Tag: fire

Zoom Around a Leveled San Francisco

Leveled San Francisco, 1906

I just spent way too much time immersed in this post-earthquake-and-fire aerial photo of SF. You will too.

Photographed by George R. Lawrence with a kite a few weeks after the disaster:

It is a 160-degree panorama from a kite taken 2000 feet (600 m) in the air above the San Francisco Bay that showed the entire city on a single 17-by-48-inch contact print made from a single piece of film. Each print sold for $125 and Lawrence made at least $15,000 in sales from this one photograph. The camera used in this photograph weighed 49 pounds (22 kg) and used a celluloid-film plate.

San Francisco Has Wood – Ladders

Ours is the only fire department in the country that makes and uses wooden ladders. Before the fir used to make the ladders can be utilized it has to sit and age for 15 years. Amazingly, they repair ladders that are close to 100 years old for future use.

This is a fascinating piece. I could do without the cheesy anchorman voice-over, but other than that, I was riveted for the whole 3:55 duration.

The video’s been around for about a month now and I don’t know how I missed it.

‘We’ are the First Responders in an Earthquake

We are the First Responders in an Earthquake, San Francisco

A great post on MissionLoc@l today reveals a brutal and likely scenario:

“We’ve done the calculations based on Loma Prieta,” the instructor says, an image of a large fireball on the screen behind him. “In a major earthquake with just winds of 10 miles per hour, we’ll see 71 large fires, 40 major rescue operations. We’ll need 273 engines.

“We don’t have those,” he says, flatly. “So where are we going to get the help?”

That would be the folks themselves – those of us who live in the affected neighborhoods.

If this article doesn’t make you want to take NERT or CERT training, it will probably at least make you think again about how to take care of yourself in the case of an untimely shake.

And let’s face it, it seems like everywhere but Northern California has been hit lately, so our number is due to come up soon.