Slightly Off the Mark

We're close to the anniversary of one of the most famous disasters in American history. No, I’m not talking about the birth of Kanye West. I’m speaking of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, which struck at 5:13 a.m. on April 18, 1906.

Which was way too early to be waked up that way, or any way.

We seem to be in the age of disasters, so it might be worth remembering that bad things have been happening to good people for a long time, not just since the Kardashians went on the air. One thing that remains the same is human nature: No one wants to think about disasters until they happen, and then their primary mission is to avoid responsibility. This is followed by a building period of forgetfulness, and then the cycle begins anew.

"Gesundheit."

Just as the Great Chicago Fire was accompanied by forest fires that killed thousands in the Midwest, and Hurricane Katrina devastated areas far from New Orleans, the 1906 quake shook up much more than San Francisco. In fact, it was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and as far east as Nevada. Two minor earthquakes even hit Las Angeles at about noon that day, probably caused by the earlier shaking. A line of trees two hundred feet wide were smashed along the fault line; small towns along the way were flattened, and any building actually built on the fault found itself at fault.

At least 3,000 people died, and a half million dollars in damage resulted – 1906 dollars. It was … well, it was a disaster.

Many people don’t know that most of San Francisco was not flattened by the earthquake; it was destroyed by the fire that followed.

A rattled homeowner, glad to be alive, got hungry after the earthquake and decided to cook up some ham and eggs, without bothering to check on whether their home’s chimney had been damaged. The resulting blaze, called the “Ham and Egg” fire (naturally), later joined up with other fires to destroy most of the city. Whether that resident actually got to eat the ham and eggs wasn’t reported.

"Pass the orange juice."

So, where the heck was the fire department?

Well, Station #4 wasn’t there anymore: A hotel collapsed on it. The Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department, Dennis T. Sullivan, threw himself out of bed and dashed through the door of his quarters, which was located at the top of another firehouse on Bush Street. (No relation to G.W.)

Unfortunately, the dome of a theater next door had just brought down the rest of the Chief’s fire station, and he dashed into mid-air. He died later that week, leaving the SFFD without its leader.

But Chief Sullivan had built a good department, and the men and equipment still standing dashed into action. Sullivan had recommended the building of a special water system, which could provide water from San Francisco Bay in case an earthquake sheared through regular water mains.

Unfortunately, the City Council refused to fund the system. The regular mains were, indeed, shattered, leaving most of the city dry. U.S. Navy personnel, always ready to help, laid a long fire hose from the bay and put it into action. But the tactics of operating a fire hose aren’t as easy as they appear, and the hapless sailors were outmaneuvered by the flames. They had to retreat, leaving the hose behind.

Steam fire engines generated almost as much smoke as the fires.

That morning a telegraph station in San Diego sent reports of the disaster to the ship “U.S.S. Chicago”, which immediately steamed for San Francisco. It was the first time a wireless transmission was ever used during a disaster. Later the fire alarm and telegraph offices in the city had to be abandoned to the approaching flames, making communications more difficult. It became impossible to coordinate firefighting efforts.

By that time word had gotten out, and Secretary of War Taft ordered all available relief supplies and military units to San Francisco. He later became president, so Taft must have done an okay job.

Less helpful individuals began looting the city, and the Mayor declared open season on such lowlifes. Several were shot; none were missed.

Eventually, with the assistance of volunteers, firefighters, military personnel, and demolition of buildings to create fire breaks, the blaze was controlled. It was time to take stock, and to determine what to do to prevent such a calamity in the future.

No need, according to Father Ricard of the University of Santa Clara, who wrote to a newspaper: “Never mind foreboders of evil: They do not know what they are talking about … those who venture out with predictions of future earthquakes when the main shock has taken place ought to be arrested as disturbers of the peace.”

In other words, don't worry – it won't happen again.

San Francisco City Hall has looked better.

What have we learned from this?

Well, be careful before running through doorways after an earthquake, of course. Good communications are vital. You can’t put out a fire without water. Shooting looters is worth a bullet. Courage alone doesn’t make up for a lack of training and preparation. Don’t cook breakfast until after you’ve started your brain up in the morning.

Finally, and most importantly: Hiding from reality doesn’t prevent anything except being prepared. If somebody tells you “It won’t happen here”, hit them. Preferably in the mouth, so they don’t keep spouting nonsense.

Because it could happen tomorrow.

Some of our books cover fires and disasters, and others are just escapism:

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

While I was mowing the lawn a few years ago, oil started spurting out all over (from the mower, not me). Investigation revealed the oil did not come from an opening oil should come out of. No, it was a brand new opening.

Going back still another year, while I pushed that that very same mower, the handle suddenly dissolved into numerous pieces. They scattered across the lawn in a pattern that spelled out “Ha!” I found what I thought was one of those pieces still on the mower deck, and picked it up. The pattern of that bolt, which -- it turned out -- was actually from the engine, is imprinted to this day on the palm of my hand.

No connection could be established between that red-hot doohickey and the auto-dismembering handle, but what are the odds?
 

The lawn mower before that lost its life when I pulled the handle to start it, but failed to notice the rope didn’t retreat back into the machine, where it belonged. Then I mowed over the rope. It wasn’t pretty. My father eventually took that mower to his Home for Mistreated Machines (established in my honor), where it happily whacked away for years more, without a care. (In other words, without me.)

The one before that is the Infamous Exploding Lawnmower, which caused the first ever Level One Hazardous Material Emergency in the history of Noble County, and was featured on both CNN and “The Simpson’s”. The parts that could be located are on display in the Smithsonian, after being borrowed by an investigation team from the History Channel program, “Engineering Disasters”.

What I’m saying is, I have a history.

After the most recent lawn mower sacrificed its lifeblood (still visible in a dead patch of  grass that spells out “help me”), a friend let me borrow his. I know – dumb friend!

Ironically, the mower ran just fine under my borrowship. It was a freakin’ miracle.

Then my friend gave me the mower, maybe assuming it was tainted. He wasn't wrong.

Oh yeah, and this happened. Those wheels are supposed to go in the same direction.

My mowers never screw up the same way twice. One time it's the starter rope; another time a cracked head (not unlike the one I got from a low hanging branch); then it’ll be sheets of flame and a towering mushroom cloud.

So I’m mowing the lawn the day after the mower officially became mine, and it stops. Just stops, after once around the lawn. I manage to get it started. Once around, it stops again. After some effort, including changing the gas, oil and sparkplug, and some imaginative praying, I get it going again. Once around, it stops.

Changing fluids is the extent of my capabilities. Yes, I can change the sparkplug, but that task once led to me regaining consciousness on top of the neighbor's car. But eventually, a realization hit me:

When the mower leaned toward the right, it kept running. When it leaned toward the left, it stopped. Every time.

I had a conservative lawn mower.

Okay, but how do I go the other way?

Luckily, very little of my lawn is level; in fact, there’s every indication the entire property is sliding downhill. The US Geological Service estimated that within the next hundred years my house will be west of the old car wash on the next block, which is bad because right now it’s east of the car wash. The same team that handled the Leaning Tower of Pizza is working on the problem.

But my lawn can't wait a hundred years, so my solution was simple: Keep the mower’s right side pointed downhill at all times.

I gotta tell you, that’s nowhere near as easy as I thought it might be:

* Sooner or later, you’ve got to turn around. Otherwise, the neighbors will get annoyed.

* When you back up, you can’t watch both the mower and the dog droppings.

* Slipping while pulling a lawnmower toward you is the closest thing you can get to an instant of sheer terror without being in a plane crash.

* Pulling a lawn mower toward you is dumb.

This was a genius way to torture me. I possessed a mower that was perfectly capable of mowing, as long as it’s tilted in one direction. Why replace it? That’s money I could use for other things, like utility bills, food, or crutches. Besides, this is Indiana – I’m surprised there aren’t more right leaning lawn mowers. So I spent the next few years wearing out one side of my shoes.

Sometimes I think my lawn can’t slide away soon enough.

• Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
• Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
• Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
• Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
• Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
• Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter
• Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember, if you don't stop to read, your lawn mower might inspire the next disaster movie.

Someone commented the other day that the coronavirus pandemic will turn out to be the worst worldwide disaster since World War 2. I'm not sure I agree with that--apparently this particular person was too young to have experienced the disco era.

Listen to "Disco Duck", then tell me Covid-19 is all that bad.

But it is bad, of course, and it's likely to hang on every bit as long as disco did. In fact, now that it's here the virus is likely to come around again on occasion, just as its cousin, the flu, does. It's the Uncle Eddie of disasters. It's the equivalent of me going through old boxes a few years ago, and stumbling across the "Thank God It's Friday" soundtrack. On vinyl.

Yes, in some corner of a storage unit disco still crouches, waiting to strike again.

Buy hey, I liked some disco songs, even as I despised the disco craze itself. Similarly, for an introvert like me there are some good things about being driven indoors by a pandemic.

"Stay home, read and watch TV, play some games--the life you save may be anyone's."

Oh. Okay, then.

Luckily my wife is as much of an introvert as I am. The other day I wrote 3,000 words on my new novel, and when I got tired watched "The Walking Dead" while she went to her computer and killed 3,000 Orcs and trolls. Who says modern entertainment doesn't prepare you for real life?

I can't work my full time job from home. I mean, I could, but it would be expensive to run 911 lines and emergency radio service into my living room. (By the way, coming downstairs to find our dispatch center has been moved to my living room is a common nightmare I already had--I didn't need the help.)

But we already have a home office for our part time job, writing. It's a working office, which is code for "cluttered". The irony is that over my last days off I never went in there, because I pulled a back muscle and redefined the concept of uncomfortable office chairs. The couch, an ice pack, and the laptop with Pandora's John Williams channel in the background, and I was set to write until the muscle relaxer kicked in. Then I had to stop, or I'd drool on the keyboard.

No, this is not what my desk looks like ... it's way too neat.

I can only imagine how badly this is going for extroverts.

We do have to go out from time to time, to buy food and to harvest leaves for toilet paper replacement. Don't use the three-leaf plants. Experience. But then came a new twist, when authorities went from saying masks don't help unless you're infected to, "Kidding! Go ahead and use them--couldn't hurt."

Which we all know isn't true.

Being in the police business, my first thought was, "How many reports of armed robberies in progress are we going to get? Especially since some people (um, me) planned to take advantage of it by dressing up as cowboys?

"Give me all the cash, or I remove this bandana!"

But I don't own a bandana, or a handkerchief, or ... well, I have a ski mask, but since there's a hole in it for the mouth that's not very useful. Finally, when I had to go out, I settled on wrapping toilet paper around my face. I was kidding about the leaves: I'm one of the few people in the world who had stocked up on TP before the virus came around. Why? So I don't run out, duh.

I figured my worst problem would be if it started raining. But no: My worst problem is that I didn't make it fifty feet from the house before someone mugged me.

For the toilet paper.

But at least they had a mask on.

Hopefully today’s rain will cut down on ground cover fires for awhile, and hopefully without severe storms. And hopefully without an earthquake, like Missouri just had. Worst case scenario: an earthquake during a forest fire, with a funnel cloud touching down to make a fire tornado. The scary part is that it could happen.

 But remember, folks: Just because the ground is still wet doesn’t mean we can’t have ground cover fires. Dead foliage from over the winter dries out quickly, and until things green up later in the spring it can ignite easily—sometimes within hours of a rain. I’ve seen flames burn through a swamp, right over standing water.

In fact, fires this time of year can be even worse, because brush, grass, and fields still burn, but the ground can be too wet for four wheel drive brush trucks to reach the flames. Firefighters have to walk to the fire with hand tools, or wait for the flames to reach their positions close to the road. Waiting means the fire gets bigger, and there’s a chance it might reach and damage buildings or vehicles.

So don’t burn in windy conditions, have a cleared area around whatever you’re burning, and watch the fire until it’s completely out. If in doubt, don't do it.

Not being in a burning building doesn't make it safe: Firefighters have suffered smoke inhalation, heat exhaustion, falls, burns, and being hit by vehicles at grass and field fires.

This photo is from a fire that endangered buildings on March 18th, near Long Lake Road and CR 175 N.