As drunks and looters hindered firefighters’ efforts, mayor tells troops to shoot anyone disobeying orders
Copyright 2006 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
All Rights Reserved
By CARL NOLTE
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
This is the seventh of a 10-part retelling of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake — and its aftermath.
Two days after the Great Quake of 1906 unleashed a storm of fire, it seemed inevitable that the whole of San Francisco — everything — would be destroyed.
It was Friday morning, April 20. Already, downtown, South of Market and Nob Hill were a pile of ashes. The Mission District and North Beach were next in line.
Firefighters decided to make a last stand at Van Ness Avenue, a 120-foot-wide boulevard that was the most fashionable address of 1906 San Francisco. If they could blast a firebreak and stop the fire at Van Ness, the thinking went, they could save the Western Addition and the rest of the city.
Mayor Eugene Schmitz, meanwhile, was desperate to get a chaotic city under control. He thought that looters were everywhere — that authority belonged to whoever took it.
Whatever the case, unruliness in some quarters was hindering firefighting efforts. Navy Lt. Frederick Freeman, who was in charge of a force of sailors and Marines battling blazes on the waterfront, had “constant trouble ... owing to large numbers of drunken people.”
“The crowds rushed saloon after saloon and looted the stocks, becoming intoxicated,” he wrote in his official report. “In my opinion great loss of life resulted from men and women becoming stupefied by liquor and being too tired and exhausted to get out of the way of the fire.’'
When the sailors and city firefighters tried to make a stand on Rincon Hill, they found that able-bodied men refused to help unless they were paid.
To Schmitz, it was clear what he had to do. He put out the word: Anyone caught looting, or committing any other crime, would not be arrested. They would be shot.
Army Gen. Frederick Funston ordered more than 1,000 troops from Fort Mason, the Presidio, Alcatraz and Angel Island into the city and put them at the disposal of the mayor. But when he heard about the mayor’s order, he sent Army Col. Charles Morris to ask Schmitz whether he would be responsible for such an order.
“Yes,” the mayor said. " ... I would be responsible for that order; we could take no prisoners; we must stop looting; and therefore to shoot anyone caught looting.”
Later in the day, the order was slightly changed. Looters or those suspected of “any other crime” were to be killed. The mayor’s proclamation, printed up later in the day and distributed all over San Francisco, had KILL in capital letters.
The order was, of course, illegal. No mayor has such authority.
Regardless, almost everyone in San Francisco believed that the city was under martial law. And the Army needed little prompting to enforce the decree.
Mary Doyle, who lived on Henry Street, wrote that “a large number of men and women have been shot down for disobeying the orders of the soldiers.”
John Jorgensen, a 21-year-old junior executive of Price, Waterhouse and Co., said he knew of several men killed for shirking work.
An Army private named Koff wrote home to say “looters are being shot left and right. ... At night, you’d think a war is going on because shots are being fired all the time.”
Another soldier wrote: “People caught looting are being shot without warning.”
Sister Alice Studevant of the Salvation Army said that anyone starting a fire, even in his own undamaged house, was shot. “Corpses were left lying on Market Street after being shot,” she wrote in a letter to friends.
Some historians said the military shot as many as 500 suspects, but no one knows for sure.
Despite the pandemonium, the firefighters and sailors never gave up.
Freeman and his men were unsung heroes of the fire. Working pretty much independently, they used two Navy fireboats, a destroyer and the crew of the Destroyer Perry to keep the fires from burning the waterfront. This would be of critical importance later, as the undamaged port would be used to bring in material that rebuilt the city.
Finally, on Friday, the biggest fire in the city was stopped at Van Ness Avenue. It wasn’t easy. A misguided use of explosives at the Viavi Building, at Van Ness and Green streets, spread the fire eastward into Russian Hill.
At another point, the blaze nearly jumped Van Ness Avenue. The shingles on the highest steeple of St. Mary’s Cathedral on the western side of Van Ness at O’Farrell Street began to smolder.
But the pastor of the cathedral parish, the Rev. Charles Ramm, and a couple of other men climbed the bell tower, just under the golden cross. With the aid of a hose, they reached the top of the church tower and put the blaze out.
There was one last stand. The Mission District fire had moved toward Dolores Park at 18th and Dolores streets. It had come within a few yards of the city’s oldest and most treasured building, the 1794 Mission Dolores.
But after an exhausting stand by the firefighters, the fire lines held at 20th Street.
Then, with the help of 300 civilians who pushed and pulled the heavy fire engines up the steep hills near Dolores Park, the firefighters tapped into a hydrant at 20th and Church streets. They turned the valve — and water poured out. The Mission District was saved.
By the morning of Saturday, April 21, the fire was under control.
There was little time to celebrate. Now came the horrific task of assessing the damage.
Sunday: a city in ruins