The fire that destroyed a great part of San Francisco in three days, beginning April 18, 1906, was the greatest conflagration humans have ever witnessed.
On the morning of April 18, 1906, the first jarring shock of an earthquake struck at 5:12 AM and lasted 28 seconds. On that fateful morning the population was awakened to the terrifying spectacle of their city's destruction. Within a few hours 52 fires had started, many of which would have been general alarm blazes even under ordinary conditions. Before the flames were extinguished three days later, 478 persons were dead, including the Chief of the Fire Department, Dennis T. Sullivan, and the property loss was $350,000,000. The area burned was 4.7 miles square miles, which included all of the downtown territory.
A three-alarm fire had broken out during the earlier part of the morning at Bay and Mason Streets, and most of the firemen in the downtown district had just turned in, dead tired, when the quake struck. The entire alarm system went out at the first shock. Of the 600 glass wet batteries operating the system, the earthquake broke 556 of them. As a result, not one alarm was ever sounded for this greatest of all fires!
The main reservoirs for the city were twenty miles away; six miles of the distance was disclosed to be
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http://guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/fires/great_fires/1906.html
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