The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire eBook
Charles Morris
While the soldiers under General Funston took military
charge of the city, squads of cavalry and troops of
infantry patrolling the streets and guarding the sections
that had not yet been touched by the flames, Mayor
Schmitz and Chief of Police Dinan sprang into the breach
and prepared to make a desperate charge against the
platoons of the fire. This was not all that was
needed to be done. From the “Barbary Coast,”
as the resort of the vicious and criminal classes was
called, hordes of wretches poured out as soon as night
fell, seeking to slip through the guards and loot
stores and rob the dead in the burning section.
Orders were given to the soldiers to kill all who
were engaged in such work, and these orders were carried
out. An associated Press reporter saw three of
these thieves shot and fatally wounded, and doubtless
others of them were similarly dealt with elsewhere.
A band of fire-fighters was quickly organized by the
Mayor and Chief of Police, and the devoted firemen
put themselves in the face of the flames, determined
to do their utmost to stay them in their course.
Cut off from the use of their accustomed engines and
water streams, which might have been effective if
brought into play at the beginning of the struggle,
there was nothing to work with but the dynamite cartridge
and the gunpowder mine, and they set bravely to work
to do what they could with these. On every side
the roar of explosions could be heard, and the crash
of falling walls came to the ear, while people were
forced to leave buildings which still stood, but which
it was decided must be felled. Frequently a crash
of stone and brick, followed by a cloud of dust, gave
warning to pedestrians that destruction was going on
in the forefront of the flames, and that travel in
such localities was unsafe.
FIGHTING THE FLAMES.
All through the night of Wednesday and the morning
of Thursday this work went on, hopelessly but resolutely.
During the following day blasts could be heard in
different sections at intervals of a few minutes, and
buildings not destroyed by fire were blown to atoms,
but over the gaps jumped the live flames, and the
disheartened fire-fighters were driven back step by
step; but they continued the work with little regard
for their own safety and with unflinching desperation.
One instance of the peril they ran may be given.
Lieutenant Charles O. Pulis, commanding the Twenty-fourth
Company of Light Artillery, had placed a heavy charge
of dynamite in a building at Sixth and Jesse Streets.
For some reason it did not explode, and he returned
to relight the fuse, thinking it had become extinguished.
While he was in the building the explosion took place,
and he received injuries that seemed likely to prove
fatal, his skull being fractured and several bones
broken, while he was injured internally. In the
early morning, when the fire reached the municipal
building on Portsmouth Square, the nurses, with the
