Fires San Francisco

Strong winds swept up and down the California coast Thursday, stoking fires in San Francisco and Ventura and leaving overturned trucks, uprooted trees and damaged gas lines in their wake. Just weeks after record winds shredded the San Gabriel Valley, the National Weather Service again issued high wind warnings with gusts in Southern California's mountain regions reaching up to 72 mph. In Ventura County, a 45-acre fire broke out in a rural area Thursday afternoon. Six agencies deployed a combined 100 firefighters and two helicopters to battle the blaze.

Ron Good surveys the high-walled splendor of this prehistoric corner of Yosemite National Park and solemnly promises to renew the long-dormant environmental battle that broke the spirit of famed naturalist John Muir. "Look what humans have done here," he scowls. "Trust me; this will not stand."

As Americans followed in horror the anarchy, looting and mounting death toll in the wake of the New Orleans flooding, California historians compared that city's devastation with another disaster of nearly a century ago: the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. In both cases, they say, cities crucial to the U.S. economy of the era -- San Francisco's financial might and New Orleans' offshore oil reserves -- were hit by a natural disaster: one by an 8.

Laurence Kornfield's favorite San Francisco bar is a wood-framed tavern with floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around a street corner in the South of Market neighborhood, with apartments stacked on top of it. It's a typical San Francisco streetscape, one that gives the city much of its flavor -- and much of its risk in case of a serious earthquake. "The lower floor would be squished," Kornfield, chief building inspector for this city of 740,000, said as he looked at the bar.