Ok! It's 5:13 am on April 18, 1906. The earthquake is over, a lot of people are dead or trapped in the rubble. Almost right away, dozens of fires start across the city - many are small in homes and can be put out immediately. But some, especially in places where the gas lines have ruptured, are out of control in minutes. In a city where many are trapped or injured, they now need to run for their lives to escape the flames. After four days of fire and a heroic stand by the SF Fire Department and the US Military - 80% of San Francisco will be gone. Join us for part two of San Francisco's worst day - the Fire.
Ok! It's 5:13 am on April 18, 1906. The earthquake is over, a lot of people are dead or trapped in the rubble. Almost right away, dozens of fires start across the city - many are small in homes and can be put out immediately. But some, especially in places where the gas lines have ruptured, are out of control in minutes. In a city where many are trapped or injured, they now need to run for their lives to escape the flames. After four days of fire and a heroic stand by the SF Fire Department and the US Military - 80% of San Francisco will be gone.
Join us for part two of San Francisco's worst day - the Fire.
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your and we're back to another episode of
Doom to fail which that means I did the int introductions properly I'm bars joined here by Taylor and Taylor you're
you're did you did you change between recordings no I I took my sweatshirt off because I'm getting hot oh then we're
trying to do wardrobe changes between recordings um sweet and we're back to a new topic
where this G be a Taylor's joint and she's gonna play the regular game of me
guessing what she's going to cover and I'm gonna be wrong I mean you know what I'm going to cover because I covered the first half last
week San Francisco Fire yes got it
um so okay I feel like I got like 70% of
the way there and then the book I was reading was just like so long that I was like I want to die I was listening to it
at 2.5 speed last night and I was like this this has to end so um I feel by
ending of this I'm not going to land this as much as I want to but we'll we'll talk about it so before we
go and kind of recap last week and talk about the fire I'm gonna send you a
picture can I send it in the chat in this um uh I don't know but if not you
can send her slot I think it's a link I linked it twice I'm likeing I'm 100
years old there's a link can you click on that link please and describe what you're seeing in that
picture um complete and utter
Devastation and a giant fire that is black and white there is a clearly a
trolley system running down the center of the city one building for some reason is missing its entire facade which seems
bad because of the earthquake ah that'll do it but the rest of the um rest of the
buildings are standing I mean there's a lot of rubble in the street but yeah so
this is okay so this is like the day after the earthquake and I'll share this on social media but I think it's wild so
there's like a building missing a facade so like a dollhouse you can see inside and see the room and then there are
people sitting on the street sitting in the rubble kind of sitting in chairs looking down a big hill and the fire is
just two blocks away it's coming for them you know so I'm sure all of this
area was destroyed as well yeah but you don't know that I mean you don't know that it's coming for you
when you're looking at it because fire is strange directions all the time no I think you know it's coming for you I'll tell you why a little bit because it
came for everyone um um remember that the
earthquake happened at 5:12 a.m. on April 18th 1906 it was a 7.9 earthquake
and it was like 42 seconds long which is just so unbelievably long I can't even
imagine so a lot of people died immediately Chimes fell buildings collapsed and then do you remember what
happened to the fire chief by chance he walked home he was
sleeping in the living room but he walked in to check on his wife and he walked into an open hole yes so he goes
straight to the hospital that is Chief Sullivan he never wakes up he is like
he's there they don't tell him what's happening he dies a couple days later so the fire chief he is um he he doesn't
make it but um so there's like an acting fire chief
that I'll tell you about in a second but the fire chief dies um I also posted and sent you a text that I got a crowbar
said I would have one yeah you PR of you thank you and I was going to bring it in here to show you but then I was like I
should keep it under my bed duh that's like where it needs to be so I left it my bed so it's there I've I've also seen crowbars before I know I know so I have
a crowbar but um so also I'll add shoes under there and then the third rule is
to make sure you have water cuz water is going to be a big problem um in San Francisco like literally right now so
almost immediately after the earthquake communication is cut off between San
Francisco and the rest of the world um the telegraph System telephone system everything is is down and um the
earthquake is pretty much over it has a couple little aftershocks in the next couple days but
the earthquake damage is done like that is already done and now it's time for the fire so and we talked about this
before because of societies like in in London in 1666 like there was just fire
that was the only option you know like you had candles you had a fire in your house and then in Chicago you know there
was like you have a gas stove you have gas um lights and then now in San Francisco some things have electricity
like the businesses usually do but homes usually still have like gas lighting and and gas for everything so immediately
there are a bunch of fires because gas mans are broke chimneys fall down there's little fires kind of all over
the city but a lot of them are put out by people cuz they're like in their house so if you're like like in your kitchen and you see a fire like you
we've talked about this before like you saw a big fire in like a window or like a mirror and you like had to go put it out oh my God yeah terrifying yeah but
so that probably happened hundreds of times but someone was there so you're at your house you do it so there's no like
it doesn't spread it's just you at your house but then a lot of places where the commercial buildings where there's may be like a night one night Watchman but
not a lot of people so those fires got out of hand like really quickly
um most businesses did have electric lights but it was mostly the gas um the
gas like lines exploding that started all the fires by 7:30 a.m. so about 2
hours after the earthquake all of the gas had been cut off and it would be cut off for 23 days so for 23 days they
would not have access to gas and what people will do later is they will build
stoves out of bricks on the street so people were outside cooking for about a
month they weren't allowed like back in their homes to like have open cles and do things like that um I also wrote I
have no idea how to do that if was this it was April okay so it wasn't like freezing
cold it's not freezing I mean it's San Francisco so it's like San Francisco gets pretty cold and damp it's like damp
but like not the world um So within fires about three to four days long
there are 30 different fires about that kind of like converge like into one big fire it destroyed approximately 20
25,000 buildings 490 blocks were destroyed and in today's money the
damage would be 8 and a half billion dollars so it just like destroyed the
city um in the beginning the death toll that they were saying was about 300 but
like that cannot be true you know like we talked about with like the other fires like that's ridiculous like you
don't you there's so many people whose bodies you're never going to find and people who you don't know where at a certain place or whatever and especially
like they were discounting the people in Chinatown for a long time so now that
they started to count them then we think the number is a little bit higher so obviously like the death toll is probably closer to like 3,000 if not
more um a lot of bodies were just like unable to be found because they were burned so badly they're just like part of this Rubble the chief dies um but I
do want to emphasize that Chief Sullivan a lot of the good that happened during the fire and how prepared they were were
because of him he made sure that his you know his department they were fully trained they did a ton of drills they
were like ready to help the problems that they had were like you know water and like the fire was huge and all the
things but like the the firemen were as ready as they could have been and that was because of him so now that um he
is you know now that he is essentially dead he dies a couple days later but they never talk to him again um there's
going to be a new chief that is is going to have to step up and then the military is going to get involved as well there
are a lot of stories of things like and I hate this I think this is like the worst thing of like parents dying and
like the kids being left alone you know and like trying to figure out what to do so like finding like a baby by itself
like I hate that Mak me so upset but like yeah you know so like a lot of that is happening so right when it happens um
when the fire starts the last message that the Navy gets out of San Francisco to the rest of the world like over the
wires they say earthquake town on fire send Marines and tugs and that's it so
rest of the country kind of starts to know that it's happening and they start to kind of start to send relief but they really don't know like the extent of
what's going on there Oakland is not on fire San Francisco is so people are able to escape to Oakland I'll talk about
that in a second so some stories just like some like anecdotal stories like from people who are like doing Really
Brave things really crazy things are happening to them as this fire is just like building and building um the author
Jack London do you know who that is he wrote like The Call of the Wild about the dog oh yeah yeah go yeah yeah so he
lived 40 miles away and coler's magazine called him that morning and they said
can you go to San Francisco and tell us what happened so him and his wife went to San Francisco and they kind of just
like walked through the city as it was burning and like talked to people and like met people and he wrote an article
for Colliers and I listened to it today it's available on Wikipedia someone did like an audio version of it and some of
the things that you know he says is you know San Francisco is gone the earthquake is going to make this so much
harder so this isn't like a fire at a place where
like things aren't already destroyed you know what I mean like there's like the Rippling of the streets and you know all
the water remains are broken and all the gas Mains are broken so the town is already destroyed and then it's on fire
which makes it like that much worse you know yeah um and people were like he
said people were very calm um he saw someone offering $1,000 which is like
[ __ ] ton of money 1906 to help bring like a wagon of of trunks um somewhere
and then no one would help him and he eventually saw those trunks on fire like everything caught on fire people were like I was this like yesterday I was
worth $600,000 and today I have nothing and he went to a man's house and the man
was like this is my house like it'll be gone in 15 minutes you know and he was
like this is my wife's China he's like look at my piano isn't it beautiful and like he knows it's going to be destroyed
because of the fire is coming which is like horrifying okay Taylor you have 15
minutes M said save the piano okay so that was what I was gonna ask you you have 15 minutes to save the
three most valuable things in my home yes I feel like I have
like papers like our passports and like our birth certificates and stuff so I feel like I'd want to save those I also feel
like you know I thought about it like I don't know I feel like I would just like take a bunch of clothes and like underwear and like pajamas cuz like a
lot of people are going to be like dirty for a really [ __ ] long time after this because there's no burning water and water is so um so important thank
you miles and so rare that like you can only use it for drinking and cooking you can't use it to like take a
shower yeah you know you know what I what I thought was I would take
my laptop cell phone chargers and papers
Chargers is a good one to remember yeah because that's like the only connection you can really have to
the outside world but you're if we came together then we'd be set yeah
yeah we um but yeah so people are thinking so
there's some rumors and this happens in every disaster but there's rumors that like this is the end of the world people are like Chicago's on fire too you know
like every major city is on fire like the world is ending which like obviously is not what happened but people were
kind of panicking a little bit um there are a couple hotels obviously and
apartment houses that collapsed and they're just full of bodies and we'll just never know what happened to those people I think we talked about that last
week but they're just once the they're trapped in the rubble and then the fire comes and we'll never know um one of the
fires so several fires that kind of converge into one so one fire is called the ham and eggs fire they tried to say
that a woman was making breakfast but I don't think that that's true I think like that could have happened anywhere
you know but that ends up being one of the worst ones I don't really know say is good geography but this one is like South of Market Street and that one
ended up being the worst but other fires were starting like simultaneously um people were doing the same thing that
they did in Chicago where they were like burying their stuff so they would like bury all their China bury their Pian
like try to like bury stuff so it would be safe from the fire but a lot of that stuff was like so hot and another thing
that I think is it's science but it's wild is like the oxygen is one of the things that makes things catch on fire
so people had stuff in in like a safe at their house and they couldn't open the safes for at least a month because one
um like one organization tried to open theirs on May 2nd so April 18th to May 2nd and as soon as they opened it
everything caught on fire inside of it because it's still so hot inside and then once the oxygen hits it that's when
it ignites so they had to wait like at least a month to open things that were like super sealed which I think is crazy
um it's the same story that we had heard over and over we heard it in London we heard it in Chicago where people were
like charging a lot for like their carriages and their cars and to get people out of out of the Town um so you
know the prices were like obviously increasing like of course they would um one person in the book I I read one
person said like if he thinks that because you know in the Bible when in
Sodom and Gomorrah Lot's wife turns around and turns into salt why would I know that I don't know it's like a
famous story but some someone was like I think that she didn't die from that I think she died from carrying her trunk out of this town because like everyone
was carrying all their [ __ ] like one guy had like was carrying his dead wife people were carrying you know the all
they could just trying to like get away like save their couple you know their couple little things but then that got
me thinking like why would you have a trunk ever as your luggage it's going to be be super heavy and it's like a brick
so it's like when did we invent luggage with wheels and do you want to guess what year we invented that I when did we
invent Wheels do we have wheels back then did they invent did they know that round things roll back then first it was
1906 we've had wheels for like thousands of years oh okay oh my god
um anyway it was 1970 which I think is way late to figure out that you should put wheels on your
luggage a man named Bard d sat out invented rolling Luggage in 1970 and patented it in 1972 can you copy and
paste his name and find out what his net worth is because I bet it was like three3 billion dollar I mean like I
can't believe we think of that earlier it's real dumb everyone to have like a really heavy drunk so um people are
trying to just get out with whatever they have um one fun story is the California Academy of Sciences on Market
Street had a goddamn hero named Alice Eastwood she was a selftaught botanist
and she had preserved a ton of plant spe specimens and had all of the science
material and things there and so she went in the middle of the fire climbed over like all of the broken stuff from
the from the earthquake and saved a [ __ ] ton of scientific research she would she
climbed up six stories through all the rubble got as much as she could and she lowered it down to her friends with a
rope and they were able to save it she had to move it several times but she saved a lot of scientific work then so
great job Alice um people were rushing to the water so Oakland was out on fire
so they needed to like get their fairies were just like moving people moving people um across the bay to places that
like obviously were not engulfed in flames um at the pier it was Women and Children First and that reminded me that
Lindsay also wrote wrote my cousin Lindsay wrote to us because she said that like you kind of backed into being on
the right side of that Women and Children First argument because like essentially it is based on like the
patriarchal idea that women are nurturers but also I'm for it because I want to be first on the boat if you want
to be a true feminist sailor you will sacrifice your life to save mine I will not I will be first in the boat with my
kids so I have to Grapple with that on my own um over in Oakland the three major
English English English language papers um printed a paper together the next day
so they did like a joint um newspaper to tell people what was going on um a lot of people went to their workplaces to
save them because they were like my house is okay or my house is gone so what do I do next I'm going to go to my
office and try to save it because this is my place of employment and like I don't want to be a dick but like I would literally never do
that I mean like could you imagine like going to our our old office and being
like I'm super worried about this I'd be like that'd be like the last thing I would think of no I guess not I guess
like my relationship to my emplo place of employment is different now than it was back then so maybe I would
now but also everything's online everything's in the cloud everything's digital now I would never do that but
like I get people did that then but just was like oh my God I would literally never risk my life to save my office we
have to save the Staples chairs yeah no like L is this is a $1,500 chair but
still it has wheels you could like P push out on it no they clearly did not have wheels on chairs if it took that
long to met wheels on luggage they definitely didn't have wheels on chairs until like 2013 probably no I think I'm
gonna fact check myself um who invented chairs with wheels
because I think it's Charles Darwin wait it's
Darwin yeah okay I thought it was Thomas Jefferson but the internet is telling me
now it's Charles Darwin going to Kora for no reason um but it was a long time
ago like longer ago than wheels on luggage wild now people are saying no I
thought maybe it Thomas Jefferson either way history of the office chair anyway we maybe we'll get there so Taylor why
don't why don't we like why don't we you know why don't we just like put our heads together and just list off
everyday items and figure out if they're better with chairs on it with wheels
I love everything about that idea I'm 100% in well well guys the next we'll do
a bonus episode where we just list off every item we we can think of 5,000% um
so people were doing that like one photographer got a lot of really good shots of the city because he went to a
photography store and the guy was like take anything you want it's going to you know it's G to get burned anyway so just like take it um I know you you have not
seen peewee's cre Adventure right I mentioned it during the Alamo episode I think I have so jum well I haven't seen
all of them but I've definitely seen I mean I no you didn't say was it
Peewee yeah okay maybe not I'm think about the other guy who um the other
weird guy he also got caught jerking off in a in a
theater not PE he goes to death row Ernest Ernest
I'm confusing Ernest with Peewee okay disregard Blair and I watch Ernest saves Halloween or one of them recently and
it's still still pretty fun um so okay so Pew's Great Adventure he is somewhere
and there's a pet store on fire and he is like I got to see the animals so he
goes in and he's like opening the cages and there's like monkeys and there's dogs and cats and like bunnies and he's
holding the fish tanks every time he goes in he se he sees a cage full of snakes and and he's like every single
time and he brings out all the animals out and finally he the last animals in are the snakes so he comes out of the birding building and he's holding two
handfuls of snakes and he's like and he hates that it's so funny but
during this great fire two young men did save all the pets of a pet store which is very nice they broke the windows yeah
that would be me while you're saving the orphans from the orphanage I'm saving the animals for sure perfect um I don't
know if you remember last week we talked about the palace hotel which was the nicest hotel in town and it had survived
it was earthquake proof oh really is that where that was I thought it was yeah cool but um it burned down they
rebuilt it in 1909 and it's still there but the original one did burn down even though it did survive the
earthquake um another kind of fun thing that happened is there was a bank called the bank a lot of the banks I mean they
burned out but the bank of Italy was run by a man named Amadeo Petro Giani and he
was the owner and he took all of the money to his house which was like $2 million like a [ __ ] ton of money he took
it to his house he had some men guard it and he was able to give loans and take
deposits so he was really important in like rebuilding because he knew he knew all of his customers he knew what they
needed he was able to like you know loan money to get more money um and in two
years the bank of Italy was in a new building and kind of ready to go and he pioneered
branching um so he was like one of the first people to like have like branches of his bank like around around the city
and then in the 1920s he um merged with a smaller Bank in Los Angeles and became
the Bank of America which is pretty cool yep I I I so my well not my first job
the longest job I had before we worked together was at Bank of America and so I looked at the history of it was like
wild pretty cool um the um I don't know if you remember but also there was an opera the night before
the earthquake and the singer en enrio Caruso he's the one who saved his signed
picture of Terry Roosevelt that's the thing that he saved but he said I will never return to San Francisco and he
didn't he died you know 20 years later um but he also looked awesome so if you ever want to look up enrio cruso he
looks amazing um some buildings were saved by locals so there was a cathedral
that was saved by people and what they did is one guy climbed to the roof and he tied a rake to a um to a rope lowered
the rake down and they attached a hose to the rake and he pulled it up and soaked the roof so that it wouldn't
catch on fire as fire was kind of coing through the air and like ashes and Embers were flying through the air
people would they'd land on the roof and they would just chop off those shingles you know just to like stop it as much as
they could so a lot of people were able to do that people would soak sheets in wine and put them on their roofs just to
like try to get the the fire to stop and um another building that was saved was
the mint that had all the the gold and like the money in it was saved by a few people who were very invested in in
Saving it um and it was one of the only buildings to survive in like downtown s Francisco um the people were inside
fighting the fire as it kind of came closer and closer and when it ended they you know opened the doors to nothing you
know which was just like crazy they were like in this building ing it and then not even really paying attention and then like everything was gone when they
when they open the doors um so a little bit more about how they actually stopped
the fire cuz it wasn't rain and the winds didn't change like it was stopped but not before it spread so the hydrants
and sewers started to dry up not all of them but a lot of them did and active um
active fire chief doter doy he was in in charge and he was trying to create fire
breaks but they were doing it like absolute wrong way they were using gunpowder and dynamite and they were
only knocking down buildings that were already on fire but what you have to do is be like ahead of
it by a lot yeah knock over the next building so the they're knocking down
buildings that were already on fire so when they ex when they essentially bombed the buildings all of the Embers
and the air would just set the next house on fire so it would just like keep going you know so that really helped
helped it like get bigger and bigger um there was a general it kind of works though well it didn't work no no it no
no if you played out to this end conclusion it would work because if you just did that all night
long eventually you would have destroyed every house thereby extinguishing the fire when it hit the ocean sure sure
sure if everything's gone and there's no fire well there you go so it would have worked congratulations
um that order came from that order came from General Frederick bunston nicknamed
Fearless Freddy he was in the military and he got the military involved right away his Superior General major um gley
Major General gley he was out of town but was slowly coming back but in the meantime this kind of crazy dude
Frederick Funston he did a whole bunch of stuff like he had a um he was the one
who was who said to use Dynamite to only do houses that were already on fire um
he had like finally gotten a message out cuz a lot of messages were not getting out people were like you know obviously
like send want and messages to their family like I remember when there was a earthquake in San Francisco in the 90s
my aunt vienne who lives there called and said we're okay right before the
phones went out you know yeah and we were like so grateful that we she was able to get through to us cuz I remember
I remember calling and she's like there's an earthquake we're okay and then the phones went out and we at least knew she was okay but these people don't
some people will never know what happened to their family and some people are just like waiting for anything so
telegraphs and and mail was free but it took a long time for it to like well it took a while for it to get going um but
they did eventually get you know uh news over to DC Teddy Roosevelt was the
president he asked people to donate to the Red Cross because this was 76 years before FEMA was um spun up so he asked
people to do it to the Red Cross to to be able to contribute Taft with the Secretary of War and he
was you know in in contact with Funston and gy as well so one thing that Fon did
is he did kind of a pseudo a pseudo martial law like it wasn't martial law
he they would like say that later but like it kind of was so the order was anyone who was looting or you know
lighting a stove or a fire in a place they shouldn't should be shot to kill it was a shoot to kill order so a lot of
military people came over and they had they were fully armed and being like
pretty aggressive they would like yell at people who if they had like a candle it they would um force people to help
with certain things and it's like they would have probably helped anyway they didn't need to do it like at gunpoint you know but I I am in favor of like
when everything's fcked beyond all belief dealing with like basic human
greed or criminality or whatever it's like yeah just [ __ ] shoot him like we we have way any normal bodies to bury we
don't [ __ ] need to Y that [ __ ] anymore like yeah I'm sure and I'm sure officially there were very few deaths by
gunshot but there are probably more like you said like I'm sure that happen more often some and like one of them um they
killed a Red Cross worker by accident you know like people were riled up and scared and so the wrong time to have a
gun um but people you know they were kind of forced to help which I also again think is kind of okay like they
would have helped anyway like what else are you going to do like help rebuild so um there was a fireboat called the
fireboat Leslie and they tried to get water from the sea but it was like the peers are wood it was like hard to get
to them they did some pretty incredible things by like coupling hoses together and some of the hoses would go for over
a mile from the ocean to the houses and that saved like a part of the city as
well um they use sewer water which is gross but like you know whatever you can get I mean it's 1900s
like everything probably smell like [ __ ] anyways exactly I mean it was like I think one of the first things in the book that I read the longest minute was
like everybody was wearing hats because you had to wear hats because it like there's constantly like [ __ ] in there
you know like there's everyone's burning coal everyone's all these things so like
yeah like no one smell cre um but another thing they did is they stopped liquor sales almost immediately and they
broke all the bottles of booze that they could there was The Distillery that had cuz they don't want people to like get drunk and freak out but also I'm like
if anything preserve the liquor and like ration it and like literally just give it out to people like why would you I
know it's the opposite I know um there was a Distillery that made that made
whiskey and they had like a 100 barrels of whiskey and they were like excuse me um we basically have bombs like we have
this whiskey like it is going to catch on fire it's going to explode is that is that possible though because I was
thinking about when you said the wine thing was like oh Ever Clear like it's not flammable
because the liquid content the O2 H2O content has to be so
significantly higher the flammability of the LI liquor in there right that's a
good question and I don't know so please email us dipod gmail.com if you know because I was thinking that too but I
was like wine must have less of an alcohol content and then like whiskey and like vodka and like hard liquor
feels like that could be flamable more like isn't that what a moltov cocktail is I don't know all the things but
anyway they moved all the barrels of whiskey to a place that had already been burned so that it was like out of the way um talkit about I I literally I
literally reached over while you were like talking and I was I I typed what into Google and I was going to follow
with what is in a Molotov cocktail and then I was like that is for sure going to flag me for the FBI so I'm going go
ahead and change uh if anybody just happens to have that information handy or willing to sacrifice our search
history to the GT no I think it's just I think it's just booze and then
a rag well it's got to be more specific than that it can't like what is like it can't just be like a my ti right no but
it's like but like a margarita no yes yes in a salt room my
Molotov cocktail little wedge of lime be so cute
that be such a cute bottle oh I guess it mostly has like gas in it probably
are M 12 cocktails legal is this question of course they're not legal you're stupid you were stupid if you're
asking that question I mean the components are legal if we figure out what's in it yeah but
you can bomb someone's house yeah but you can own a moloto it's like owning a I own a molot I have
bottles I have Rags I have gas in my car you know we got to stop recording our
crimes anyway okay anyway so another thing talk about last week was like the
relationship that the Chinese Americans had to the rest of the city um people in Chinatown didn't want to leave because
they were afraid that they W you know they were going to get deported and they were right to be afraid um they had to
if they didn't have their papers like they were definitely like in trouble and a lot of people during the rebuilding
wanted to just like not have a Chinatown and ban them from coming back to San Francisco proper um but that was ended
up being overruled and they were able to come back and and build the CH town that is is there today people were definitely like scared and then also of course like
the soldiers who are just there in under martial law are like raiding people's homes so they raided Chinatown which is
like bummer to yeah um people started to make
their own fire breaks they had their own like committees there were like people trying to figure out what to do because the communication is kind of all over
the place everyone is like sleeping in Parks it gets really really foggy people are getting sick sleeping on the ground
they have like one blanket that's something that happened a lot in the other ones we talked about too like outbreaks of chalera and the refugee camps things like that um everyone
though is helping like if people are working they're working so people are like you know they're helping in bakeries they did not run out of food
they ended up they were able to like you know feed um a lot of people everyone was pitching in um at one point someone
had like a like there were like 2,000 chickens in like a I don't know chicken farm that they like let loose and
everybody was like grabbing chickens which I think is hilarious because also I would not know what to do with a chicken with a
chicken I mean you you you you cut it head off right feathers yeah and
then yeah you cut its head off um you plug its
feathers I guess they didn't have Fried Chicken back then so like you probably have just like they always had fried
chicken um either way people are pitching in kind of helping each other
um another person who is a hero from this time is Lieutenant Frederick Freeman he was um on a boat and him and
his men stopped the fire from spreading on day three they went to like a big portion of of the city and were able to
able to save it he worked kind of on his own with no direction and um so he
really you know really saved a lot of people saved a lot of property and later
in his life during World War I he was the captain of a ship that was torpedoed and then he started he was so upset
about it he started drinking and going into addiction ended up being dishonorably discharged and kind of living like a vagrant lifestyle but in
1941 before he died FDR pardoned him and gave him an honorable discharge because of all the work that he did during the
earthquake and other things he had done before that but he had like felt so guilty about being torpedoed um but so
people are working together and they are working really hard like 80% of the city is destroyed but the mail was working by
Friday which is a big deal because it was like Tuesday to Friday the mail was working people were able to you know
talk to their to tell their their family around the country around the world they were safe and the fire ended up stopping
because you know the people stopped it they did the correct fire braks they it didn't rain it wasn't anything like that
it just like they ended up stopping and also obviously it ran out of [ __ ] to burn because it was like it burned most
of the city um in the aftermath there was no water so we just talked about this like for bathing so people were
getting sick people had to dig poop holes in their backyards you know like it was like a pretty bad like sanitation
issue for a while um people were giving donations but some of the donations had strings attached like there was a part
of the city that did not have cable cars and the cable car company was like we'll donate you know $100,000 if we can build
a car in this place where we couldn't have one before things like that a little bit of corruption happened um the
judge who was the judge of the the Wong k Kim Arc case that we talked about last time he was actually the president of
the American Red Cross at this time so he was able to like he like invested a lot and like helped in um in San
Francisco the um like the Empress of China tried to donate money and the people were like no which is so racist
and dumb take it yeah stupid um like I hate in a movie when someone's like I am too moral to take this check I'm like
I'll take that check thank you yeah I'm kidding you know like you're dumb I have no principles yeah um people were given
tents some people had insurance so some insurance companies paid out a lot of the ones that were based overseas are on
the East Coast never really paid out what they were supposed to pay out cuz a lot of it and I don't know if I'm sure
you remember this from owning a home in California but like you have to have separate earthquake insurance from your regular home insurance and so people had
to prove that their house was destroyed by the fire and not by the earthquake
yeah you know believe it you know it was like when I was living in Florida and I knew people who were homeowners in
Florida and they had to get separate hurricane or Food Insurance from everything else and yeah it was yeah
expensive yeah yeah so a lot of people ended up living in little housing camps
so they would build these like little 200 square foot houses and then you could move them later so you would like put down a down payment and then end up
being able to move the house to maybe where your original land was or moving it um all the little houses were blue
because the Army had extra blue paint which is kind of fun um there was another another story where like the
Army had all these boots that were the wrong color and the people didn't want to wear them so they were in a storage
room so they just gave them to everybody which is also cute that's awesome yeah so so yes so this is kind of where I
stopped my research about like the rebuilding and such but you know they rebuilt better than before um but I
think that the thing that is so scary about this is just like one disaster after the other like a fire Could Happen
anywhere but like that earthquake was crazy and it's going to happen again
you know like California is not safe we're going to have other earthquakes so I also this reminded me um my friend
Morgan sent me a article about that tower that you had talked about in San Francisco that's falling or tilting the
Millennium Tower so I read an article about it it it's called the Millennium Tower and it's on Mission Street which
is one of the streets that was like totally destroyed in the Mission District and it is like six inches off
and like one the lady that in the article that she sent me like figured it out because like she was like doing a putt putt in her apartment and her three
[ __ ] million apartment and all of the golf balls would like go into one corner I
mean okay yeah you you know what never mind I was what I was well because my
house is also like not level but like wait you're like but you're on the first floor you're on I know exactly it's
different when you're like 40 stories in the air I get it yep it's different yeah like if my house was tilted a little bit
me I'm on I'm on bedrock I'm not worried about it but like this
this like gigantic Tower um is oh my God it's crazy also
it's funny to think that $3 million in San Francisco that's probably like a starter condo for any anyone who lives
there I cannot imagine like so it's it's um it's 58 floors the whole building um
but they have 60 they say they have 60 floors because they skipped 13 which
happens and 44 because people think the fours are bad luck have you heard that before yeah I don't that but um Jesus
Christ I'd be so [ __ ] mad if I bought a $3 million car fix it no
it's like they're trying to figure out how to fix it what's it called Millennium
uhhuh it makes you kind of want to throw up a little bit like even it makes me it
makes me so and like so nervous I mean I don't know maybe maybe in like 3,000
years your home will be like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and there'll be a landmark
for people to visit but also like there's no way that if there's an
earthquake that isn't topping toppling over literally immediately I know if I was a neighbor I'd be like I want a
refund yeah and you can't you can't you know like oh God I hate it so
much I really like honestly my hands hurt you know like you get nervous and your hands hurt talking about like I just hate it so much I
don't know what to do um so yeah I mean I I I I know that you know this it was a
good good time to like Industrial Revolution time is a good time to start
over on a city so they could build better because like they had done things like you know we should have stronger
construction we should not build everything out of wood but like they hadn't retroactively put those laws in so if you have to start over at you can
start over better um in some cases they did some cases they didn't people just wanted some place to live like really
quickly you know those camps were open for years people trying to figure out where to go like in all these disasters
rich people can figure it out but poor people they have [ __ ] nothing you know what are they supposed to do but um
now there just seems to be a lot of tall buildings in San Francisco which makes me nervous man this this Millennial thing I
hate it so much I was in New York so the the week that this was 13 years ago but
the week that we had our wedding reception in New York City we had to move it because there was a hurricane so there was like hurricane times so we had
to cancel our reception do it a couple months later it was fine but that week there was also an earthquake and I was
on the 38th floor of a building and I felt my desk go blop looop and I was
like [ __ ] yeah yeah it's interesting too because California has like probably
some of the strictest regulatory guidelines for building things and you think that like
how was this able to happen I mean in 1906 or this Millennium
Tower no the Millennium Tower also 100% it is the it's got to be like a developer's worst nightmare to have like
a bunch of millionaires living in their building when your building like [ __ ] up really badly because like they're
going to sue you into Oblivion and it sounds like that's what they're doing right now but they're not going to like
what are they like the the woman in the article I read I'll share the article but like a like Tech bro bought the
apartment above her for like $15 million and he was like I don't care that it's tilting like the view and I'm like you're the worst I mean that would be
the dream to be that rich we would we Taylor you might say he's the worst but we would both love to be in that
position I would not I wouldn't I would not want to live there yeah I definitely would want to live there scary I'm G to
know from that guys just just live on level land I have no idea how we got to this conclusion in the San Francisco
fire fire episode but that is my takeway I'm I think we both we both live in one
story houses and I'm happy that we do amen please don't move um sweet so that
is the S we got San Francisco we got Chicago wrapped up I'm sure there's plenty plenty more fires I know well I'm
going to start doing um women's History Month next week and I'm very excited to have some things that some fun stories
but um if you know women's history you know there is a very important fire that
I will talk about but I was going to do it next week but I'm just so tired of talking about fires that I'm going to maybe do it the week after uh good I don't know what that is
I'm sure if you know you know but I'll tell you later I will probably know after you tell me because you know that
I don't you know me I don't connect dots real quick it takes a little bit for to marinade and so I'm sure I'll I I'll
know when you tell me so okay cool um but yeah that was awesome thanks for sharing Taylor we got our episodes in
for the week sorry for the late start per usual it was my fault um but we got them taken care of I I re-released
Mutiny on the Bonnie today so there's something out there enjoy Mutiny um cool
uh again write to us at Doom defel pood gmail.com uh find us on the socials at Doom defel pod we're trying to become
rich and famous and I don't think that's a bad thing no tell your friends
I think yall should want us to be rich and famous because some like doing this yeah we like doing this it's it's like
come on and and and like as our friends you know we'll give you VIP passes to
our live shows at Madison Square Garden email us today with your name and you will be on the list forever
forever dos a lot um sweet anything else before we shut off that's it just that
those fun things from Morgan were were fun and um she gave me some other good ideas of things to cover and how people
have sent us Instagram messages of like some true crimey things so make sure you make sure you see them love it awesome we'll go ahead and cut
things off [Music]
and