ill forward
dynamite as soon as obtained."

All outside nearby places were appealed to for dynamite and as fast as
the explosive was received it was directed against large buildings in
the path of the fire. The crash of falling walls mingled with the
reverberations of the explosions, led many to believe that the
earthquake shocks were being repeated. Here and there a fireman went
down beneath the ruins as some huge building tumbled to the ground
shattered by the destructive explosive. In the downtown districts the
efforts of the dynamiters were wholly unavailing. The fire had gained
such headway that it swept with a roar over every vacant space made by
the explosive and continued its consuming way in every direction.

Better success was obtained in the residence district west on the
second day of the fire. The widest thoroughfare in the city is Van
Ness avenue in the heart of the fashionable residence section. There
it was decided that an effort should be made to check the spread of
the flames westward and save the many beautiful homes in the district
between that avenue and the water line.

The co-operation of the artillery was secured and huge cannons were
drawn to the avenue by the military horses to aid the dynamiters in
blowing up the mansions of the millionaires on the west of Van Ness
avenue in order to prevent the flames from leaping across the highway
and starting on their unrestraining sweep across the western addition.

Every available pound of dynamite was hauled to that point and the
sight was one of stupendous and appalling havoc as the cannons were
trained on the palaces and the shot tore into the walls and toppled
the buildings in crushing ruins. At other points the dynamite was
used, and house after house, the dwellings of millionaires, was lifted
into the air by the bellowing blast and dropped to the earth a mass of
dust and debris.

The work was necessarily dangerous and many of the exhausted workers
who kept working through a stretch of forty-eight hours without sleep
and scarcely any food through force of instinctive heroism alone were
killed while making their last desperate stand.

Many of the workers in placing the blasts, took chances that spelled
injury or death. The fire line at 6 o'clock extended a mile along the
east side of Van Ness avenue from Pacific street to Ellis. All behind
this excepting the Russian Hill region and a small district lying
along the north beach had been swept cl