Big news! No earthquake in San Francisco today!

[xsedrinam]

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).

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)
"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.''

 

[WildCowboy]

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.

Sullivan was also the mastermind of the plan to dynamite buildings in order to create firebreaks if a massive fire ever broke out. He arranged with the Army in the Presidio to store dynamite for this purpose, and he was an expert (the only expert in the city) on how the plan should be carried out.

When he was killed right off the bat, the city still put the plan into action, but it went horribly wrong. The army first sent over gunpowder...great for starting fires, but not so much for destroying buildings entirely to create the necessary firebreaks. They used it anyway, with the expected horrible results. When they did get the dynamite, they didn't know how to use it correctly and weren't nearly as successful as they could have been.

Edit: Oh yeah, there was one other guy who was an explosives expert...he was drunk, but they let him blow stuff up anyway. He started 60 additional fires.

Edit #2: Found the article where I read this...interesting read.

 

[Aztechian]

I watched the History Channels show on this the other night. RE: dynomiting buildings - apparently they were one building away from creating the needed firebreak to stop the fires (sometime in day 2 I think). The only building left to demo was a pharmaceutical factory. So they blew it up... not knowing that there were massive amounts of alcohol inside. The fire from that continued to burn another 50 blocks

 

[Doctor Q]

I asked my parents what they knew about our family members who lived in S.F. in 1906. Great Grandma, 13 at the time, tried to get out of bed but was repeatedly knocked back down by the shaking. The family lost its home. She remembered being on the top of a hill with her siblings and parents, watching the city on fire. Without nothing left, they not only left the city but the country, returning some years later to the newly rebuilt San Franciso, where she lived the rest of her life.

 

[comictimes]

And it's going to be at least 25 years after the Loma Prieta quake damaged the eastern span of the Bay Bridge that we'll have a replacement...hope they get it done before the next big quake.

Oh god, don't even get me started on that.... although they're FINALLY making some headway... it's absurd though.

 

[WildCowboy]

Oh god, don't even get me started on that.... although they're FINALLY making some headway... it's absurd though.

At least they actually awarded the tower contract this week...for the same price it would have been before Arnold stuck his bicep into things...

 

[Doctor Q]

I don't know how well-prepared for a huge quake Los Angeles is either. We have our own areas built on reclaimed land, history of changing building codes, and questions about how good emergency services and communiations would be when the day comes. Being so spread out, L.A. probably has its own advantages and disadvantages in an emergency.

I work in one of those buildings that is designed to move with the ground, so the building survives even if the contents of my miles of bookshelves all come crashing down and bury me under user manuals and the oversized boxes they sell software in. If you come to rescue me, look under the Mac OS X Tiger box and the O'Reilly Sendmail manual.

 

[MoparShaha]

Anybody saw the parade on Market St. today?

I attended the ceremony at 5:12. I got there at 4:30 AM! It was very humbling listening to the survivor's stories.