upon. Hitherto much of the work had been ignorantly and carelessly done,
and by the hasty and premature use of explosives more harm than good had
been occasioned.

As the fire continued to spread in spite of the heroic work of the
fighting corps, the Committee of Safety called a meeting at noon on
Friday and decided to blow up all the residences on the east side of Van
Ness Avenue, between Golden Gate and Pacific Avenues, a distance of one
mile. Van Ness Avenue is one of the most fashionable streets of the city
and has a width of 125 feet, a fact which led to the idea that a safety
line might be made here too broad for the flames to cross.

The firemen, therefore, although exhausted from over twenty-four hours'
work and lack of food, determined to make a desperate stand at this
point. They declared that should the fire cross Van Ness Avenue and the
wind continue its earlier direction toward the west, the destruction of
San Francisco would be virtually complete. The district west of Van
Ness Avenue and north of McAllister constitutes the finest part of the
metropolis. Here are located all of the finer homes of the well-to-do
and wealthier classes, and the resolution to destroy them was the last
resort of desperation.

Hundreds of police, regiments of soldiers and scores of volunteers
were sent into the doomed district to warn the people to flee. They
heroically responded to the demand of law and went bravely on their way,
leaving their loved homes and trudging painfully over the pavements with
the little they could carry away of their treasured possessions.

The reply of a grizzled fire engineer standing at O'Farrell Street and
Van Ness Avenue, beside a blackened engine, may not have been as terse