San Francisco remembers hotel fire that killed 4 firefighters

With bells and with silence, with prayer and with testimony of service and struggle, San Francisco's leaders gathered Sunday for the 75th annual memorial mass to honor police, firefighters and sheriff's deputies.

Outside St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic Church at 850 Judah St., fire trucks used ladders to hold up a giant American flag as a backdrop for gathering guests and officials before they led a procession inside.

The mass was first held a year after the loss of four firefighters who battled flames in the early hours of July 30, 1946, at the Herbert Hotel at 161 Powell St. The five-alarm fire also injured at least 30 people and forced 200 hotel guests to flee to safety after a call from a hotel night clerk and frantic door-to-door pounding by two San Francisco police officers.

Back then, fire department officials called it the worst blaze since the devastating fires that followed the 1906 earthquake. The firefighters died that night after the fully occupied hotel at Powell and Ellis streets was set ablaze in a neighborhood of jerry-built structures that had largely been thrown together helter-skelter after the Great Quake four decades earlier in the center of the city's nightlife area.

One of the four drowned when he was driven into a deep pool of water in the nightclub kitchen, while his partner was crushed under falling debris near a stand where a jazz band had been entertaining night revelers hours earlier. Investigators speculated that the fire could have been started by someone in the seven-story hotel dropping a lighted cigarette out of a rear window, though the cause was never officially determined.

Over the years, the mass has also recognized other first responders who have fallen in the line of duty, including the 343 firefighters, 71 law enforcement officers and eight paramedics and emergency workers who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York City's World Trade Center, as well as more than 100 firefighters who died of cancer or toxin exposure in the years following the attack.

On Monday, San Francisco firefighters are set to mark the 22nd anniversary of the terror attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Those ceremonies will be livestreamed on Facebook, with each fire department station holding smaller ceremonies of their own, with assemblies in front of station flagpoles including the ringing of bells, the lowering of station flags to half-staff and readings of fallen firefighters' and paramedics' names.

After a color guard and opening prayers, psalms and readings on Sunday, San Francisco Police Sgt. Maina Tuimavave and San Francisco firefighter Liam Casserly read verses from the Bible–Ezekiel 33:7-9 and Romans 13:8-10–that referenced the duty to warn evildoers and the love of one's neighbor as the fulfillment of the law.

In a homily before the several hundred people in attendance, San Francisco Archbishop Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone said thank you to "my dear brothers and sisters in uniform."

Cordileone noted that the risks taken by first responders to save lives and property "often goes unrecognized and unappreciated."

Before taps and a recessional hymn of "God Bless America," a final blessing named an honor roll of active and retired firefighters, police officers and sheriff's deputies who had died within the last two years. A ceremonial bell tolled nine times for each agency, marking sacrifice and remembrance.

Officials who attended the mass Sunday included San Francisco Mayor London Breed and mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Elsbernd; state Sen. Scott Wiener; City Attorney David Chiu; San Francisco Supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Myrna Melgar; San Francisco Fire Department Chief Jeanine Nicholson and retired Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White; Fire Commission President Stephen Nakajo; San Francisco Police Department Assistant Chief David Lazar; San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto; San Francisco Park Ranger Chief David P. Murphy and San Francisco Interfaith Council Executive Director Michael Pappas.