Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906

From As I Remember by Arnold Genthe: This photograph shows "the results of the earth quake, the beginning of the fire and the attitude of the people.

I went to Montgomery Street to the shop of George Kahn, my dealer, and asked him to lend me a camera.

There is particularly the one scene that I recorded the morning of the first day of the fire (on Sacramento Street, looking toward the Bay) which shows, in a pictorially effective composition, the results of the earthquake, the beginning of the fire and the attitude of the people.

Groups of people are standing in the street, motionless, gazing at the clouds of smoke.

Enormous clouds of smoke ominously approach, buildings' facades have collapse from the quake, and residents stand and sit in the street, in a stupor, calmly watching the approaching fire.The photograph is one of the "famous disasters" that hang on the wall of the night club "The Blue Note" in the David Zucker film The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear.