68 THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE. 
trously after dynamiting than if the building were left intact. A 
good plan in such a case would be to remove all the combustible 
contents of the building before the fire reached it, throwing them out, 
if no other course were open, on the side next to the advancing con- 
flagration. Under such circumstances the average fireproof building, 
while it might be ruined itself, would probably act as a barrier to the 
spread of the flames beyond it, although, of course, it could not pre- 
vent the fire from working around the sides if neighboring com- 
bustible buildings were not removed. 
A certain amount of damage in addition to that caused by the fire 
and earthquake was done in San Francisco by the dynamite used to 
blow down dangerous walls. More specific data on this point are 
presented in the detailed descriptions. 
TEMPERATURE OF THE BALTIMORE AND SAN FRANCISCO FIRES. 
The apparently more complete destruction by fire at San Francisco 
than at Baltimore immediately raises questions as to the probable 
temperature of the San Francisco fire. I noted everything coming 
under my observation which would seem to give an idea as to the 
probable temperature prevailing, and I am personally of the opinion 
that the San Francisco fire was appreciably hotter than that at Balti- 
more. Thus, in places which had been occupied by hardware stores I 
saw kegf uls of nails with the wood all burned away, but with the nails 
still standing up in a compact mass, retaining the shape of the keg, 
owing to the fact that they had been partially welded together. In 
other places kegfuls of nails which had evidently fallen at least one 
story, and possibly several stories, into the basement of an adjoining 
building, had nevertheless retained the form and size of the keg, 
although some of the nails were loosened. I also saw a number of 
cast-iron radiators that were partially melted and some cast-iron 
soil-pipe fittings that had been melted to such an extent that it was 
not possible to tell what sort of fittings they had been. In some 
cast-iron columns which had been softened and broken in the fire the 
raw edges of the break were appreciably rounded and blunted, due 
to the incipient fusion of the metal. In the basement of an iron 
warehouse I saw a number of racks of steel bars which had apparently 
been precipitated from the first floor and which were to a consider- 
able extent welded together. The weld was not perfect, of course, but 
at some of the points where the welds occurred it would have been 
impossible to separate the bars without considerable damage. 
Glass of all kinds melted and ran freely. Lead sash weights melted 
and ran out of the window boxes before the timber of the boxes was 
entirely consumed. Several witnesses, among them an engineer offi- 
cer, told me that they had observed this phenomenon in a number of 
places. The sheet-metal cases of typewriters and similar articles of 
