A City Tossed and Broken
Page 12
By midday on Wednesday, seven hours after the quake, the fifty or so small fires that had begun with the first shock had leaped and spread into three main fires: the fire south of the Slot, which extended from Market Street to the waterfront; the fire north of Market Street, which encompassed Chinatown, the financial district, and eventually would spread up to Nob Hill and then be halted at Van Ness; and the “ham and eggs fire” — so named because it was reportedly begun by a woman cooking breakfast with a broken chimney above her stove. This last fire in Hayes Valley would grow and spread with frightening speed, taking out City Hall and then heading for the Mission.
Hospitals were evacuated and the injured moved to the ferries or the Army hospital in the Presidio. The mayor moved his central command three times as again and again the fires took over whole sections of the city.
A firestorm is so powerful that it generates its own wind, which helps to further feed it. In some sections the pavement was so hot it caused people’s feet to blister. The superheated air raised the temperatures into the eighties. The smoke cloud rose two miles high over the city.
The firemen of San Francisco faced an impossible task. There were no telephones or fire alarms operating. Messages had to be carried by foot, by car, or by horseback. The fire trucks were pulled by horses. Without functioning hydrants, the firemen had no way to fight the massive blazes. They used everything they had — water from abandoned cisterns, salt water if they could get it, sand, even soda water — to tamp down what they could. They dragged by hand a heavy hose from San Francisco Bay all the way up to Sacramento Street — a trip more than a mile long, and possibly the longest stretch of fire hose in firefighting history, according to historian and former firefighter Dennis Smith. By the time the final firefight took place to hold back the fire at Dolores Street, some of them had been on duty for three days straight. Man and beast fought past the limits of exhaustion.
Personal heroism counted. In two major institutions — the U.S. Mint and the U.S. Post Office — the workers refused to leave. They were brave men who fought the flames with cistern water on the roof of the Mint, and for the post office, with whatever they had on hand. Because of their heroism, after the fire the financial situation in San Francisco remained stable despite the burning of the banks, and the mail continued to be delivered — and nobody had to buy a stamp. For two years, the mail was free.
The writer Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild, left his ranch north of the city with his wife, Charmian, shortly after the quake. They traveled as quickly as they could to San Francisco. There he gathered material for his firsthand account of the aftermath of the quake. They walked the city that night until the soles of their feet blistered from the hot sidewalks, and finally slept in a doorway. London later wrote an article for Collier’s Weekly, telling of the awful beauty of the orange sky and the tremendous wind generated by the firestorm. He told a story of a millionaire on Nob Hill calmly telling him that everything he owned would burn in fifteen minutes and render him penniless.
By the time the fires went out on Saturday, half of the city had been destroyed. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were gone and 225,000 people were homeless. An estimated five hundred city blocks had been incinerated. Whole sections of the city looked as though they’d been wiped out by a massive bomb.
Fire chief Dennis Sullivan did not see or hear of the firestorm that engulfed the city. He never regained consciousness and died of his injuries the fourth day after the earthquake — after the fires had been defeated at last and a cooling rain fell.
City officials worried about investors being scared of rebuilding a city so vulnerable to earthquakes. They set the official death toll at 498, an obvious attempt to convince the world that San Francisco was a safe place to invest. Historians now believe that at least three thousand people perished, and some scholars place the number even higher.
Money and help poured in from around the United States. In a remarkably short period of time, tent cities were set up in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and the larger squares. People lined up for food and water. Some people lived in the parks for three years.
The prejudice against the Chinese population that already existed reached a boiling point. Chinatown had been completely destroyed by fire. A plan was set in motion to relocate fourteen thousand Chinese to the mudflats south of the city. Those who fled the city during the fires were prohibited from returning. Racism collided with greed, for it certainly occurred to many that the land Chinatown had taken up was a potentially lucrative parcel close to downtown. It took the personal intervention of the Empress Dowager of China, who declared her intention of rebuilding the Chinese embassy in the heart of where Chinatown had stood, to get the city leaders of the plan to back down.
San Francisco did rebuild, and today it is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But it suffered a blow that took years to recover from. After the quake, industry, commerce, and shipping moved south to Los Angeles.
There are few reminders of the quake today: The hydrant on Church Street that saved the Western Addition is painted gold every April 18. At dawn on April 18, a ceremony is held for Dennis Sullivan, and firefighters dip their ladders in tribute. Five thousand redwood cottages were built to house homeless families after the quake, and two are preserved and can be viewed in the Presidio. The portico of the burned Towne mansion, where Minnie and her father pause to view the burned-out city, now stands in Golden Gate Park. Called Portals of the Past, it can be found on the shores of Lloyd Lake, a tribute to the courage and perseverance of the people of San Francisco.
At 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, an earthquake tore through San Francisco, destroying huge swaths of the city and killing, contemporary historians believe, more than 3,000 people.
Catastrophic fires billowed throughout the city of San Francisco following the devastating earthquake. Fifty fires began in the first hours after the quake, and joined together to form a wall of flame a mile and a half long.
A crack running down the middle of a San Francisco street indicates the power of the massive 1906 earthquake. Scientists today estimate the quake registered between 7.9 and 8.2 on the Richter scale.
This famous photograph taken by the photographer Arnold Genthe, titled “Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906,” shows the devastation caused by the earthquake.
After the earthquake, many of the frame houses in San Francisco toppled from their foundations.
Views of Market Street in San Francisco, before the earthquake (above) and after it (below).
After the earthquake, survivors took to the relative safety of the open streets. With half the city destroyed, 225,000 survivors were left homeless. In the photograph on the left, two women are sifting through the rubble of a house, presumably searching for salvageable items. On the right, two men uncover a safe among the rubble and destruction following the earthquake.
A modern map of the United States showing San Francisco, California, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On writing A City Tossed and Broken, author Judy Blundell noted, “I was lucky enough to live in San Francisco twice in my life, and it remains one of my favorite cities. On my walks from my apartment in Noe Valley to Dolores Park (called Mission Park in Minnie’s time), I always made sure to walk on the side of the street where the golden hydrant commemorated the last great battle to douse the Mission District fire. I often stopped to read the plaque. That spot offers a grand vista overlooking the city, and I would stand for a moment and try to imagine what it all looked like in 1906.
“I experienced several quakes while living in the city, but nothing like the event of 1906. I do remember the feeling of surprise when the shaking begins — and the spurt of fear every San Franciscan feels when they think, Is this the big one? In researching this book I soon learned that the earthquake and subsequent firestorm were much worse than even my imagination had conjured up those years ago. The three days after the quake were not as simple as
I’d thought — history rarely is. Wrong decisions and blunders were made, some took advantage of the calamity, but by and large the citizens of San Francisco showed remarkable courage and optimism during and after the ordeal. I think Minnie has the same character traits that led so many to make San Francisco their home — an adventurous spirit and a talent for reinvention.”
Judy also encourages anyone who wants to know more about the quake to read the fascinating personal accounts of those who lived through it. They are available online at the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco: www.sfmuseum.org/1906/ew.html.
Judy Blundell is the National Book Award–winning author of What I Saw and How I Lied and the acclaimed novel Strings Attached. In addition, she has written many other books for middle-grade and young-adult readers under various pseudonyms, including a host of Star Wars novels; Premonitions, which was an ALA Reluctant Readers Best Picks and was chosen by the New York Public Library as a 2004 Best Books for the Teen Age; and Beyond the Grave (Book 4), In Too Deep (Book 6), Vespers Rising (Book 11), and A King’s Ransom (Book 2 of Cahills vs. Vespers) for the New York Times bestselling series The 39 Clues, as Jude Watson. Judy lives in Katonah, New York, with her family.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following:
Cover portrait by Tim O’Brien.
Cover background: City Hall, April 1906, San Francisco, Library of Congress.
Man walking up a devastated San Francisco street, ibid.
Catastrophic fires billowing through San Francisco following the devastating earthquake, ibid.
A crack running down the middle of a San Francisco street, ibid.
“Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906,” by photographer Arnold Genthe, ibid.
San Francisco houses toppling from their foundations, ibid.
San Francisco’s Market Street before the earthquake, ibid.
San Francisco’s Market Street after the earthquake, ibid.
Two women survivors sifting through the rubble of a house, ibid.
Two men survivors uncovering a safe among the rubble and destruction, ibid.
Map by Jim McMahon.
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Minnie Bonner is a fictional character, created by the author, and her diary and its epilogue are works of fiction.
Copyright © 2013 by Judy Blundell
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blundell, Judy.
A city tossed and broken : the diary of Minnie Bonner / Judy Blundell. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Dear America)
Summary: It is 1906, and when her family is cheated out of their tavern, fourteen-year-old Minnie Bonner is forced to become a maid to the Sump family, who are moving to San Francisco — three weeks before the great earthquake.
ISBN 978-0-545-31022-2 (paper over board)
[1. San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Calif., 1906 — Fiction. 2. Earthquakes — Fiction. 3. Household employees — Fiction. 4. Family life — California — Fiction. 5. Diaries — Fiction. 6. San Francisco (Calif.) — History — 20th century — Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series: Dear America.
PZ7.B627146Cit 2013
813.6 — dc23
2012014742
e-ISBN 978-0-545-51006-6
The display type was set in P22 Arts and Crafts Hunter.
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
Photo research by Amla Sanghvi
First edition, March 2013