1906 San Francisco Fire: Insurance Arson, Dynamite and the Panic of 1907

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At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a rupture along about 296 miles of the San Andreas Fault shook San Francisco for 42 seconds, offsetting some ground by up to 28 feet. Professor Andrew Lawson's 1908 report showed that buildings on bedrock fared far better than those on filled marshes and valleys, where soil liquefaction took hold, and a three-inch tsunami recorded by a tide gauge at the Presidio later helped place the epicenter offshore. Broken gas and water mains set off more than 30 fires, including the Ham and Eggs fire in Hayes Valley, which started at a cracked chimney and burned City Hall. Fire Chief Dennis T. Sullivan was fatally injured when a hotel chimney crashed into his firehouse.

Untrained crews dynamited buildings for firebreaks, which turned them into kindling and spread the flames, and the fire burned for four days across 490 blocks and 25,000 buildings. Because policies covered fire but not earthquake damage, Captain Leonard D. Wildman of the Army Signal Corps reported residents setting their own damaged homes ablaze. Insured losses of $235 million to $265 million bankrupted 20 insurers and drained gold from European banks, and the Bank of England's rate increase helped bring on the Panic of 1907. City leaders called the disaster the fire to reassure investors and kept the death toll low until a 2005 revision put it above 3,000.

• Enrico Caruso fled the Palace Hotel with a signed photo of Theodore Roosevelt and vowed never to return.
• Botany curator Alice Eastwood saved core type specimens from the California Academy of Sciences.
• The army built more than 5,600 navy-blue relief cottages that rented for $2 a month, and a few still stand.
• Mayor Eugene Schmitz issued a shoot-to-kill order for looters while General Frederick Funston's troops patrolled with fixed bayonets.
• Chinese residents defeated a plan to move Chinatown, and burned birth records let immigrants claim native birth, giving rise to paper sons.