Chapter 4
IV. THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE And while the people were yet looking at the strangely swaying houses and the serene sky, it was discovered that fires were starting everywhere throughout the city. Every district, nearly every neighborhood, had its blaze, some of them caused by falling and
uninsulated electric wires, others originating in broken flues and stoves upset in restaurant and hotel kitchens and flimsy tenements. It is known that there were fifty-two original fires on that fatal morning. Probably there were many others that did not get into the records of the fire department. Some were put out by the occupants
of the houses where they occurred. Others, finding things more to their liking, made a stubborn resistance, and were controlled only after a lively battle, many, too, getting a better start, growled and snarled like wolves uncaged, and were soon beyond the power of men to cope with.
At twenty-second admission a fire started, and a quarter of a block was burned before it was controlled. Others occurred out in the western edition, at Hayes and Laguna Streets, at Buchanan Street and Golden Gate Avenue, and on Polk Street near Clay. Though in blocks solidly built up of wooden structures, they were confined to a few
buildings. Many other fires were already raging downtown in the wholesale district north of Market Street, and in the tenement and manufacturing districts to the south. There, where many fires raged among flimsy, tumble-down structures, the task was great. The firemen were scattered by many alarms. From the first the streets
resounded with the hurrying engines. Here an instant to subdue some flame almost at the moment of ignition. Then, panting away in response to some other, perhaps more important, call. The department, in which the safety of the city depended, was no longer a concentrative force. Those first alarms had cut it up into small squads and scattered them
along a great skirmish line. Some found the hydrants dry from the first. Others for a time had water. Most of the latter were effectively fighting their separate fires. Others were too few in numbers, too limited of apparatus, to do more than fight and fight and hope for reinforcements. None of them were impotent. All had courage and grit
and training. But their task was too great, their isolation from their brothers too complete. And as they fought and fought and hoped for reinforcements, the streams from the fire hose dwindled away. Puzzled, confused, the men stood helpless with the nozzles empty in their hands. Then the truth dawned upon them that the mains had been broken by the
earthquake, and that the supply of millions of gallons stored in the reservoirs was seeping itself away into the soil, useless in this hour of greatest need. Serious as this loss of the water was, it was the breaking out of so many fires at once, and the absence of their chief even more than the
failing water that made the task of the firemen so hopeless. For many places came the call for more men, and from the hearts of many men in anguish went forth the prayer for the chief to come, the chief they felt to be equal to the emergency. Foreseeing such a conflagration as had just started, forethinking even
of a water supply cut off, Chief Sullivan had been perfecting his plans through many years. In his own mind he knew what would be best to do. He had the confidence of his men. He could count on them to carry out unquestionably whatever heroic measures might be necessary. Now that the long-feared event had arrived those men fought on and prayed
for his coming, not knowing then that he was among the first victims of the tembler. It is known now that all that were lacking were leadership and discipline and a plan of operation. Water there was in the bay and equipment and willing men, but these were as nothing in the unforeseen emergency without the chief. But he, hurrying to his wife's aid in
headquarters, had been struck down by a wall from an adjoining building and received injuries from which he died three days later, unconscious to the end of the fate that had overtaken his beloved city. Throughout the city the firemen struggled to put out the many fires, any one of which might cause a conflagration. Those struggles, however,
were only skirmishes. The real battle was beginning in the district south of Market Street. There the dwellers and ramshackles were scarcely in the streets when fires sprang up all around them. There the tinder-heaped blocks spontaneously burst into flame in many places. In this district, many detached fires were soon subdued, but others, either larger in
themselves or occurring several to the block, had early grown into fires of threatening proportions. The firemen, willing, anxious, but badly scattered, and soon deprived of water, were powerless. In a perfect devil-dance of fury the flames leaped among the crowded houses already shaken into tender piles. As far east as the waterfront, and west to
Eighth Street, which faces the city hall, every street had its fire. From Mission Street south to Harrison innumerable tongues of fire shot up, ever spreading, ever growing as they spread, licking up in an instant whole blocks in their course, darting down this street now that, to leave it bare of all its buildings, writhing in sinuous ecstasy, never
stopping in that wild, devastating dance. Soon the whole district was a cauldron in which brick buildings with their steel and iron girders crumbled away, and machinery of a thousand sorts melted into a conglomerate mass of waste, and in whose fierce heat frame structures flashed into sudden nothingness. As the sight-seers were on their way
to the parks and hilltops to watch the progress of the flames, the many separate fires were eating their way rapidly toward each other, and each, like an octopus, was sending out horrid tentacles in all directions. Block after block went down. The firemen, always fighting, were driven steadily back, unable to make a lasting stand. Fire boats, tugs, and
other sea-craft pumped water from the bay at an early hour. The firemen used water from cisterns and from broken sewers and mains as long as it lasted. But still the flames spread, unrestrained, save for the temporary check of a street to cross, or a brick wall, or a pitifully insufficient water supply. A case in point was on the waterfront. East Street, south
from Market, in a strip extending a block or two to the lower manufacturing district, was built up of tumbled-down buildings, remnants of a past decade. Here were all the customary surroundings of the waterfront of any large sea-port. Ship chandeliers, cheap-john clothing stores, sailors' hotels, restaurants, little corner groggories, and various
places of uncertain business, sprawled themselves in tottering structures for blocks around. When fire started very early Wednesday morning these places burned with the quick fury of a crumpled paper and a stove. The manufacturing places just beyond soon caught from the fierce blaze thus started, and began a conflagration far beyond the power of the crippled
department to control. Another large fire was getting under way at the same time across Market Street among similar buildings. Another was further south, at east in Pacific, and another along Sansom near California. Through the wholesale district that lay between these three buildings they gradually ate their way toward each other and north toward
Telegraph Hill. Up Market Street through the wholesale district on one side and the lower manufacturing district on the other the fires traveled, their advance growing slower as they reached brick buildings of a more solid sort. Wherever brick buildings stood side by side only one at a time burned. Each waited its turn offering but a slight check
to the ensweep of the flames at the side walls, but soon igniting and finally passing the fire on to the next in line. Some frame buildings were interspersed with the brick and their burning was very rapid. Gradually Market Street west to Sansom became the point of conjuncture of two immense fires. Beyond other great fires came down the south side
of Market Street to meet them. The Palace Hotel, world famous, stood between. Early in the morning a fire at the power station on Stevenson Street, in the shadow of the Call Building and but a short distance beyond the Palace, had eaten its way toward forth, then on either side to Mission and to Market, following the line of least resistance, the
line of flimsy wooden construction. As on the waterfront, in fact as everywhere in the city where the fire found old wood awaiting it, these buildings on Stevenson and forth were the scene of a fierce quick fire. Here also, as throughout the city during the day of its burning, these shacks acted as huge kindling piles for the better buildings around.
The fire fought its way through to Mission Street direct, and flames began to pour from the buildings there, from old St. Patrick's Church, and soon from the Grand Opera House, further down the street toward Third. The Playhouse had long been a part of the city's tradition, and only a few hours before its walls had re-echoed the strains of Carmen at
the opening of the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company season. It contained the Company's wardrobes and stage settings, eight great carloads. It burned quickly from the moment of ignition. The fire-weakened walls crumbled, the roof fell in upon the smoldering embers. Nothing was left but the tradition.
Slowly the fire traveled through to Market Street, attacking the rear wall of a four-story stationery store opposite the end of Grant Avenue. The store contained a large stock of artist's materials, stationery and printing papers, pictures and moldings, all highly inflammable material, and shortly flames were darting from every window. For a time the
firemen had a stream of water, but it was woefully inadequate and soon shrunk into a mere dribble. The building became a seething furnace, and in an incredibly short time was a smoldering ruin. The flames approached the Third Street corner. Their progress was marked by the slow ignition of the successive fireproof buildings en route.
On the corner stood the Call Building, most famous of all the city's office buildings, and one of the best and most beautiful in the country. Building a small ground space, but of extreme height, and with the elevators in the center, it made a splendid flue for the flames. Fanned by their own current and drawn up by the fierce draft, they made quick
headway, beginning at the third floor and spreading rapidly. The building throughout its entire eighteen stories was soon a shaft of fire. It was a spectacle not soon to be forgotten. The soldiers had taken possession of Market Street and had driven the crowds back. They gathered
in Kearney and O'Farrell and other nearby streets, and looked, awestruck, at the many windows belching flame, like so many blast furnaces. Up and down and far out into the streets, and high in the air, the fire raged, a roaring, devastating, uncombatable force. Those who watched began to realize the magnitude of the conflagration. It had become something
greater than they had supposed possible. With saddened hearts they thought of the price that was being paid for the magnificent display, and wondered how a fire they had at first thought would be put out in an hour or two had succeeded in reaching their cherished call. Gradually it had grown to be something demonical, a godless monster desecrating their
temples. They resented the fire madly with hate. At the same time fires were reaching Market Street midway between Fourth and Fifth, and Fifth and Sixth, and Sixth and Seventh. One by one the great buildings fronting on the south side of Market went down. The morning began to wear away, and the crowds at Throne Knob Hill and other high places
gradually realized that all the districts south of Market was doomed. A pall of smoke hid the far-lying districts, but they knew that the fire was working its way there too, and must eventually spread far out into the Mission. Of what was actually taking place there behind the smoke they knew nothing. No regular papers were sued. No man knew what was
happening beyond the range of his own vision. Oblivious to the stirring scenes round, the newspaper bulletin boards foolishly announced the trivial news of the day before, the doings of Congress and the President, and all the other commonplace matter that seemed so important then. As to the real news of the day, there is nothing anywhere, nothing as to
the damage in other parts of the city, the number of fatalities, the fate of nearby cities, nothing but anxious speculation, and a chance word here and there. Disquieting rumors began to circulate that the city's prisoners lay dead in the ruins of the jail, that hundreds had been crushed at the city hall, and thousands killed in various hotels
south of Market Street, that the mechanics pavilion had burned before the injured and dying, who had been taken to it, could be removed to places of safety. None knew, then, how little truth there was in most of the rumors. Later wild stories that Chicago had slid into Lake Michigan, that Manhattan Island was submerged, that all the Pacific
Coast cities were demolished by earthquake or were burning, spread among the people, but they created only a mild surprise. They were thought probable enough, but of doubtful origin. Anyway, it would be time to find out after the fire stopped and ordinary life had been resumed. The people were not worrying at all
about the outcome of the fire. It had not crossed Market Street, and in the Wholesale District it seemed to be dying out. The frequent roar of explosions and the quick puffs of smoke as building after building was blown up indicated a stubborn contest there, and the slow spread of the flames seemed to presage success. At about ten o'clock the word was
passed among the watchers on the hills that a fire had started in Hayes Valley, and it needed but the rising columns of smoke from the neighborhood of Gough and Hay Streets to confirm the rumor. Of the origin of this fire it is claimed that a woman, after satisfying her curiosity for a time, went into her house to breakfast on ham and
eggs. The chimney was broken, the house took fire, and to the conflagration working elsewhere throughout the city was added another great fire. This manner of accounting for it is so plausible that the conflagration had started, it became generally known as the Ham and Egg Fire.
Finding block after block of framed buildings in its path and with a brisk breeze blowing behind it, the fire burned rapidly in the direction of the city hall, turning aside for a while to leap the space of a whole block to the lofty spires of St. Ignatius Church and College on Van Ness Avenue. This was an institution that had cost nine hundred
thousand dollars to build, and with its magnificent organ and mural paintings of the finest was reputed to be the grandest Jesuitical church in the world. The building with the organ, the mural paintings, and all the invaluable emblems it contained were destroyed. Only gaping unroofed walls were left. A few minutes before there had been
no fire within several blocks. There was no warning, no opportunity to save any of the precious contents.
