San Francisco Begins to Tick

San Francisco College hit by bomb, casualties undetermined. . . .

Scott Street & Pacific Avenue--enemy planes dropping gas bombs. . . .

Japanese are starting fires and rioting.

Flares burning in Calvary Cemetery.

Bomb exploded in zoo, all animals are running loose. . . .

Most San Franciscans were peacefully finishing their dinner, starting for the movies, or settling down to the radio when these hair-raising messages were flashed into the city's air-raid report headquarters. Most San Franciscans never heard the messages. They went on about their evening with complete calm. The reports that poured into city-hall headquarters were merely practice. Police Chief Dulles was trying out the city's system for handling air-raid alarms--as improved since the first confused days after Pearl Harbor.

Within half an hour, headquarters handled 190 calls from air-raid wardens who had been told to give their imaginations free play. Only message that caused momentary confusion was the one about the zoo. (No one knew quite what to do about loose wild animals.) A few bottlenecks were uncorked. Fire Chief Brennan wryly noted that it would have taken two complete fire departments to handle the reported holocaust. But by & large the try-out was a success. San Francisco was no longer a model of bumbling confusion. The city's air-raid precautions were beginning to tick.

Mayor Rossi and the heads of city departments ran the show, used the city's 66,245 volunteers only in minor jobs. Blackouts were almost perfect. Mr. Rossi, who sells flowers on the side, doused his shop's electric sign, which had been left to glisten through a previous blackout. Sirens, at first inaudible above the traffic, were more ear-piercing. San Franciscans had sand in their homes, were ready to fight incendiaries.

There were still some inadequacies. San Francisco asked the Office of Civilian Defense for $10,000,000 worth of equipment: 1,440 auxiliary pumping units for the fire department; 1,440 one-and-a-half-ton trucks to lug them around; 3,000,000 feet of fire hose; 700,000 gas masks; helmets; arm bands; whistles; 400 motorcycles.

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