The Great Shake: San Francisco 1906 1906


s night fell, more than a quarter of the city's 400,000 residents were homeless. The Ham and Eggs fire crossed Market Street about midnight, joining the South of the Slot fire. The next morning, novelist Jack London wrote:
 

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rose color that pulsed and fluttered with lavender shades. There was no sun. So dawned the second day on strickened San Francisco."

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The fire burned for two more days. It destroyed 2,831 acres of the city, more than 490 blocks. It consumed 30 schools, 80 churches, 250,000 homes. It killed at least 3,000 people. (No one knows how many people actually died; the intense heat—up to 2000°F—incinerated bodies. Almost all records in City Hall had been destroyed the first day.)

 



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