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- Due to a widespread practice by insurers to indemnify San Francisco properties from fire, but not earthquake damage, most of the destruction in the city was blamed on the fires. Some property owners deliberately set fire to damaged properties, in order to claim them on their insurance. Capt. Leonard D. Wildman of the U.S. Army Signal Corps reported that he "was stopped by a fireman who told me that people in that neighborhood were firing their houses…they were told that they would not get their insurance on buildings damaged by the earthquake unless they were damaged by fire".
This is why homes in California now require earthquake insurance, and one of the reasons that the laws were changed so that arson is not covered. The other thing that amuses me is the header of the article directing people to separate earthquakes, each with a different date and name.