Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Speaker 1: I'm to blame a chok reboarding and I'm fair outing.
Speaker 1: And we recently covered the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which
Speaker 1: at the time was one of the deadliest workplace disasters
Speaker 1: New York and perhaps the entire country had ever seen.
Speaker 1: It was a tough one. It was tough to research
Speaker 1: and tough to talk about. It was tough to research
Speaker 1: because it was such a sad topic, but it is
Speaker 1: easy to see why listeners requested so much, because it
Speaker 1: was fascinating to learn about. We were really fascinated by
Speaker 1: all the little vignettes from survivors, rescuers, witnesses. Some of
Speaker 1: the points that really struck us the most were how
Speaker 1: quickly the fire started and spread, how split second decisions
Speaker 1: people made seemed to make a difference, and how it
Speaker 1: really influenced the lives of the people who were involved
Speaker 1: and legislation for years to come. So because of that episode,
Speaker 1: we decided we wanted to take a look at some
Speaker 1: other famous fires and just look at some of the
Speaker 1: parallels between them, look at some of those little split
Speaker 1: second decisions and how that might be the same in
Speaker 1: one fire that takes place in the sixteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: then one take one that takes place in the eight hundreds,
Speaker 1: and then just see how they're different too, exactly. And
Speaker 1: we're also going to take a look at the pre
Speaker 1: fire environment some parallels there. I mean, we saw in
Speaker 1: a Triangle factory how it was really set up for
Speaker 1: a disaster in a lot of ways, with the cotton
Speaker 1: scraps lying around, and the really crowded environment and people
Speaker 1: just generally ignoring signs of danger that we're there to
Speaker 1: begin with. So the first fire on our list that
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a look at is the Great Fire
Speaker 1: of London, a very famous one, and like the Triangle
Speaker 1: Factory fire, the situation here was really just right for disaster.
Speaker 1: Fires weren't unusual in London in the first place in
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, since timber construction and narrow streets were
Speaker 1: really the norm at the time. So by September of
Speaker 1: sixty sixty six, a long, hot summer had made matters
Speaker 1: even worse. It was dried out both the city and
Speaker 1: its water reserves, and according to the BBC, some people
Speaker 1: had actually seen this coming. Some people had warned of
Speaker 1: the possibility of a major fire in London even before
Speaker 1: it got to this point, but most citizens at the
Speaker 1: time had something else on their minds right Sarah plague. Yes,
Speaker 1: plague at that time had killed about sixty eight thousand
Speaker 1: people in the years leading up to sixteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: so they were worried about it. Understandable that that would
Speaker 1: be your top concern at the time. So when the
Speaker 1: Great Fire did start on September two, sixteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: started in Putting Lane near London Bridge, and it was
Speaker 1: in the home of the King's baker, Thomas Farrenore and
Speaker 1: a workman had smelled smoke around two in the morning
Speaker 1: and told the baker's family, and they had all managed
Speaker 1: to escape by fleeing over the roofs, and their maid
Speaker 1: was too scared to leave, and so she became the
Speaker 1: first casualty and this fire, even though you're gonna probably
Speaker 1: be surprised to learn that very few people die in
Speaker 1: this fire, considering how disastrous it was, she was too
Speaker 1: scared to get out of the house. Though. Yes, the
Speaker 1: house was quickly engulfed in flames, and from there the
Speaker 1: fire spread through the narrow streets of London. But the mayor,
Speaker 1: Sir Thomas Bloodworth, for some reason, really wasn't a concerned
Speaker 1: at first. He was woken up about an hour after
Speaker 1: it started, and after being awoken he said a woman
Speaker 1: might piss it out of the fire. That was the
Speaker 1: colorful statement he makes. So it kept spreading from there
Speaker 1: and London Bridge was burning by dawn. So just to
Speaker 1: give you a little understanding of how they fought fires
Speaker 1: in this time, or one of the ways they fought fires,
Speaker 1: they would build fire breaks or create firebreaks by destroying
Speaker 1: buildings in a fire's path so that it didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to spread to. It would just be brought to
Speaker 1: a sudden halt. And the strategy had been used in
Speaker 1: a fire in sixteen thirty two on London Bridge and
Speaker 1: it created this open space that ended up saving the
Speaker 1: bridge in sixteen sixty six, so that the fire was
Speaker 1: confined to one part of the city. It couldn't jump
Speaker 1: the river, but it continued to just get worse and
Speaker 1: worth on the westward side of the city and it
Speaker 1: was fanned by the wind, and the mayor kept on
Speaker 1: hesitating though about the fire break. So even though they
Speaker 1: were tested, it seemed to work. He wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: order a bunch of buildings blown up. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: what that came down to is just the cost of it.
Speaker 1: It was going to cost so much to rebuild those buildings,
Speaker 1: and that's why he was so hesitant about it. But
Speaker 1: King Charles the second fields a little differently. He did
Speaker 1: want those fire breaks, but by the time that he
Speaker 1: ordered the mayor to destroy as many buildings as possible
Speaker 1: to make that happen, the fire was already too out
Speaker 1: of control for that strategy to really work. They would
Speaker 1: destroy houses too late, or the wind would just help
Speaker 1: the fire jump over the gaps that they made. And
Speaker 1: if you destroy the houses too late, you're just creating
Speaker 1: tinder essentially. Yeah, because it was all right if they
Speaker 1: didn't have time to clear it out before the fire
Speaker 1: got to it, they were actually kind of helping it along.
Speaker 1: So the fire raged on for three days. By Wednesday
Speaker 1: it finally started to die down own, and then by
Speaker 1: Thursday it was extinguished. Flames did spring up again briefly
Speaker 1: at Temple Church, but the Duke of York made kind
Speaker 1: of a quick, split second decision there to blow up
Speaker 1: several buildings at once with gunpowder and create a firebreak
Speaker 1: right away, so they were able to squelch that, so
Speaker 1: the fire was out by that point. But the damage
Speaker 1: to London was really significant. A large part of the
Speaker 1: city had been destroyed, including a lot of the civic
Speaker 1: buildings old St Paul's Cathedral. I think we mentioned that
Speaker 1: in an earlier episode on St Paul's that one of
Speaker 1: many times it burned down. Eight seven parish churches had
Speaker 1: burned in about thirteen thousand, two hundred houses and according
Speaker 1: to the BBC, though only four official deaths were reported,
Speaker 1: but some people think that the actual death toll might
Speaker 1: have been a lot higher than that. But regardless of
Speaker 1: the number of people that died, it affected thousands of citizens,
Speaker 1: somewhere around one sixth of London's population, and they had
Speaker 1: to flee to places like Hampstead and Highgate and more Fields,
Speaker 1: which was that last one was the chief refuge. I
Speaker 1: think within days they started putting together plans to rebuild
Speaker 1: the city, and Christopher Wren of all people, got involved
Speaker 1: with this rebuilding plan and presented plans to sort of
Speaker 1: remake the city, regularized the streets and um even though
Speaker 1: they stuck to old lines in most cases, they didn't
Speaker 1: just change the map of the city entirely. They broadened
Speaker 1: a lot of the streets and built houses out of
Speaker 1: brick instead of these sort of rough and tumble wooden
Speaker 1: houses that caught fire so easily. Yeah, but it didn't
Speaker 1: stop there. Like the Triangle shirtwaist factory incident, everyone was
Speaker 1: looking for someone to blame after this. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: a simple rebuilding. They wanted somebody to take the blame.
Speaker 1: So a parliamentary committee investigated the incident, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: find that it was anything other than a quote act
Speaker 1: of God. Even though a French watchmaker confessed to the
Speaker 1: crime and was executed for it, nobody really believed he
Speaker 1: did it, so people were still kind of always coming
Speaker 1: up with theories of what could have happened, especially since
Speaker 1: this was a time of political and religious upheaval. People
Speaker 1: pointed a finger at foreigners a lot and to Catholics
Speaker 1: for years. In fact, a monument that commemorated the fire
Speaker 1: born inscription blaming quote to the treachery and the malice
Speaker 1: of the Popish faction until eighteen thirty one, when we
Speaker 1: can presume somebody sort of chiseled it off discreetly or something.
Speaker 1: But um, it seems a little strange that there would
Speaker 1: even be a blame game if the fire starts in
Speaker 1: a bakery. I mean, it seems like a place where
Speaker 1: a fire accident could easily happen. Yeah, I agree, and
Speaker 1: I think most people accept that it was probably just
Speaker 1: the result of carelessness on the part of the baker
Speaker 1: or has made someone in the household, and we can
Speaker 1: rely on that at this point. All right, So our
Speaker 1: next fire might also be the result of carelessness, but
Speaker 1: no one's entirely sure. It is a fire that happened
Speaker 1: in Japan in sixteen fifty seven, the may Reiki Fire
Speaker 1: or the Great Fire of mary Ki in Japan's of
Speaker 1: course been in the news a lot lately, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people have probably heard of the Great Canto
Speaker 1: earthquake of nineteen twenty three, And it was a noon earthquake,
Speaker 1: which meant lots of cooking fires were going and so
Speaker 1: a big fire started across Tokyo and killed and estimated
Speaker 1: one thousand people. But before Tokyo was even Tokyo, back
Speaker 1: when it was still a Doh, this fire took place,
Speaker 1: and it was the center of power for the Tokugawa
Speaker 1: Shogunate and the fire was just as deadly. Way back
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty seven, a hundred thousand people were killed yea.
Speaker 1: And considering how many people were killed in that fire,
Speaker 1: it might be especially surprising to learn that Edo had
Speaker 1: actually been a little fishing village just a few generations earlier.
Speaker 1: In the late sixteenth century, the showgun Tokugawa Ayasu had
Speaker 1: moved to Pan's capital to Edo and started a series
Speaker 1: of developments there, and over the years the city just
Speaker 1: got bigger and bigger. Mountains were cut down to fill
Speaker 1: in the bay. Edo Castle was rebuilt, and by sixteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven the city was operating under something called alternate attendance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the alternative attendant system. And if you're trying to to
Speaker 1: think of what this is, it's kind of like a protoversih.
Speaker 1: Almost all the daimio or lords had to live in
Speaker 1: the capital part time, and when they weren't there, when
Speaker 1: they were back on their own estates, they had to
Speaker 1: leave some of their family behind as collateral, sort of like,
Speaker 1: don't get up to any trouble off in your own estates,
Speaker 1: because we have all you care about here. So there
Speaker 1: was this versioning elite living in Edo and and buying
Speaker 1: lots of things and in need of lots of services.
Speaker 1: So that meant a lot of regular folks were moving
Speaker 1: to town to provide those services, merchants and entertainers and
Speaker 1: the like. So because of all the crowding, the narrow
Speaker 1: streets and alleys set up in this Kyoto grid style,
Speaker 1: and of course built and lined with houses made of
Speaker 1: wood and paper, we're sort of at risk for fires.
Speaker 1: And fires consequently did happen a lot, similar to the
Speaker 1: situation shan in London that we just discussed, But in
Speaker 1: Japan they even called these little fires the flowers of edge.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just blooming across the city from time to time.
Speaker 1: But the fire that hit in sixteen fifty seven was
Speaker 1: the worst, and it started in a temple. Legend has
Speaker 1: monks burning an unlucky long sleeve kimono. Um, you'll see
Speaker 1: different accounts. Sometimes the kimono belonged to several young girls
Speaker 1: who died before they could wear it. Sometimes there were
Speaker 1: a couple kimonos, each having belonged to a girl who died.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this gives us the fire's other name, which
Speaker 1: was the flurisode fire or long sleeves fire. You might
Speaker 1: hear it referred to that way, so strong winds from
Speaker 1: there carried the fire across moats and canals, and then
Speaker 1: the wind shifted and the fire burned the shops along
Speaker 1: the Sumida River. Supposedly an unattended cooking fire in a
Speaker 1: Samurai household helped feed it further too, so it just
Speaker 1: kind of grew. Sixty of the city was destroyed, and
Speaker 1: most of Edo Castle was destroyed. Yeah, and again, like
Speaker 1: lone in, the whole thing made the feudal government really
Speaker 1: reconsider how they were going to rebuild and whether there
Speaker 1: were improvements that could be made before you set up
Speaker 1: a similar situation again. And especially because by sixteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: so just a few decades after this fire, the population
Speaker 1: was larger than that of London or Paris, so you
Speaker 1: had a lot of buildings to consider. This time they
Speaker 1: mapped out the city and spread the buildings out more.
Speaker 1: There were, still, of course, later fires. They didn't totally
Speaker 1: eliminate that threat, but according to a book called an
Speaker 1: Introduction to Japanese Architecture, this was a fairly successful attempt,
Speaker 1: early attempt at city planning in a real turning point
Speaker 1: for the city. Yeah, and even laws that were made
Speaker 1: afterwards suggest fire consciousness. While commoners weren't allowed the extravagance
Speaker 1: of building a third floor in their homes, they were
Speaker 1: encouraged to use super expensive tile roofs and kura or
Speaker 1: fireproof storehouses. So both of those things kind of became
Speaker 1: status symbols. Yeah, so you have sump Stuary code sort
Speaker 1: of just avoiding one avenue if it, if it helps
Speaker 1: make the city more fire safe, go for it, even
Speaker 1: if even if you look impressive doing it. It became
Speaker 1: cool to be safe. So the first two fires we
Speaker 1: talked about are pretty well known, but the third fire
Speaker 1: on our list is one that got overshadowed a bit
Speaker 1: by another fire that occurred at the same time. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Pestigo Fire, which occurred in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, sometimes called the Great Peshtigo Fire. Took place
Speaker 1: obviously in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and it has the distinction of
Speaker 1: being the deadliest fire in US history. But the reason
Speaker 1: it's not as well known as some other incidents is
Speaker 1: because it occurred on the same night as the Great
Speaker 1: Chicago Fire October eight, eight seventy one. Some people think
Speaker 1: maybe even the same hour, right, Yeah, same hour but
Speaker 1: a bit of a more mythical beginning, I guess, which
Speaker 1: is one reason that it might have overshadowed Pestico a
Speaker 1: little bit. We actually have a podcast on the legendary
Speaker 1: origins of the Great Chicago Fire, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people think it was started by miss O'Leary's cow. So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that and how true it is, you can go back
Speaker 1: and listen to that podcast. Part of the reason why
Speaker 1: it was overshadowed, though, is because Chicago is a bigger
Speaker 1: city and news was going to get out faster about
Speaker 1: a huge fire in Chicago that leaves a lot of
Speaker 1: people dead. Yeah, Pechico was a railroad and lumbering town,
Speaker 1: probably not as exciting as a big urban area like Chicago.
Speaker 1: There were about eight hundred men who were employed by
Speaker 1: a local would wear wooden't wear factory sorry, and to sawmills,
Speaker 1: and the town had about one thousand, seven hundred residents total.
Speaker 1: Once again, the conditions here were just right for a
Speaker 1: big fire. After harvesting trees, lumberjacks would leave piles of sawdust,
Speaker 1: brush and limbs known as slash, all over the forest floor.
Speaker 1: To add to this, men who cleared the land for
Speaker 1: railroads and farmers who needed to clear the land to
Speaker 1: plant in would torch trees, stumps, buildings, basically anything in
Speaker 1: their path. So small fire. As we're burning around this
Speaker 1: area all the time, and no one really thought anything
Speaker 1: of it. We're cool with it pretty much. But to
Speaker 1: make matters worse, there hadn't been that much rain during
Speaker 1: the summer in the early fall, so the area was
Speaker 1: especially dry, and by the first week of October, even
Speaker 1: the air in Peshtigo along the north shore of Green
Speaker 1: Bay was so thick with smoke from all of these
Speaker 1: little fires from the farmers and the lumberjacks and all
Speaker 1: of that that ships on Lake Michigan had to navigate
Speaker 1: by compass and harbor masters you fog horns to guide
Speaker 1: them ashore, so it couldn't even see where you were going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the environment, I guess just really set the stage for
Speaker 1: something eerie to happen. But no one knows exactly what
Speaker 1: started the big fire October eighth. A recent article in
Speaker 1: History magazine, I think in the March issue, actually discussed
Speaker 1: a couple of possibilities about that very thing. Lightning was
Speaker 1: apparently ruled out, but because of the conditions. Some people
Speaker 1: speculate there may have been instances of spontaneous combustion on
Speaker 1: the forest floor. Always makes a story more interesting. Absolutely, meteors,
Speaker 1: that's another. That's another one that helps make things interesting.
Speaker 1: Meteor showers are actually pretty common in the Upper Great
Speaker 1: Lakes region in the fall, So it's possible that chunks
Speaker 1: of a meteor could have landed in the Wisconsin woods
Speaker 1: and set all that tinder on fire. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: strong winds that night would have added to the situation,
Speaker 1: fanning fires, causing them to combine and spread. So wind
Speaker 1: is a major character and all of these fires that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, and chances are even if it wasn't meteors,
Speaker 1: even if it wasn't spontaneous combustion, just all these little
Speaker 1: fires that had been set throughout the area, once the
Speaker 1: wind came through, it kind of combined and helped them
Speaker 1: spread all over the place. But regardless of what caused
Speaker 1: the fire, around nine that night, there was an eerie
Speaker 1: roaring sound and then the fire just seemed to kind
Speaker 1: of fall out of the sky. Yeah, And and the
Speaker 1: wind really fed the flames, kept on feeding them, so
Speaker 1: it seemed like the air itself was on fire. People
Speaker 1: tried to outrun it, but they couldn't and somewhere burned
Speaker 1: in the streets. And the really strange thing here is
Speaker 1: it would seem like they were far away from anything
Speaker 1: that was combustible. They weren't standing near the burning building
Speaker 1: or the burning tree or something like that. They just
Speaker 1: would suddenly ignite. Yeah, I mean, it's like the witnesses said,
Speaker 1: the fire was almost in the air, and that's what's
Speaker 1: so scary about this one. Some sought refuge lying flattened
Speaker 1: clearings or in the water of rivers or in Green Bay,
Speaker 1: so they would actually get in the river and kind
Speaker 1: of hold their breath and only come up for air
Speaker 1: to try to avoid catching on fire. Other people hid
Speaker 1: in cellars, which wasn't a good idea because they suffocated.
Speaker 1: Some people hid in wells and in ponds as well.
Speaker 1: So the flames just kept on spreading. They traveled over marshland,
Speaker 1: and you might think that that would put it out
Speaker 1: because there's lots of water in marshy areas, but instead
Speaker 1: it would just ignite rising gases, and from there the
Speaker 1: flames were able to cross the Peshtigo River and jump
Speaker 1: the waters of Green Bay and Lake Michigan. So from
Speaker 1: there the fire spread into other Wisconsin communities, including the
Speaker 1: Door and Key Auntie Counties. It also spread into Michigan.
Speaker 1: It destroyed at least seventeen communities total, and Pestigo itself
Speaker 1: was obliterated in just an hour. And we saw that
Speaker 1: in I think the Triangle Factory fire to how quickly
Speaker 1: things seemed to happen. Yeah, so the fire just kept
Speaker 1: on basically until it had nothing left to burn. I
Speaker 1: think again, the winds have so much power. The winds
Speaker 1: changed and kind of turned the fire back on itself.
Speaker 1: But by that time it had already killed somewhere between
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred and two thousand, five hundred people
Speaker 1: eight hundred and Pestigo alone and destroyed about one point
Speaker 1: three million acres of forest land. So that's an area
Speaker 1: about twice the size of Rhode Islands. And by contrast,
Speaker 1: three people were killed in the Chicago fire, so way
Speaker 1: those numbers together. But by the time the word of
Speaker 1: all of this reached Madison, it took two days to
Speaker 1: do so. The governor and the state representatives had all
Speaker 1: gone to help out with the Chicago crisis, because of
Speaker 1: course that news had broken long before and everybody knew
Speaker 1: about it. And sequently, the Peshtigo fire didn't really get
Speaker 1: as much notoriety as Chicago, but it did lead to
Speaker 1: some new forest management programs and lumber harvesting techniques, again
Speaker 1: a few sort of social reforms or fire safety reforms
Speaker 1: coming out of a big disaster. The last fire on
Speaker 1: our list is one that listeners will probably be most
Speaker 1: familiar with, at least from a visual standpoint, because it's
Speaker 1: the most recent one, and that's the Great San Francisco
Speaker 1: earthquake and fire. And to talk about this one, we've
Speaker 1: of course got to talk about the earthquake a little bit,
Speaker 1: I think definitely. So at five twelve am on April eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, a four shock shook the people of
Speaker 1: San Francisco awake in their beds, and about twenty seconds
Speaker 1: later the shaking started again, except it was a lot
Speaker 1: harder this time, and it drove people out into the
Speaker 1: streets if they could get out of their houses. It
Speaker 1: lasted for nearly a minute, which seems like such a
Speaker 1: long time to be just waiting for your house to
Speaker 1: fall down or not around you. The famous tenor and
Speaker 1: Enrico Caruso for exam but was in town. He had
Speaker 1: just performed a big show the night before, and he
Speaker 1: described it like being on a boat at sea. If
Speaker 1: you can imagine how shaky that is. I'm sure some
Speaker 1: of you have probably been an earthquake, so you can't
Speaker 1: imagine it. But while the seven point nine magnitude earthquake
Speaker 1: could be felt as far away as central Nevada and
Speaker 1: southern Los Angeles, it was San Francisco that really got
Speaker 1: hit the hardest. Yeah, buildings collapsed. Weak masonry on the
Speaker 1: sides of homes kind of flopped off in sheets into
Speaker 1: the street, exposing dollhouse like apartments. Chimneys fell in on
Speaker 1: otherwise dirty wooden houses. Structures and formally marshy areas were
Speaker 1: just swallowed up in sinkholes. Yeah, there's a famous four
Speaker 1: story hotel that was swallowed up to the fourth floor
Speaker 1: and it just looks collapsed like a slinky sitting next
Speaker 1: to other buildings that are still their full height. Um
Speaker 1: and probably most importantly for our story, gas lines broke.
Speaker 1: But within half an hour the city's fire department had
Speaker 1: been They had responded to fifty two fire alarms, and
Speaker 1: they seemed to be keeping pace. They seemed to be
Speaker 1: putting out these little fires, keeping things under control. But
Speaker 1: the fires just grew and they merged, and they spread
Speaker 1: by dry wind from two main origin points, and one
Speaker 1: was the south of Market neighborhood and the other was
Speaker 1: north of Market Street near the waterfront. But because the
Speaker 1: water mains had been broken during the earthquake, the department
Speaker 1: didn't have that much to work with. They could put
Speaker 1: out these tiny fires, but when they were faced with
Speaker 1: these these growing walls of flame, there wasn't much they
Speaker 1: could do about it. Yeah, I think they only had
Speaker 1: eight fifty thousand gallons of water to use. So the
Speaker 1: alternate options they had were what they had to turn to,
Speaker 1: but those weren't really great. One of the alternate options
Speaker 1: was that they could tap old cisterns, and now those
Speaker 1: didn't have much water, so that was why that wasn't
Speaker 1: a great option. And the second option that they had
Speaker 1: was to have navy ships pump water in from the bay,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of slow. So yeah, both these
Speaker 1: were oh, and they didn't really get them that much
Speaker 1: water either. So to make matters worse, Fire Chief Dennis
Speaker 1: Sullivan had been mortally wounded during the earthquake. He had
Speaker 1: had a master plan for a fire in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and his replacement didn't. Yeah, so they didn't have some
Speaker 1: sort of operating idea of what to do, and things
Speaker 1: got more and more desperate, and the department's next move,
Speaker 1: after tapping the cisterns and pumping in the water, was
Speaker 1: to use dynamite to create fire breaks. And we've learned
Speaker 1: the danger of fire breaks already in this episode, but
Speaker 1: this is kind of an even worse situation. The Army
Speaker 1: base sent the wrong kind of explosive, flammable black gunpowder,
Speaker 1: and the explosives really just made things worse. So exploding
Speaker 1: buildings would shoot off debris everywhere, which would ignite at
Speaker 1: ruptured gas lines, and then the other thing that would
Speaker 1: happen is sturdy walls that really might have helped actually
Speaker 1: service fire breaks were destroyed and brought to brought to
Speaker 1: the ground in rubble. So later that day other blazes
Speaker 1: joined the wall of the main fire. They were judged
Speaker 1: at one point to be nearly twenty floors high and
Speaker 1: two thousand degrees. One started in Hayes Valley from a
Speaker 1: damaged chimney, and another one started at the restaurant Delmonicoes
Speaker 1: from a soldiers camp fire, and at that point the
Speaker 1: mayor ordered martial law. Yeah, and you can you can
Speaker 1: look at the order the proclamation, and it came out
Speaker 1: not long after after the earthquakes. Of course, people are
Speaker 1: still totally in a state of shock, and there's some
Speaker 1: practical advice like don't use your damage chimney, but way
Speaker 1: at the top it says will shoot to kill all looters,
Speaker 1: and I think people were a little disturbed by that,
Speaker 1: and it was something that got a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: after the fact. But by Friday night, the fires finally
Speaker 1: started to die down and it was over by Saturday.
Speaker 1: But by that point four point seven square miles of
Speaker 1: San Francisco had been burned, five hundred eight city blocks,
Speaker 1: and with so much destruction, you would think that maybe
Speaker 1: the large death toll three thousand to five thousand people
Speaker 1: were the result of the fire as well as the earthquake.
Speaker 1: But most of the deaths did occur during the earthquake
Speaker 1: because there's not much you can do when when something
Speaker 1: strikes and you're at home in bed, Whereas the fire
Speaker 1: people could see it coming and they had time to
Speaker 1: grab what they could and and get out, whether by
Speaker 1: ferry or or just going to other parts of the city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some people had to relocate a multiple times. Chinese refugees,
Speaker 1: for example, who stayed in the city were forced to
Speaker 1: relocate over and over. Yeah, so they faced some persecution there,
Speaker 1: although not the ones who had fled to Oakland. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: but um, just if there's so much out there on
Speaker 1: this fire, if you want to learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about it, or look at pictures. You mentioned when
Speaker 1: we first started talking about it that it's a very
Speaker 1: visual earthquake and fire. There's a great Smithsonian story with
Speaker 1: color photos. Actually it was a year before color photography
Speaker 1: was commercially available. It's kind of strange to look at
Speaker 1: a color pictures from nineteen o six. There's another interesting
Speaker 1: Smithsonian story about the men who stayed behind to defend
Speaker 1: the San Francisco meant and protect three hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: that was kept inside it, which is the equivalent of
Speaker 1: six billion dollars today and had would have had a
Speaker 1: pretty tremendous effect on the economy potentially if that had
Speaker 1: all been lost. But they stayed right in the path
Speaker 1: of the fire and used well water i think, to
Speaker 1: defend the building and it was stood the fire and
Speaker 1: became sort of a a memorial to the fire for
Speaker 1: the city of San Francisco because it was one of
Speaker 1: the few buildings that had survived. And today it's even
Speaker 1: in the process of becoming the Museum of the City
Speaker 1: of San Francisco. So you can potentially go visit this
Speaker 1: hallowed site of the fire at some point, and you
Speaker 1: can check out their website now too. That's where I
Speaker 1: found the Crusoe quote. They have all sorts of survivors accounts. So,
Speaker 1: like we said earlier in the podcast, it's definitely something
Speaker 1: sad to reflect on, but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: lessons to be learned, I think, especially if you're someone
Speaker 1: living in these areas that we've talked about well. And
Speaker 1: and you know, we live in Atlanta too, so we're
Speaker 1: a city where our official symbol is the phoenix. We've
Speaker 1: been burned down twice. Yeah, so I guess it would
Speaker 1: be appropriate for us to cover that time sometime too, maybe.
Speaker 1: But first we're going to move on to some slightly
Speaker 1: happier beat. Miss listener mail. So this email is from Michael,
Speaker 1: and I've got to read the subject line. Your podcast
Speaker 1: got me a date that definitely hot our attention, but
Speaker 1: he wrote in to say, I thought I would share
Speaker 1: a little story with you. I was traveling with a
Speaker 1: group of friends when someone decided to play twenty questions
Speaker 1: to pass the time. Instead of playing the normal, boring
Speaker 1: all game, we decided to play using historical figures. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe how helpful your podcast came. I knew literally
Speaker 1: every single person them that came up, Mata Harri, Lizzie Borden,
Speaker 1: the Lindbergh Baby, Harry Uddini two comes basically anyone you
Speaker 1: had covered recently in the podcast. As someone who had
Speaker 1: never really taken an interest in history before, I was
Speaker 1: amazed to see how much I learned in only a
Speaker 1: few short months. As silly as it might seem, a
Speaker 1: topic of history started a conversation with one of the
Speaker 1: girls we were traveling with, and we found we shared
Speaker 1: a lot of the same interests. We're now planning a
Speaker 1: trip to see some of the amazing historical artifacts at
Speaker 1: the Royal Ontario Museum. Thank you so much for bringing
Speaker 1: history alive. So thank you for writing in, Michael, Congratulations.
Speaker 1: We're glad we helped out a little bit. Yeah, hopefully
Speaker 1: we can help others in that department too. I've never
Speaker 1: thought of that as a goal of the podcast. The
Speaker 1: good thing to bond over though, like shared love of history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mutual interests. That's always something that brings people together. So
Speaker 1: if you have any more cool stories like that about
Speaker 1: friends you've made, people you've met through history, specifically our podcast,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear them. You can write us
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com or
Speaker 1: hit a step on Facebook or on Twitter at Nston History.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about how to stop a fire once one gets going,
Speaker 1: we have an article can you really Fight fire with Fire?
Speaker 1: And it's by Robert Lam. You can find it on
Speaker 1: our homepage by searching for fight fire with Fire at
Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.