San Francisco Is Burning by Dennis Smith

Here's Robert Hartwig, Chief Economist for the Insurance Information Institute in New York. The city's already tenuous water supply was severely damaged and the city's fire chief, Dennis Sullivan, was mortally injured in the first seconds of the earthquake.

That's one reason.Īnother reason is all those morning fires that were created to heat things, like in a Chinese laundry, those fires created to heat the irons so that the laundry people could work ironing sheets and pillow cases and so on, or to put a breakfast on or whatever, those fires became displaced.īOGGS: But earthquake and fire were just the beginnings of the catastrophe. SMITH: Why did the earthquakes cause the fire? Well, because flues were connected to the roofs and the earthquakes displaced many of the flues, and the heat from the fires, instead of going out, went to the roofs of the buildings and created fires. He's also a former New York City firefighter and the author of a book about the 1906 disaster called San Francisco is Burning. He is Chairman of First Responders Financial in New York. DENNIS SMITH (Chairman of First Responders Financial): Twenty-eight thousand buildings burned in the fires that were caused by the earthquake.īOGGS: This is Dennis Smith. And we could see the flash fires breaking out all over the city, you know. Unidentified Man #2: I remember my dad taking me across the street that evening and we watched the town burn. So I got up there as quick as I could and I helped pull the dead and the wounded people out. Unidentified Man #1: (On the Radio) I had heard in the morning of the earthquake that the Valencia Hotel on Valencia Street had collapsed. (Soundbite of Hearing Voices radio project) That morning, just before sunrise, the earth shrugged and San Francisco collapsed and burned. They were wandering in stunned silence or desperately searching or clawing out of rubble. The Queen of the West hosting the world's finest singer in the world's most popular opera, Bizet's Carmen.īOGGS: But the next day, no one was speaking of Caruso.

One hundred years ago, on the night of April 17th, 1906, the great tenor Enrico Caruso made his first and only appearance in San Francisco.īOGGS: The event was a brilliant jewel in the city's crown. Independent producer Jesse Boggs has the story of what happened.

The greatest destruction was not from the tremor itself but from the fires that followed.

Tomorrow's the 100th anniversary of one of the worst catastrophes ever to hit this country, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

San Francisco Is Burning by Dennis Smith