I found this quote of one of his pleas: Pretty prophetic, I'd say. Makes one think of all the voices of history which were ignored but gave warning to pending disasters. (Titanic, as an example)Doctor Q said:Dennis Sullivan, the Fire Department's Chief Engineer in 1906, wanted to upgrade the water system to prepare for a fire and had warned the city about the potential for a large conflagration, but his ideas were shot down for monetary reasons. Save a nickel, lose a city. And he was one of the first to die in the quake, when an adjacent theater building collapsed into his fire station (here on the map).
"Dennis Sullivan, the fire chief, repeatedly asked the Board of Supervisors for money to build a high-pressure water system to fight fire with water from the bay. "This town is in an earthquake belt,'' he said in a speech. "One of these fine mornings, we will get a shake that will put this little water system out, and then we'll have a fire. What will we do then? Why, we'll have to fight her with dynamite.''