The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 has been retold and analyzed in hundreds of books, articles and documentaries.

So what more can there be to say?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

Former New York firefighter Dennis Smith spins a finely woven human story of tragedy, death, heroism and blunder in his book, San Francisco Is Burning.

This isn't a story only of the near destruction of a great city ? it's a tale of the people who lived there, how they dealt with disaster and, in the long run, how it dealt with them.

Take Navy Lt. Frederick Freeman, a hero of this account, who led sailors' efforts to battle the fires along the waterfront and whose heroism was forgotten or ignored in the aftermath. Freeman provides the opening and closing chapters, a conclusion that can bring tears.

Or consider Gen. Frederick Funston, proclaimed a hero with statues and honors for commanding Army troops during the battle against the flames.

The Associated Press
Yet Smith details how Funston's decision to dynamite buildings may have started more fires than it prevented, and notes how orders to evacuate civilians by force prevented many people from assisting in firefighting.

Whole swaths of the city burned after evacuations ? except a few homes whose owners were able to evade the soldiers and use wet blankets and water in buckets to douse cinders and small blazes to save their homes. Meanwhile, Freeman and his sailors were encouraging civilians to stay and help them battle the flames, eventually saving the waterfront area, reports Smith.

Along the way the reader meets dozens of other characters ? corrupt Mayor Eugene Schmitz and party boss Abraham Ruef; businessmen and reformers James Phelan and Rudolph Spreckels; and a host of brave firefighters, from Chief Dennis Sullivan, who was fatally injured early in the event, to Capt. George Brown, who led his men from blaze to blaze despite a broken, bleeding foot suffered in a fall.

To Smith, who also wrote Report From Ground Zero, these men are true heroes, and well they should be. The book is an eye-opener, and a good read, to boot.