Disappointing. Dennis Smith is an ex-firefighter and highly regarded author; his books Report From Engine Co. 82 and Report From Ground Zero were best-sellers and received critical praise However, San Francisco Is Burning doesn’t do much for me. At almost the very beginning, Smith gets way out of his depth with his description of the physics of earthquake ground shaking:


“Consider a weight on a string, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. If the weight is hit by a force at the lowest point in its path to the earth, that action will create another pendulum going in the direction opposite the force, due to the simple Newtonian explanation that for every action there is an equal reaction. If the force, however, hits the weight at anywhere other than at the lowest point in its path it will not create another pendulum but a circular motion. This circular action combined with both the pendulum motion and an up-and-down motion are the three most fundamental movements in nature. If oscillation and waving are added to these three motions, the net affect will approximate the movement of the ground that might be felt by a person during an earthquake. It can be beyond Newtonian in relation to the original point of the quake, and if one is inside a house, one will move the way the house moves, and the house will move according to its construction and the soil it sits on.”


Well, alright then. If anybody understands that, I invite you to explain it to me. Smith is on firmer ground when recounting the post-quake fires, but even here he seems awfully derivative. He recounts many of the same anecdotes related by Fradkin – the tavern owner trampled to death by an escaped herd of longhorn cattle panicked by the quake, for example. His most interesting contribution is his discussion of the efforts of the US Navy and the US Army in fighting the fires.


Smith makes General Frederick Funston the villain. Funston took control of the city after the quake and brought in troops from nearby military bases to enforce his authority. The problem, according to Smith, is that Funston’s actions were almost all incorrect. Funston had his soldiers patrol for looters and evacuate threatened areas rather than actually fight fires – with the exception of blowing up buildings to create firebreaks.


Smith claims that the anti-looting patrols were overenthusiastic, sometimes resulting in the summary execution of innocent citizens. His evidence is all anecdotal: well after the disaster, various people reported seeing soldiers shoot looters – or just ordinary people. The issue is complicated as there were several armed official or quasi-official groups operating in San Francisco simultaneously; the Regular Army, the California National Guard, the San Francisco Police Department, the Special Police civilian auxiliaries, miscellaneous police forces and security guards belonging to railroads and other private entities, and ordinary citizens who picked up guns and stood guard over their homes or businesses. Fradkin and Smith agree that some looters or suspected looters were shot, but neither provides any sort of documentary evidence. (To be fair, the huge historical collection made just after the disaster – including hundreds of eyewitness stories, was apparently lost sometime in the 1920s. Both Fradkin and Smith hint that the loss might have been deliberate, to encourage investment – but there’s no evidence for that either).


Smith’s second contention is that the military evacuated people unnecessarily; he cites a couple of examples where workers and homeowners were prepared to defend their houses or industries, but were forced away at bayonet point. Smith is able to cite a couple of cases where defense measures were successful – people patrolled their roofs and extinguished burning embers; office workers threw all flammable building contents out the windows and saved the building shell – and another case where a building probably could have been save if the army had left people alone (a mostly sheet-iron and steel-frame flour mill where the only burnable material was grain in the bins). I tend to agree with Smith but it’s not fully clear. Although the fires were not moving very fast, there was still the possibility that a large number of civilians could have been trapped if evacuation had been delayed or not attempted.


Could the troops have served better if they directly assisted the firefighters? Perhaps. Smith doesn’t give a coherent analysis of what the Army should have done, other than dropping hints here and there in the text. My general impression is that Smith thinks the Army should have acted the same way as civilians who successfully defended their property: patrolled roofs for embers, moved furniture and flammables out of exposed buildings, and perhaps recruited civilians to help rather than simply forcing them out. The problem is that the Incident Commander system was decades in the future. For the Army to have acted this way, it would have been necessary to have somebody on the scene that Brigadier General Funston recognized as more expert than himself; this is almost impossible to imagine.


Fradkin and Smith both agree that the large-scale dynamiting was worse than useless. Once again, this was on Funston’s initiative; he was apparently aware that dynamite had been used successfully in fighting other large urban fires. There were two problems; although everybody talked about “dynamiting”, both during and after the fire, what was actually used most often was black powder. Further, there were no explosive expert available, so the buildings tended to by blasted to bits rather than collapsed, which either just left a heap of flammable rubble, or worse, dropped little bits of flaming debris all over. What Smith said should have been done is pick a defense line well ahead of the fire, clear all the burnable contents – furniture, merchandise, etc. – out of the building, then used just enough explosive to drop it in place. There were enough troops to get this done, but no one with sufficient authority or understanding to get them to do.


Although hard on the Army, Smith has nothing but praise for the Navy, specifically the destroyer Preble under the command of Lieutenant Frederick Freeman. The Navy, of course, had a salient advantage over the Army; they had the Pacific Ocean to draw water from. Freeman hooked up SFFD hoses to Navy pumps – took a while, the connections weren’t compatible – and successfully defended the waterfront (he reportedly didn’t sleep for 36 hours). Smith notes that Freeman’s contribution was ignored when Funston made his report. (Freeman’s subsequent career was rather sad; he was dismissed from the Navy during WWI for being drunk on duty and eked out a small living renting his house. A loyal subordinate eventually got his dismissal changed to an honorable discharge, which made him eligible for a pension – just in time for Freeman to die of cancer).


The writing’s well done, although Smith breaks up the book into numerous small chapters – some only a paragraph long, but each with a large heading. There are good maps showing the fire’s progress, and a photograph section. The references are a little strange; some of the works don’t seem to have much relevance (The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake; The Path Between the Seas; the Origin of Continents and Oceans, for example). I think if I had to choose I’d probably recommend Fradkins book, although both have flaws. ( )

This book would be a great gift if you have a fire fighter in the family. It is very heavy on the firefighting details. It was also an indictment on when political corruption meets a disaster. ( )

Very interesting book. It was such a huge event that it gets a little long trying to cover everything and I definitely would have appreciated a period map of the city. But, all in all, I really liked it. ( )

Looks at the San Francisco Earthquake by focusing on the political coverup designed to downplay the earthquake and blame the greater damage on the fire. Does an excellent job of covering the disaster as well. ( )