TEMPERATURES OF THIS AND BALTIMORE FIRES. 69 
sheet metal, though they showed no evidence of melting, had been 
almost completely burned up, so that they were full of holes, and the 
metal itself presented the same appearance as iron that had been 
burned in a blacksmith's forge. In the warehouse of the Waterhouse 
& Lester Company, on Howard street, some racks of steel bars were 
precipitated into the basement when the building collapsed. These 
bars were partially welded together by heat. (See also PI. LI, B.) 
In the ruins of glassware and china stores the glass, as a rule, was 
completely melted, and many articles of porcelain ware had become 
softened and distorted in all manner of shapes, indicating a high 
temperature, as porcelain is made of very refractory material. 
All things considered, I am inclined to think that temperatures 
considerably in excess of 2,000° F. were not at all uncommon in the 
San Francisco fire, although there were manifestly, in the burned 
area, places where no such temperature was reached. Very few office 
buildings were subjected to such intense heat, except here and there 
in individual rooms, where there was evidence of the storage of rec- 
ords or other combustible matter in large quantities; but the depart- 
ment stores, dry goods stores, and other buildings of mercantile 
occupancy evidently suffered from temperatures at least as high as 
2.000° F. In mercantile buildings these high temperatures seemed to 
be the rule and not the exception. 
EARTHQUAKE- AND FIRE-RESISTING QUALITIES OF 
STRUCTURES AND STRUCTURAL MATERIALS. 
EFFECT OF FIRE ON GOVERNMENT AND "CLASS A" COMMERCIAL 
BUILDINGS. 
So far as resistance to the fire is concerned, the only buildings that 
presented anything of interest were naturally the monumental public 
buildings and the commercial fireproof buildings of the better class; 
that is, practically of class A. The fire did not succeed in entering 
the mint nor the appraisers' stores. It got into the upper story of 
the new post-office building at one corner, and cleaned out a court 
room and its adjoining offices; but it was held at this point, and the 
post-office building itself was not involved in a fierce conflagration 
such as that which ruined many of the commercial buildings. The 
fire got into the new city hall, and succeeded in Avrecking the portion 
which was not ruined by the earthquake. 
VAULTS AND SAFES. 
In many of the office buildings in San Francisco suites of offices 
were equipped with vaults, some of which were fairly capacious and 
provided with doors of more or less efficient appearance, a number of 
them having the ordinary vestibule, with both inner and outer doors. 
Where the interior partitions of the building consisted of metal 
7171— Bull. 324—07 6 
