FIRE-FIGHTING APPARATUS. 153 
tied and anchored together. San Francisco's experience has proved 
that this rule is a most important one to follow in all brick' and stone 
construction, and its neglect in the past has resulted in much loss and 
ruin. 
FIRE-FIG IITIKG APPARATUS AND FIRE-RESISTING 
MATERIALS. 
The damage inflicted on San Francisco from the direct and imme- 
diate effects of the earthquake was relatively small, being estimated 
at only 3 to 10 per cent of the total loss ; but a subsequent and indirect 
effect Avas to paralyze the water supply and its distributing system, 
start a great conflagration and render impossible its extinguishment 
with the means at hand, cause the death of at least 600 human beings, 
burn approximately $500,000,000 worth of property, render home- 
less and miserable 200,000 people, and inflict remoter damages to 
business, commerce, and labof, only to be estimated in the future. 
Inasmuch as it can be plainly seen, by looking backward, that nearly 
all of this destruction and suffering might have been prevented by 
wise foresight and provision, it is felt that a warning should be sent 
to all the cities in the world. Any city that disregards this warning 
will be guilty of a great crime. 
San Francisco should have had separate and ample water mains 
entering the city on several independent lines from different sources 
of supply, and numerous distributing reservoirs on the hills in vari- 
ous parts of the city, always well filled, independent and yet with a 
distributing system meshing the entire area, with its pipes so joined 
or valved that they could be separated or united as desired. There 
should have been in that city, almost surrounded by salt water, a 
separate system of flexible salt-water mains for fire and -ewer pur- 
poses, and numerous large cisterns in her streets, laid in reenforced 
concrete, with somewhat flexible lining and pipes. These 1 cisterns, 
only a few blocks apart, should have been filled at all times with salt 
water. There should have been many wide streets — like Van Ness 
avenue, where the fire was finally checked — and many large squares, 
the city being thus divided into numerous lire districts. The lire 
department should have included a dynamiting corps of experienced 
fire fighters, and a number of lire boats always ready along the water 
front and among the shipping. None of these things did San Fran- 
cisco have. With these means available, probably this story of the 
greatest fire in history would never have been written. 
Of a building's entire lire risk, that from fire within the building- 
is estimated, on the average, at 40 per cent, the other <">() per cent of 
the risk being from exterior fires. This risk for interior fires should 
