San Francisco Is Burning by Dennis Smith

Yet Smith details how Funston's decision to dynamite buildings may have started more fires than it prevented, and notes how orders to evacuate civilians by force prevented many people from assisting in firefighting. Frederick Funston, proclaimed a hero with statues and honors for commanding Army troops during the battle against the flames. Freeman provides the opening and closing chapters, a conclusion that can bring tears.

Frederick Freeman, a hero of this account, who led sailors' efforts to battle the fires along the waterfront and whose heroism was forgotten or ignored in the aftermath. This isn't a story only of the near destruction of a great city - it's a tale of the people who lived there, how they dealt with disaster and, in the long run, how it dealt with them. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 has been retold and analyzed in hundreds of books, articles and documentaries over the years.įormer New York firefighter Dennis Smith spins a finely woven human story of tragedy, death, heroism and blunder in his book, 'San Francisco Is Burning.' Told with verve and a seasoned firefighter's knowledge, San Francisco Is Burning is the gripping and definitive account of one of the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.'San Francisco Is Burning: The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires.' By Dennis Smith.

Throughout, Smith reveals many unknown details about the event, from the city's great vulnerability to fire-due to its corrupt and hasty building practices-to the widespread racism the quake unleashed and the atrocities committed by national guardsmen. Smith cinematically recounts this terrible tragedy through the stories of the people who lived through those terrible days-from a valiant naval officer who helped save the city's piers and wharves to Eugene Schmitz, the crooked mayor, to the 'debonair scoundrel' Abe Ruef, the most erudite city boss in American history.

This watershed event in American history has never before been told with the richness of historical detail and insight that our foremost historian of fire, Dennis Smith, brings to it in San Francisco Is Burning. In all, 522 blocks and 28,188 buildings were leveled, and some 200,000 people dislocated. The ensuing fires that ravaged the city for days were responsible for the deaths of as many as 3,000 more. on the morning of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was struck by one of the worst earthquakes in history, instantly killing hundreds.

San Francisco Is Burning by Dennis Smith