A century ago was the first anniversary of Berkeley’s 1923 Wildfire. The September 17, 1924 Berkeley Daily Gazette carried an extensive summary of developments since the conflagration.
“There has been a decidedly dominant note of optimism in Berkeley since its disaster,” Mayor Frank Stringham wrote. “The material loss was great but not irreparable.”
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Excluding burned lots purchased by the university, the paper reported “close to 50 percent of the lots on which buildings were destroyed in the conflagration…now hold modern and more expensive structures. A total of 244 building permits for new structures and making fire repairs have been issued in the 12-month period since the Fire.”
The cost of those structures was nearly $1.9 million. “It is estimated that because of the many apartment houses which have been erected since the fire, new structures on the hill slopes now house 70 percent of the total number of persons who lived in this district prior to the fire.”
The most recently issued permit was for a 22-room clubhouse at 1735 Euclid for the Japanese Student Club.
It was, wrote reporter Harold W. Johnson, “a bigger and better Berkeley hill district.” City Manager John Edy added in a special essay for the paper out that the city had worked with the private water company to plan “new and larger water mains,” a replacement fire house was funded and an additional fire house planned, and a fire watchtower had been constructed in the Berkeley Hills.
Also, “a fire road and fire break have been built in the hills extending down from Grizzly Peak to East Euclid Avenue” and 6,000 vacant lots in Berkeley had been cleared of overgrowth during the past summer by controlled burns.
Johnson concluded wryly that while “it is an erroneous idea that conflagration is good for any city, for if it were it might be profitable to burn the city down at regular intervals,” Berkeley had benefited from “a lesson in fire prevention.”
Car crash: A UC Berkeley student, Dale D. Smith, was killed in a car accident in Wildcat Canyon on September 14, 1924. The driver, Theodore Eggerts, a fellow fraternity member and law student, and a young woman, Miss Adeline Schott, were also in the car. “The trio were in a sport model, high speed car which toppled down a 100-foot embankment.”
“Smith was probably instantly killed when he was crushed by the capsizing car which turned over at least twice before landing right side up at the bottom of the canyon” the Gazette reported. “Miss Schott who was sitting on his lap was thrown clear of the wreckage and escaped with minor injuries. Eggert was pinned at the driver’s seat but miraculously escaped being hurt.”
Schott and Eggert walked some two miles to Berkeley’s Cragmont neighborhood where they called police, who found the car and Smith’s body. The survivors told the police that Smith had told them he was “all right but was going to stay with the car” and they left him at the scene, but the police determined he was most likely killed instantly in the crash.
Their jaunt had begun with another young woman in the car, but she had left them along the way, reportedly angry that Schott was getting more attention from Smith.
The dead man, “Smith was one of the most popular members of the senior class and was called one of the most handsome young men in college. He was a member of the Glee Club and had taken an active part in many university activities.” Eggers, the driver, was arrested by the police.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.