Wine Might’ve Put Out Fires at S.F. Quake

Fires that devastated San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906 could have been battled, and maybe beaten, if firefighters had used the millions of gallons of wine stored in cellars around the city, a historian says.

When the powerful tremor struck at 5:13 a.m. on April 18 that year, it touched off fires that devoured huge chunks of the city, destroying about 28,000 buildings and claiming hundreds of lives.

Many of those lives and buildings could have been saved if the city had tapped the vats, says William Heintz of Sonoma.

“That part of the great tragedy . . . could have been sharply reduced,” he said. “It should have been.”

At the time, there probably were 35 million gallons in bulk storage in San Francisco, brought from wineries to the north to protect the delicate vintages from the scorching summer heat, said Heintz.

Huge Tanks in Rows

“We’re talking 5,000-gallon tanks, 7,500-gallon tanks, 12,000-, 15,000- and 20,000-gallon tanks. We’re talking about big block-long storage buildings with 10,000- to 20,000-gallon tanks lined up in rows--dozens of them,” he said.

“This means that on the morning of April 18, the wine would have been readily available for moving out to fight the fires,” sprayed through pumps on the premises or with the city’s portable pumps, he added.

Heintz said records he’s studied say about 50 fires were started after the quake, and most were quickly extinguished. But three major blazes--the Alice’s Lodging House, Armour Packing Co. and Chinese laundry fires--were unchecked and played a major role in the devastation.

All were located near major wine storage areas, says Heintz, who holds a master’s degree in history from Sonoma State University, writes regularly on wine and is working on a history of California’s wine-rich Napa Valley.

The reason the wine wasn’t used is not in any records and there are no surviving officials to ask, but Heintz has some theories.

He thinks part of the problem was that firefighters following department instructions might not have had the imagination to go beyond them.

Another difficulty could have been posed by troops ordered to guard against looting. Again following instructions, they might have kept everyone, including firefighters, out of the storage buildings.

And officials might have been afraid the alcohol would fuel the flames, not quench them. But Heintz said the alcohol content was too low, about 10%.

Heintz has suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that the city take advantage of the current low cost of California wine and buy thousands of gallons to fill the 152 cisterns dug when the city was rebuilt.

If the wine isn’t needed for fighting fires, it will age and improve, possibly “doubling in value,” Heintz said.