Black Fire (32 page)

O
n June 22, 1851, an arsonist struck again—the sixth great fire in eighteen months. Either he had been waiting until plenty of gold was on deposit or the need for a fire to warm his cold heart had seized him again. Wisely he had waited until the cisterns in the business part of the city were even lower than in the May fire. At 7:00
A.M.
he stalked among the dwelling houses where, in spite of the Council’s six-bucket rule, most homes had no water. On this Sabbath, the
Alta
announced that dancing by Senorita Abalos and a laughable farce,
The Widow’s Victim
, were to be staged at a downtown theater. But hours before the show, that theater would be a heap of hot ashes, as would the
Alta
office. At 7:57
A.M.
the air barely stirred. At 8:00
A.M.
the wind began to rise. The gentle sea breeze that usually filled everyone’s eyes with sand became a strong northwest gale that whipped through Spring Valley. When the wind was blowing like a hurricane, the arsonist set a fire inside a two-story wooden building on a hill.

Bennett and Kirby, the owners, occupied the kitchen with a friend, Lippincott, but let the bankers Delessert, Ligeron & Company use the front rooms. The fire, breaking out under the eaves, might have easily been extinguished if a supply of water had been at hand. None was nearer than the bay. At the rear of the building stood an empty house on the north side of Pacific. Next door, Morriss & Reynolds’ carpenter shop was packed to the rafters with wood. Sparks from Bennett and Kirby’s
burning house set the woodshop afire. Conveniently for the arsonist, a well-stocked lumberyard was also just across the street. The flames stretched hungrily toward it. A few neighbors tried to check the fire by ripping down houses in its path, but no one can tear a house to pieces faster than a fire can burn it.

The lumberyard caught and drove off the neighbors as the fire spread along Pacific Street snapping up wooden homes until it reached Barroilhet’s Gambling House. A huge warehouse of corrugated iron sheets nailed to a wooden frame caught fire. A considerable quantity of gunpowder was stored inside. The volunteers and torch boys scattered and were well back when the explosion leveled the ground over a vast area, but the force still knocked them off their feet. The four-story Graham House on the northwest corner of Pacific and Kearny streets was already ashes. At 10:30
A.M.
, just as church bells were tolling, the fire leaped Pacific Street. In minutes the block from Broadway to Stockton Street was aflame. Citizens ran to an alley near Stockton, ripped down a building in the flames’ path, and slowed the blaze. The flames moved east from Stockton over onto Jackson Street. The powerful wind blew the fire to the intersection of Stockton and Jackson streets where Lieutenant McGowan and twenty-two other men were ripping down the corner houses. As it crossed the intersection, shouts of “Fire!” sent early risers racing back home to save what they could. Late sleepers scurried from their beds, pulled on clothes, and rushed outside where strong prevailing winds nourished the flames. The intense heat sucked the moisture from their lungs, singed their hair, and blistered their lips. The blaze then licked along Dupont Street, burning frame buildings at the rear of the ruined adobe. Up went the popular La Polka. The blaze made no distinction between gambling halls and churches, because it next targeted the Reverend Albert Williams’s First Presbyterian Tabernacle on Stockton between Pacific and Broadway streets.

“At the first bell-ringing for the eleven o’clock service,” the Reverend Mr. Williams recalled, “I was looking out my north study window from my residence [five blocks away] on California Street. I saw a dark cloud of smoke rising from the region of the church.” The large New York Gothic edifice, an expensive prefab affair, had arrived in the fall and was ready for dedication. Freight, labor, and the funds to buy the lot had cost Williams’s congregation $16,000. The worshippers had been on the way to the church services while the choir made special preparations for that day’s choir music. “I reached the church in time to assist
members of the congregation in saving the books, organ, and other moveable articles,” Williams said. The fire had already burned the west pulpit end. “Last of all, I helped to detach the pulpit and bear it to a place of safety. The eastern Stockton Street front, supporting the belfry, last gave way, and the bell loosened from its loft height fell into the street and was broken … in so brief a time the church which we had waited so long, and in the use of which so much gratification had been derived, was entirely destroyed.” Just below Pacific and Broadway, the blaze gobbled up the French Church on the west side of Stockton Street. The First Baptist Church should have been the next tasty morsel, but it was the only church out of five to survive.

The volunteers exploded buildings to halt the fire’s progress. When they tried to blow up the Sacramento Hotel on Broadway, only one cask of powder ignited. A volunteer, cigar clenched in his jaw, strolled into the already flaming building with two more powder casks under his arms. The fire in the unvented room was rolling over the flax ceiling and starting down the linen wall behind him as he lit the fuses with his cigar. Calmly, he retreated, puffing as he went and adding to the smoke. In the doubled explosion behind him the hotel fell and a fiery belt arched over the street back to the engines. They had to be abandoned. This fire was especially cruel. From the Stockton Street area to Jackson Street lived a poorer class of French, Mexicans, washerwomen, laborers, and mechanics whose homes were the major sources of their income, and now those were gone. At Sacramento and Montgomery streets, Lillie Hitchcock and her parents were roused by the alarms. In the high wind, one house after another went up on the blocks surrounding them. Fire jumped Washington Street, made for Clay and Commercial streets, and then began licking at the Howard House, where the Hitchcocks were staying. Martha rushed to the attic, packed their clothes in a trunk, and with Lillie lugged the trunk downstairs and into a wagon. On the first floor, men tore down the rooms closest to the burning house next door. Dr. Hitchcock ripped up the Turkish carpets and then climbed to the roof and covered the tar with wet blankets. All their efforts proved ineffectual. As the Howard House burned, the Hitchcocks departed for Rincon Hill. From the back of the wagon, Martha studied the burning ships in the cove below with fascination. Images of the Huntington plantation’s burning filled her mind.

Survivors were already sailing to the East Bay when a second blaze erupted on the outskirts of town. The incendiary had either galloped
there on a fast horse or had a partner who had awaited his signal to act. The authorities agreed “that this fire is the work of not one, but two incendiaries.” There had been warnings. The patrol of the Vigilance Committee had lately discovered more kindling fires than ever. As thick black clouds filled the streets, plunderers and looters marched lockstep across San Francisco, taking full advantage of the confusion to loot the gold stores. Because it was Sunday, Captain Coffin and Captain Haskel called onboard the
James Caskie
for Captain Jones and his wife to join them for church services. They were sitting in the Joneses’ cabin when bells on shore began to peal. They supposed it was for the morning worship, until ships’ bells of all tones, tin pans, and cow horns joined in. On deck they saw heavy smoke and flames rising far up the hill in the western section of the city. Coffin hurried to shore, ran west toward Powell Street, and saw his friend, Dr. Mitchell of the cutter
Ewing
, fighting fire.

A Frenchman, John Baptise Durand, aboard the
Monte Lambert
anchored far out, heard the alarms and rowed ashore to help a friend transport his goods. As he reached a flaming store on Pacific Street, the fire veered toward Ohio Street. He stooped to pick up a live coal to light his pipe. A crowd saw the gesture. Taking him for the arsonist, they beat and stomped him so severely he perished from his injuries later in the county jail. The coroner’s verdict would be that he died from an inflammation of the brain caused by injuries received during the fire. A Mexican man, carrying a bale of goods from a burning building on Washington Street, was cornered by an enraged mob that demanded, “Put down the bundle.” When he either refused or did not understand, he was kicked to death. Another man was luckier. When enraged citizens accused him of starting the fire, a police patrol intervened. “He’s one of us,” they vouched and were believed, though many of the cops were ex-Hounds and former Ducks in league with the thieves or even friends of Ben Lewis. Honest police apprehended some arson suspects, acquitted three on the spot, and held others in custody.

The Jackson Street fire had burned as far as Kearny Street when George Hubbard’s friends saved him from his burning sick bed and carried him to the middle of the Square. He perished there in the heat in full sight on a heap of goods that caught fire several times during the day. Higher up on the hillside, tiny one- and two-story buildings “burned like shavings.” When Captain Coffin reached the western side of Powell, three engines were squirting the blaze with leaking hoses. As
he stood watching, he perceived something odd. The opposite side of the street, a continuous range of wooden buildings, changed from yellow to the color of burned coffee, then began to smoke. As glazing snapped and shattered, the vacuum sucked heat into the building interiors where cotton linings caught at once. An instant later the whole broadside of the street burst into flames. The volunteers abandoned two of their engines and saved a third at the risk of their lives. Several men were fatally burned. The flames raged farther down Jackson Street. Only half rebuilt, the business district was being destroyed again. The flimsiness of temporary buildings only fed the fire that attacked three storehouses and the new City Hall.

Coffin, shaken by the explosions, raced down to Stuart and Raines’s Store, where he discovered the Newburyport delegation removing their stock. Captain Raines filled a trunk with treasure, piled it into a wheelbarrow, and charged Coffin to find a safe place to store it. He rolled the wheelbarrow to Front Street, but before he went far, the blaze had careened down between Broadway and Pacific streets. In danger of being trapped between two fires, he wheeled his barrow down to the lower end of Pacific Wharf, where for the next three hours he faithfully guarded Raines’s gold.

Dutch Charley showed himself a hero again, saving blocks of houses from burning. Abruptly the blaze turned south toward Washington Street and the
Alta
office in the wooden buildings between Kearny and the Bella Union. The Howard Company tried in vain to save Gilbert’s newspaper by blowing up the California Restaurant adjoining his office. Nor could a private fire engine and a tank of water salvage the building, presses, and the type. Printing on borrowed presses and using type set up in the offices of a competitor, Gilbert bitterly wrote a single line: “We are sick with what we have seen and felt and need not say any more.”

Sawyer, feeling the wind whistle around him, feared that this time nothing might be left of San Francisco. The cloying smoke was like syrup. He began to cough. Firemen do not eat smoke. Smoke eats them. The fire assumed a celestial quality. Little whirlwinds of hot air spiraled around them and then united to create one huge vortex. The giant ring rose above the firefighters. When it was directly overhead, the invisible ring of superheated air slowly began to turn clockwise. Gradually it took on the hue of the fire and became a golden ring. It spun faster until it created an updraft rising miles into the stratosphere. The center of the ring, hotter still, ate up all the oxygen to create a counterclockwise
downdraft of sparks and lethal gases that was forced on the firemen. As the inner ring rotated, it became a dark circle of smoke, wheels within wheels relentlessly turning like a mill.

Sawyer held a moistened finger aloft. “The wind is altering its course,” he said. “Yes, the gale’s moving northward. We might be spared yet. The main district might not be lost entirely. The next hour will tell.” He looked around. Unbelievably, some citizens still refused to help fight fire unless their own places were on fire. As a team of horses galloped by dragging their harness, he saw a man weeping uncontrollably before his flaming store. The merchant, previously burned out in each of the other fires, trembled, wrung his hands, and wept. He leaped past the firemen pumping water and pulling down walls and, howling, ran headlong toward the flames, arms open to embrace them. The volunteers tried to block him, but he dodged past and in a flash of red was vaporized.

The men heard a heartless chuckle. Turning, they saw a man who resembled the fugitive Ben Lewis. The laughter continued. “This man absolutely bricked us up,” [silenced them] a volunteer said later. “Stop laughing!” another volunteer screamed. “For the love of God, a man has died.” The stranger went on roaring. He graveled, provoked them. Uneven teeth shone in the firelight as he laughed louder. A few onlookers had tears in their eyes. Were they gazing upon the Lightkeeper or his partner who had burned down their city six times? Who else could be so cruel? All the official and civilian firefighters ceased work. “Out of respect, stop,” one called, recalling Captain Vincente and all the casualties who had died at the arsonist’s hands, recalling his family that had been lost. Finally a few men threw down their buckets and axes and advanced on the laughing man. Amid the horror, his joviality was monstrous.

“By God,” said a neighbor. “By God!” The stranger only hooked his thumbs in his belt, spread his legs, drew back his head, and laughed his loudest. The fire was closer. Flames sang on the roofs. A black curtain of cinders and sparks blew over the scene. Crashing timbers and whirling fire rose up at the far end of the alley. The fire had reached them. “Do for him!” said a man, “if nothing less.” In an instant several neighbors and volunteers sprang upon the laughing man—kicking, punching, and slapping him. The stranger, rocked off his feet, only grinned up from the ground. A trickle of blood coursed down his chin. A firefighter kicked him and turned away disgusted. Another did the same. The volunteers
heard a tremendous creaking and groaning, a low rumble and a crack like thunder. The wall behind pitched forward and hundreds of bricks dropped right where they had left the supine man, bleeding and moaning. Fire swept over the bricks. No one helped. Everyone had gone back to fighting flames and saving the lives that could still be saved. Where the arsonist had been only a moment before was nothing but rubble.