San Francisco Earthquake and FIRE 1906

Photo:UCBerkeley.edu

SOLDIERS AND CLERKS SAVE CUSTOM-HOUSE.BRAVE FIGHT AGAINST FLAMES THAT
THREATENED TO DESTROY THE POSTOFFICE

To the Custom-house employees, the Appraiser's office attaches, detachments of troops and marines from the regular army and navy goes the honor of saving the Appraiser's building, the square block of stores and warehouses directly west of it, and Station B of the post office on the north line of Jackson street, above Sansome. The work of these firefighters demonstrated the benefit of even a little water.

The Appraiser's building is equipped with an artesian well, and on the roof, a 5,000 gallon tank hold the water pumped for flushing the toilets and general cleaning purposes. On the morning of the earthquake, when Appraiser John T. Dare reached the building before 8 o'clock, and saw that fire threatened the south or Washington street end of the building, he organized a bucket brigade and ordered that no water be used in any hose.

At each window he stationed one of a depleted force of Custom-house employees and Appraiser's attaches with mops and wet sacks, ordering them to douse any embers that fell on the window sills and to moisten any smouldering window frames. This work was kept up throughout the day, and by nightfall the fighters, completely fatigued by a hard day's toil, were rewarded with an assurance of success by the flames dying down on the low and dynamited Washington street buildings. All night a patrol watched the roof of the building and guarded the water tank with the same care and caution as though it were a bank vault.

Thursday the building was never in danger, and the watchers and fighters had a chance to rest. Early Friday morning, however, the north or Jackson street end of the building was threatened and the same tactic was employed as on the Washington street end, only that the fighting force was increased by the soldiers and marines, who fought like heroes in the face of heat that was almost overpowering.

A guard was detailed to patrol the roofs of the buildings on the square block west of the Appraiser's structure with buckets of water, maps and axes, and were ordered to smother all others and chop away any burning cornices. Their work was complete, and not one of the burning buildings in that location suffered more than a few hundred dollars damage as a result of the fire.

The building which housed Station B of the Post office was saved in precisely the same manner, although surrounded on three sides by the roaring flames and having a large hole rent in its roof by the failing of a heavy wall on it due to the earthquake, the soldiers and marines checked the flames with their wet sacks and mops and saved all the records, mails, stamps and money held in the office.

"The precision and determination with which these firefighters worked is beyond description," said Appraiser John T. Dare, yesterday, in speaking of the saving of this lone district in the heart of the northern burned section. "Never, even in war, did the soldiers and marines face the dangers they encountered in their glorious battle with flames, and never did the patriotic spirit of the few civilians and Government employees rise to such a height as when these soot and smoke grimed warriors, all but exhausted, came back to their superior officers and with the proper salute informed them that the danger had passed and the section was saved.

"If no official recognition is given to these men, their uphill victory will go down in the history of the city as one of the most remarkable and self-sacrificing acts of the calamity."

San Francisco ChronicleMAY 7, 1906

What the Chronicle article didn’t mention is that the excavation site for the new Custom House provided much of the water which saved the appraiser’s building directly behind it.

The Great San Francisco Earthquake in 1906 occurred on April 18^th. But most of the damage was done by three days of fire following the earthquake. The fire was the result of severed gas mains and the corresponding breakage of most of the city’s water mains. (One of the notable exceptions was a fire hydrant at 20^th Street and Church Streets. It is credited with saving the Mission District, and is painted gold every year on April 18^th. It, in fact, saved the building in which I’ve lived going on thirty-eight years.)

The current Custom House on Battery between Washington and Jackson Streets is the second U.S. Custom House on the site. The first was built in 1855 and stood for almost exactly fifty years. (Coincidentally, there was a major earthquake in 1865, which severely damaged the columned portico, afterwards removed.) There was a competition for the new Custom House, won by a pair of architects from St. Louis, Missouri. Mssrs. Eames and Young had studied at the Ecole Beaux Arts in Paris. The new building is a pastiche Renaissance revival building with certain French influences. Everything of value from the old Custom House was removed and stored in the brick appraiser’s building directly behind, before the old Custom house was intentionally demolished in 1905.

Excavation for the new building began. But 1905/06 –unlike these past several winters – was extraordinarily wet, so that construction on the new building was severely hampered. That turned out to be most fortunate, because when the water mains were severed as a result of the earthquake, the construction site acted as a reservoir. Not only was water used from the artesian well on the roof of the appraiser’s building, but water was pumped from the excavation site, which helped save the appraiser’s building – and everything of value from the old Custom House. Then because the appraiser’s building survived, so did the oldest San Francisco commercial buildings on Jackson Street – today the location of some of the finest antique stores in town.

SAN FRANCISCO ~ 5:12 AM, APRIL 18, 1906

San Francisco City Hall after the 1906 Earthquake. (from Steinbrugge Collection of the UC Berkeley Earthquake Engineering Research Center)

The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size. Rupturing the northernmost 296 miles (477 kilometers) of the San Andreas fault from northwest of San Juan Bautista to the triple junction at Cape Mendocino, the earthquake confounded contemporary geologists with its large, horizontal displacements and great rupture length. Indeed, the significance of the fault and recognition of its large cumulative offset would not be fully appreciated until the advent of plate tectonics more than half a century later. Analysis of the 1906 displacements and strain in the surrounding crust led Reid (1910) to formulate his elastic-rebound theory of the earthquake source, which remains today the principal model of the earthquake cycle.

At almost precisely 5:12 a.m., local time, a foreshock occurred with sufficient force to be felt widely throughout the San Francisco Bay area. The great earthquake broke loose some 20 to 25 seconds later, with an epicenter near San Francisco. Violent shocks punctuated the strong shaking which lasted some 45 to 60 seconds. The earthquake was felt from southern Oregon to south of Los Angeles and inland as far as central Nevada. The highest Modified Mercalli Intensities (MMI's) of VII to IX paralleled the length of the rupture, extending as far as 80 kilometers inland from the fault trace. One important characteristic of the shaking intensity noted in Lawson's (1908) report was the clear correlation of intensity with underlying geologic conditions. Areas situated in sediment-filled valleys sustained stronger shaking than nearby bedrock sites, and the strongest shaking occurred in areas where ground reclaimed from San Francisco Bay failed in the earthquake. Modern seismic-zonation practice accounts for the differences in seismic hazard posed by varying geologic conditions.

As a basic reference about the earthquake and the damage it caused, geologic observations of the fault rupture and shaking effects, and other consequences of the earthquake, the Lawson (1908) report remains the authoritative work, as well as arguably the most important study of a single earthquake. In the public's mind, this earthquake is perhaps remembered most for the fire it spawned in San Francisco, giving it the somewhat misleading appellation of the "San Francisco earthquake". Shaking damage, however, was equally severe in many other places along the fault rupture. The frequently quoted value of 700 deaths caused by the earthquake and fire is now believed to underestimate the total loss of life by a factor of 3 or 4. Most of the fatalities occurred in San Francisco, and 189 were reported elsewhere.

Excerpted from Ellsworth 1990.