Danger from Fire – A new Sensation.
These Eastern newspaper visitors, it seems, cannot come here and write of California without talking nonsense and making fools of themselves. The correspondent of the St. Louis Republican did not prophesy our destruction by earthquakes, that lead having been exhausted before he came here; but with wonderful skill, he opened for himself a new vein of sensation and stuff about our danger from fire. He says:
I am forced to the irresistible conclusion that San Francisco is a doomed city, and the mind cannot but paint for itself a horrible picture of the lapping flames leaping from one frail tinder-box to another until, not one-third of a thriving, prosperous city is swept from existence, but the whole. It needs no gift of prophecy to predict the future, for it is inevitable, and written so plainly, that in very truth 'he that runs may read.'
So much for sensation. The fact, however, is, San Francisco is in less danger from fire than any city of the East. Our frame homes are built, not of fiercely-inflammable pine, but of redwood, which burns with very little life and is very easily extinguished. Our hills, too, are a great protection, and through them we have a natural head of water in our water-pipes and cisterns, which is unknown at the East. What will the next stupid sensation that Eastern papers will invent about this city or State?
San Francisco Real Estate Circular
For the Month of May, 1872
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