San Francisco’s fire department has long been recognised as one of the most efficient in the United States. It deserves the reputation it has borne by reason of the discipline and character of the men who are in the service and the superiority of its apparatus. Handicapped as the department has been by reason of the fact that ninety per cent, of the buildings in San Francisco were frame and were constructed on hilly territory, with the winds of the Pacific ocean sweeping over the city at all hours, it has been able to cope with all conflagrations up to the one of the memorable 13th of April, and would have prevented the tremendous fire that swept over so many acres at that time, had it not been hampered by a crippled water supply. The earthquake that preceded the fire was unexpected, and as a result of its violence water piping was twisted and broken.