San Francisco’s devastating earthquake and fires dominated national news in April 1906.

But a month later, North Yakima experienced its own disaster.

While not on the scale of the earthquake that leveled much of San Francisco and triggered the fires that would destroy a good part of what was left, in North Yakima, firefighters dealt with two fires on May 5, 1906, that destroyed both the seat of county government and part of the downtown business district.

Out of the ashes came improvements to the city’s fledgling professional fire department.

It also led to the corner of North Second Street and what is now East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard becoming the permanent home of Yakima’s own temple of justice.

Central Washington has seen its fair share of big fires.

On July 4, 1889, a devastating fire broke out in Ellensburg, reducing 10 downtown blocks to smoking ruins, while an 1891 fire sparked by a nearby forest fire destroyed a city block in Cle Elum.

Yakima, then known as North Yakima, would experience a one-two punch on May 5, 1906.

It started with a phone call at 11:45 a.m. that the roof of the courthouse at the corner of North Second Street and today’s Staff Sgt. Pendleton Way was on fire.

The courthouse was originally in Yakima City — today’s Union Gap — and was one of many buildings winched across the Upper Valley to the new city of North Yakima.

It was the county’s second courthouse, the first one burning with a loss of all the county’s records March 31, 1882, and history appeared to be repeating itself.

Firefighters arrived quickly and began pumping water onto the burning building, but the best they could do was slow the fire’s spread through the wooden structure.

But this time, county employees and volunteers packed up paperwork from the offices and moved the documents to other locations for safekeeping.

A dozen prisoners in the jail were also moved out of harm’s way by the county sheriff, who reported that the prisoners patted him on the shoulder in gratitude for getting out of the jail, and “marched along gently as a lamb” to the city jail.

Firefighters were able to snuff out the flames, but not before the building was destroyed. Yakima Daily Republic Editor W.W. Robertson opined in the paper that day that the Republic had warned the courthouse was bound to catch fire, and that day had come.

But for North Yakima’s firefighters, and the people of the city, the day wasn’t over.

At 10:12 p.m., a box alarm summoned firefighters to the city’s wholesale district, in the area between North Front Street and First Avenue north of West Yakima Avenue. The fire started at the Coffin Brothers’ warehouse, and quickly spread throughout the district as other warehouses burst into flames as oil tanks exploded from heat.

Firefighters were stymied when the fire hydrants on the west side of the district were shut down for repairs to the water main, requiring firefighters to lay hoses from the east side and cope with little water pressure until the system was operating at full force.

An 11-year-old boy, Johnny Clemens, was wounded when he was hit by a bullet, as a box of cartridges in the Yakima Hardware Co. building started discharging in the heat.

Northern Pacific Railway’s freight depot was destroyed in the fire, but the passenger depot, which had started to smolder, was saved by firefighters who made their stand there, taking advantage of a fire break created by box cars between the depots.

The glow of the flames could be seen as far away as Sunnyside, causing speculation that the entire city was on fire.

The county sheriff was credited with helping to keep the fire from crossing Yakima Avenue by drafting bystanders to put out any fires started by embers, beating them out with shovels and bags.

Two men were arrested for refusing to comply with the sheriff’s orders to fight the fire.

By the morning, “skeleton walls, smoldering embers, twisted iron, smoking ash heaps, and charred and blacked ruins” marked where warehouses, a lumber yard and the depot one stood, the Republic reported.

Losses were estimated from $115,000 and $200,000 — $3.6 million and $6.2 million when adjusted for inflation — with 14 buildings destroyed. Many of the business owners said their insurance policies were likely not going to cover the losses.

While the ruins were still warm, the City Council met to discuss changes to make the fire department more effective. The council immediately authorized spending $3,200 — nearly $100,000 in today’s currency — to purchase an additional 2,000 feet of hoses, nozzles and equipment, as well as install 17 additional fire hydrants in the business district.

By 1912, the department became the first mechanized fire department in the west, using gasoline-powered vehicles when other departments still relied on horses to move engines and hose wagons.

Yakima County officials also didn’t waste time in replacing the destroyed courthouse. About a month after the fire, the cornerstone was laid for the new courthouse, which stood on the site where today’s courthouse now stands.

It Happened here is a weekly history column by Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Donald W. Meyers. Reach him at dmeyers@yakimaherald.com. Sources for this week’s column include the Yakima Fire Department, “The History of the Yakima Fire Department” by Randy Raschko, The Inflation Calculator by Morgan Friedman and the archives of the Yakima Herald-Republic.