild, and today it is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But it suffered a blow that took years to recover from. After the quake, industry, commerce, and shipping moved south to Los Angeles.

There are few reminders of the quake today: The hydrant on Church Street that saved the Western Addition is painted gold every April 18. At dawn on April 18, a ceremony is held for Dennis Sullivan, and firefighters dip their ladders in tribute. Five thousand redwood cottages were built to house homeless families after the quake, and two are preserved and can be viewed in the Presidio. The portico of the burned Towne mansion, where Minnie and her father pause to view the burned-out city, now stands in Golden Gate Park. Called Portals of the Past, it can be found on the shores of Lloyd Lake, a tribute to the courage and perseverance of the people of San Francisco.