San Francisco Earthquake and Great Fire

April 18 - Day 1 HERE.
April 19 - Day 2 HERE.
April 20 - Day 3 HERE.

ON THE FOURTH DAY, the final fire that swept the Mission District was stopped at 20th and Dolores sts. by three thousand volunteers and a few firemen who fought the blaze with knapsacks, brooms and a little water from an operating hydrant at 20th and Church.

This film shows some more of the ruins and street scenes.  Notice the sign reading “safes opened.”  Every business had a large safe and the fire fused most of them shut.  Even those that weren’t had to cool down for several days before they could be opened.  This film also contains the only clip that we have of one of the fire engines.  It appears briefly around the 1:50 minute mark.  Click to play…

The next film shows some more street scenes and one of the early soup lines set up for the refugees.

The thousands of tents sent by the U. S. Army were set up in the city parks and hastily became “home” for tens of thousands of refugees.  Public kitchens were established and the soup lines kept everybody fed and nourished.

Overall, between 225,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless with property damage estimated then at $400 million, which would equal approximately $8.2 billion in today’s dollars.

The following video shows life in the tent city set up in Jefferson Park and finishes with a soup line and soldiers patrolling the line to keep the peace.

The Army then built 5,610 redwood and fir “relief houses” to accommodate 20,000 displaced people. The houses were  grouped in eleven camps, packed close to each other and rented to people for two dollars per month until rebuilding was completed. They were painted olive drab, partly to blend in with the site, and partly because the military had large quantities of olive drab paint on hand. The camps had a peak population of 16,448 people, but by 1907 most people had moved out. The camps were then re-used as garages, storage spaces or shops. The cottages cost on average $100-741 to put up.

Construction yard for refugee housing

The $2 monthly rents went towards the full purchase price of $50. Most of the shacks have been destroyed, but a small number survived. Many of them were 2 or 4 shacks cobbled together to make larger homes.  One of the modest 720 sq ft homes was recently purchased for more than $600,000.

Neighborhood of former refugee homesteads

By 1915 the city was completely rebuilt with scarcely a trace of any earthquake or fire damage. This was accomplished by actually lowering the building standards below the pre-quake requirements. Many of the city’s buildings today are still those that were built under these lesser codes and in effect have large areas of San Francisco even more prone to earthquake damage now than it was in 1906.

A detailed analysis of the city today estimates that an earthquake even less powerful than the 1906 quake would completely destroy many sections of the city and result in thousands of deaths.

When it was all over, there were more than 800 city blocks completely destroyed.  Six months later, due to lack of tax revenue, more than half of the fire department was laid off and stations were closed.  Nothing is new in this world.

This concludes our coverage of the four days of fire and destruction in San Francisco in April 18 - 21, 1906.

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