 CHAPTER IV. THE RAIN OF DESTRUCTION AND DEVASTATION Rarely, in the whole history of mankind, has a great city been overwhelmed by destruction so suddenly and awfully as was San Francisco. One minute its inhabitants slept in seeming safety and security. Another minute passed and the whole great city seemed tumbling around them, while sights of terror met the eyes of the awakened multitude and sounds of horror came to their ears. The roar of destruction filled the air as the solid crust of the earth lifted and fell and the rocks rose and sank in billowing waves like those of the open sea. Not all it is true were asleep. There were the core of night-workers, whose duties kept them abroad till day dawns. There were those whose work calls them from their homes in the early morn. People of this kind were in the streets and saw the advent of the rain of devastation in its full extent. From the story of one of these, P. Barrett, an editor on the examiner, we select a thrilling account of his experience on that morning of awe. An Editor's Narrative I have seen this whole great horror. I stood with two other members of the examiner's staff on the corner of Market Street, waiting for a car. Newspaper duties had kept us working until five o'clock in the morning. Sunlight was coming out of the early morning mist. It spread its brightness on the roofs of the skyscrapers, on the domes and spires of churches, and blazed along up the wide street with its countless banks and stores, its restaurants and cafes. In the early morning the city was almost noiseless. Occasionally a newspaper wagon clattered up the street or a milk wagon rumbled along. One of my companions had told a funny story. We were laughing at it. We stopped. The laugh unfinished on our lips. Of a sudden we had found ourselves staggering and reeling. It was as if the earth was slipping gently from under our feet. Then came a sickening swaying of the earth that threw us flat upon our faces. We struggled in the street. We could not get on our feet. I looked in a dazed fashion around me. I saw for an instant the big buildings in what looked like a crazy dance. Then it seemed as though my head were split with the roar that crashed into my ears. Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one's hand. Great gray clouds of dust shot up with flying timbers, and storms of masonry rained into the street. Wild high jangles of smashing glass cut a sharp note into the frightful roaring. Ahead of me a great cornice crushed a man as if he were a maggot. A laborer in overalls on his way to the Union ironworks, with a dinner pail on his arm. Other men were on all fours in the street, like crawling bugs. Still the sickening dreadful swaying of the earth continued. It seemed a quarter of an hour before it stopped. As a matter of fact it lasted about three minutes. Footing grew firm again, but hardly were we on our feet before we were sent reeling again by repeated shocks, but they were milder, clinging to something one could stand. The dust clouds were gone. It was quite dark, like twilight. But I saw trolley tracks uprooted, twisted fantastically. I saw wide wounds in the street. Water flooded out of one. A deadly odor of gas from a broken mane swept out of the other. Telegraph poles were rocked like matches. A wild tangle of wires was in the street. Some of the wires wriggled and shot blue sparks. From the south of us, faint, but all too clear, came a horrible chorus of human cries of agony. Down there, in a ramshackle section of the city, the wretched houses had fallen in upon sleeping families. Down there, throughout the day, a fire burned the great part of whose fuel it is too gruesome a thing to contemplate. That was what came next, the fire. It shot up everywhere. The fierce wave of destruction had carried a flaming torch with it. Agony, death, and a flaming torch. It was just as if some fired demon was rushing from place to place with such a torch. Wreck and Ruin The magnitude of the calamity became fully apparent after the sun had risen and began to shine warmly and brightly from the east over the ruined city. Old Saul, who had risen and looked down upon this city for thousands of times, had never before seen such a spectacle as that of this fateful morning, where once rose noble buildings were now seen to be cracked and tottering walls, fallen chimneys, here and there fallen heaps of brick and mortar, and out of, and above all, the red light of the mounting flames. From the middle of the city's greatest thoroughfare, ruin, only ruin, was to be seen on all sides. To the south, in hundreds of blocks, hardly a building had escaped unscathed. The cracked walls of the new post office showed the rending power of the earthquake. A part of the splendid and costly city hall collapsed, the roof falling to the courtyard and the smaller towers tumbling down. Some of the wharves, laden with goods of every sort, slid into the bay. With them went thousands of tons of coal. On the harbor front the earth sank from six to eight inches, and great cracks opened in the streets. San Francisco's famous Chinatown, the greatest settlement of the celestials on this continent, went down like a house of cards. When the earthquake had passed, this den of squalor and infamy was no more. The Chinese theaters and joss houses tumbled into ruins, rookery after rookery collapsed, and hundreds of their inhabitants were buried alive. Panic reigned supreme among the fugitives, who filled the streets in frightened multitudes, dragging from the wreck whatever they could save of their treasured possessions. Much the same was the case with the Japanese quarter, which fire quickly invaded, the people fleeing in terror, carrying on their backs what few of their household effects they were able to rescue. As for the people of Chinatown, however, no one knows or will ever know the extent of the dread fate that overcame them, for no one knows the secrets of that dark abode of infamy and crime, whose inhabitants burrowed underground like so many ants and hid their secrets deep in the earth. The Ruin of Chinatown W. W. Overton, of Los Angeles, thus describes the Chinatown dens and the revelations made by the earthquake and the flames. Strange is the scene where San Francisco's Chinatown stood. No heap of smoking ruins marks the site of the wooden morons where the Orients dwelt in thousands. Only a cavern remains, pitted with deep holes and lined with dark passageways, from whose depths come smoke-reads. White men never knew the depth of Chinatown's underground city. Many had gone beneath the street level two and three stories, but now that the place had been unmasked, men may see where its inner secrets lay. In places one can see passages a hundred feet deep. The fire swept this Mongolian quarter clean. It left no shred of the painted wooden fabric. It ate down to the bare ground, and this lies stark, for the breezes have taken away the light ashes. Joss houses and mission schools, groceries and opium dens, gambling resorts and theaters—all of them went. These buildings blazed up like tissue paper. From this place I saw hundreds of crazed yellow men flee. In their arms they bore opium pipes, money bags, silks and children. Beside them ran the trousered women and some hobbled painfully. These were the men and women of the surface. Far beneath the street levels in those cellars and passageways were other lives. Women, who never saw the day from their darkened prisons, and their blinking jailers were caught and eaten by the flames. Devastation spread widely on all sides, ruining the homes of the rich as well as of the poor, of Americans as well as of Europeans and Asiatics, the marts of trade, the haunts of pleasure, the realms of science and art, the resorts of thousands of the gay population of the Golden State Metropolis. To attempt to tell the whole story of destruction and ruin would be to describe all for which San Francisco stood. Science suffered in the loss of the San Francisco Academy of Sciences, which was destroyed with its invaluable contents. This building, erected fifteen years ago at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, was a seven-story building with a rich collection of objects of science. Much of the academy's contents can never be replaced. It represented the work of many years. There was a rare collection of Pacific seabirds which was the most valuable of its kind in the world. In fact, the entire collection of birds ranked very high, was visited by ornithologists from every country and was the pride of the city. The academy was founded in 1850. James Lick, the same man who endowed the Lick Observatory, giving it one million dollars, so it was on a prosperous footing. It will take many years of active labor to replace the losses of an hour or two of the rain of fire in this institution, while much that it held is gone beyond restoration. As to art and science, art suffered as severely as science, the valuable collections in private and public buildings being nearly all destroyed. We have spoken of the rare paintings burned in the Bohemian Club building. The collections on Knobbs Hill suffered as severely. When the mansions here, the Fairmount Hotel and Mark Hopkins Institute, were approached by the flames, many attempts were made to remove some of the priceless works of art from the buildings. A crowd of soldiers was sent to the Flood and the Huntington Mansions and the Hopkins Institute to rescue the paintings. From the Huntington Home and the Flood Mansion, canvases were cut from the framework with knives. The collection in the three buildings, valued in the hundreds of thousands, was in great part destroyed, few being saved from the ravages of the fire. The destruction of the libraries with their valuable collections of books was also a very serious loss to the city and its people. Of these there were nine of some prominence, the Sutro Library containing many rare books among its two hundred thousand volumes, while that of the Mechanics Institute possessed property valued at two million dollars. The public library occupied a part of the City Hall, the new building proposed by the city, with the aid to the extent of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars by Andrew Carnegie, being fortunately still an embryo. In the burning of the banks the losses were limited to the buildings, their money and other valuables being securely locked in fireproof vaults. But these became so heated by the flames that it was necessary to leave them to a gradual cooling for days, during which their treasures were unavailable, and those with deposits, small or large, were obliged to depend on the benevolence of the nation for food, such wealth as was left to them being locked up beyond their reach. It was the same with the United States sub-treasury, which was entirely destroyed by fire, its vaults which contained all the cash on hand being alone preserved. Guards were put over these to protect their contents against possible loss by theft. One serious effect of the conflagration was the general disorganization of the telegraph system. News items were sent over the wires, but private messages inquiring about missing friends for days failed to reach the party's concern or to bring any return. That the world received news of the San Francisco disaster during the dread day after the earthquake is due in part to the courage of the telegraph operators, who stuck to their posts and continued to send news and other messages in spite of great personal danger. The operators and officials of the postal telegraph company remained in the main office of the company, at the corner of Market and Montgomery streets, opposite the Palace Hotel, until they were ordered out of it because of the danger of the dynamite explosions in the immediate vicinity. The men proceeded to Oakland, across the bay, and took possession of the office there. That night the company operated seven wires from Oakland, all messages from the city being taken across the bay in boats, as the days passed on the service gradually improved, but a week or more passed away before the general service of the company became satisfactory. The Danger from Thirst Much news as came from the city was full of tales of horror. For a number of days one of the chief sources of trouble was from Thirst. Although the earthquake shocks had broken water mains in probably hundreds of places, strange to say, no water, or very little at least, appeared on the surface of the ground, public fountains on Market Street gave out no relief to the thirsty thousands. At Powell and Market Streets a small stream of water spurred it up through the cobblestones and formed a muddy pool, at which the thirsty were glad enough to drink. The soldiers, disregarding the order not to let people move about, permitted bucket brigades to go forth and bring back water to relieve the women and the crying children. To reach the water it was necessary sometimes to go a mile to one of the four reservoirs which topped the hills. Here is a story told by one observer of the incidents in the city during the fire. I talked to one man who slept in Alta Plaza. The fire was going on in the district south of them and at intervals all night exhausted firefighters made their way to the Plaza and dropped, with the breath out of them, among the huddled people in the bundles of household goods. The soldiers who are administering affairs with all the justice of judges and all the devotion of heroes, kept three or four buckets of water, one from the women, for these men, who kept coming all night long. There was a little food, also kept by the soldiers for these emergencies, and the sergeant had in his charge one precious bottle of whiskey, from which he doled out drinks to those who were utterly exhausted. Over in a corner of the Plaza a band of men and women were praying, and one fanatic, driven crazy by horror, was crying out at the top of his voice. The Lord sent it, the Lord! His hysterical crying got in the nerves of the soldiers and bade fair to start a panic among the women and children, so the sergeant went over and stopped it by force. All night they huddled together in this hell, with the fire making it bright as day on all sides, and in the morning the soldiers, using their sense again, commandeered a supply of bread from a bakery, sent out another water-squad and fed the refugees with a semblance of breakfast. There was one woman in the crowd who had been separated from her husband in a rush of the smoke and did not know whether he was living. The women attended to her all night, and in the morning the soldiers passed her through the lines in her search. A few Chinese made their way into the crowd. They were trembling, pitifully scared, and willing to stop wherever the soldiers placed them. This is only a glimpse of the horrible night in the parks and open places. We learn here that many of the well-to-do people in the Upper Residence District have gathered in the strangers from the highways and byways and given them shelter and comfort for the night in their living rooms and drawing rooms. Shelter seems to have come more easily than food. Not an ounce of supplies, of course, has come in for two days, and most of the permanent stores are in the hands of the soldiers, who dole them out to all comers alike. But the hungry cannot always find the military stores, and the news has not gotten out, since there are no newspapers and no regular means of communication. An Italian tells me that he was taken in by a family living in a three-story house in the fashionable Pacific Avenue. There were twenty refugees who passed the night in the drawing room of that house, whose mistress took down hangings to make them comfortable. In the morning all the food that was left over in that home of wealth was enough flour and baking powder to shake together a breakfast for the refugees. They were hardly ready to leave that house when the fire came their way, and the people of the house, together with the refugees, who included two Chinese, made their way to the open ground of the Presidio, with them streamed a procession of folks carrying valuables and bundles. There came out two tales of both heroism and crime. The fireman had been at it for thirty-six hours under such conditions as firemen never before faced, and they do little more than give directions, while the volunteers, thousands of young western men, who have remained to see it through, do the work. The troops have all that they can do to handle the crowds in the streets and prevent panics. The work of dynamiting, tearing down and rescuing, is in the hands of the volunteers. This morning an eddy of flame from the edge of the burning wholesale district ran up the slope of Russian Hill, the highest eminence in the city. All along the edge of that hill and up the slopes are little frame houses which hold Italians and Mexicans. A core of volunteer aides ran along the edge of the fire warning people out of the houses, but the flames came too fast, and three women were caught in the upper story of an old frame house. A young man tore a rail from a fence, managed to climb it, and reached the window. He bundled one woman out and slid her down the rail. Then the roof caught fire. He seized another woman and managed to drop her on the rail, down which she slid without hurting herself a great deal. But the roof fell while he was struggling with another woman, and they fell together into the flames. There must have been hundreds of such heroisms and dozens of such catastrophes. We are so drunken and dulled by horror that we take such stories calmly now. We are saturated. How Looting Was Hindered One thing to be strictly guarded against in those days of destruction was the outbreak of lawlessness. A city as large as San Francisco is sure to hold a large number of the brigands of civilization, a horde who need to be kept under strict discipline at all times, and especially when calamity lets down for the time being the bars of law, at which time many of the usually law abiding would join their ranks if any license were allowed. The authorities made haste to guard against this and certain other dangers. Mayor Schmitz issuing, on Wednesday, the following proclamation. The federal troops, the members of the regular police force, and special police officers have been authorized to kill any and all persons engaged in looting, or in the commission of any other crime. I have directed all the gas and electrical lighting companies not to turn on gas or electricity until I order them to do so. You may therefore expect the city to remain in darkness for an indefinite time. I request all citizens to remain at home from darkness until daylight every night until order is restored. I warn all citizens of the dangers of fire from damaged or destroyed chimneys, broken or leaking gas pipes or fixtures or any like causes. He also ordered that no lights should be used in the houses and no fires built in the houses until the chimneys had been inspected and repaired. There was need of vigilance in this direction, for the vandals were quickly at work. Routed out from their dens along the wharves, the rats of the waterfront, the drifters on the back-eddy of civilization, crawled out intent on plunder. Early in the day a policeman caught one of these men creeping through the window of a small bank on Montgomery Street and shot him dead. But the police were kept too busy at other necessary duties to devote much time to these wretches, and for a time many of them plundered at will, though some of them met with quick and sure retribution. STORIES by Sightseers One onlooker says, Were it not for the fact that the soldiers in charge of the city do not hesitate in shooting down the ghouls the lawless element would predominate, not alone do the soldiers execute the law. On Wednesday afternoon, in front of the Palace Hotel, a crowd of workers in the mines discovered a miscreant in the act of robbing a corpse of its jewels. Without delay he was seized, a rope obtained, and he was strung up to a beam that was left standing in the ruined entrance of the hotel. No sooner had he been hoisted up and a hitch taken in the rope than one of his fellow criminals was captured. Stopping only to obtain a few yards of hemp, a knot was quickly tied, and the wretch was soon adorning the hotel entrance by the side of the other dastard. These are the only two instances I saw but I heard of many that were seen by others. The soldiers do all they can, and while the unspeakable crime of robbing the dead is undoubtedly being practiced, it would be many times as prevalent were it not for the constant vigilance on all sides, as well as the summary justice. Another observer tells of an instance of the summary justice that came under his eyes. At the corner of Market and Third Streets on Wednesday I saw a man attempting to cut the fingers from the hand of a dead woman in order to secure the rings which adorned the stiffened fingers. Three soldiers witnessed the deed at the same time, and ordered the man to throw up his hands. Instead of obeying the command he drew a revolver from his pocket and began to fire at his pursuer without warning. The three soldiers, reinforced by a half a dozen uniformed patrolmen, raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired. With the first shots the man fell, and when the soldiers went to the body to dump it into an alley nine bullets were found to have entered it. The warning this severity gave was accentuated in one instance in a most effective manner. On a pile of bricks, stones and rubbish, was thrown the body of a man shot through the heart, and on his chest was pinned this placard. Take warning. Those of the ghouls who saw this were likely to desist from their detestable work, unless they valued spoils more than life. Willie Ames, a Salt Lake City man, tells of the kind of justice done the thieves as it came under his observation. I saw a man after man shot down by the troops. Most of these were ghouls. One man made the trooper believe that one of the dead bodies lying on a pile of rocks was his mother, and he was permitted to go up to the body. Apparently overcome by greed he threw himself across the corpse. In another instant the soldiers discovered that he was chewing the diamond earrings from the ears of the dead woman. Here is where you get what is coming to you, said one of the soldiers, and with that he put a bullet through the ghoul. The diamonds were found in the man's mouth afterwards. Others were shot to save them from the horror of being burned alive. Max Fast, a garment worker, tells of such an instance. He says, when the fire caught the Windsor Hotel at Fifth and Market Streets there were three men on the roof, and it was impossible to get them down. Rather than see the crazed men fall in with the roof and be roasted alive the military officer directed his men to shoot them, which they did in the presence of five thousand people. He further states, at Jefferson Square I saw a fatal clash between the military and the police. A policeman ordered a soldier to take up a dead body to put it in the wagon, and the soldier ordered the policeman to do it. Words followed and the soldier shot the policeman dead. Among the many stories of this character on record is that of a concerted effort to break into and rob the Mint, which led to the death of fourteen men who were shot down by the guard in charge. They had disregarded the command of the officer in charge to desist. They had disobeyed and the death of nearly the whole of them followed. DEATH FOR SLIGHT OFFENCE As may well be imagined, the privilege given to fire at will was very likely to lead to examples of unjustifiable haste in the use of the rifle. Such haste is not charged against the United States troops, but the militia and volunteer guards showed less judgment in the use of their weapons. Thus we are told that one man was shot for the minor offense of washing his hands in drinking water, which had been brought with great trouble for the thirsty people gathered in Columbia Park. It is also said that a bank clerk searching the ruins of his bank under orders was killed by a soldier who thought he was looting, more than one seems to have been shot as looters for entering their own homes. Among the reports there is one that two men were shot through the windows of their houses because they disobeyed the general orders in lit candles, and one woman because she lighted a fire in her cook stove. Yet, if such unwarranted acts existed, there were others better deserved. It is said that three men were lined up and shot before ten thousand people. One was caught taking the rings from a woman who had fainted, another had stolen a piece of bread from a hungry child, and the third, little more than a boy, was found in the act of robbing tents. One thief who escaped the bullet richly deserved it. He came upon a Miss Logan when lying unconscious on the floor of the St. Francis Hotel after the earthquake, and, rather than take the time to wrench some valuable rings from her hand, cut off the finger bearing them, and left her to the horrors of the coming fire. The climax and the two free use of the rifle came on the twenty-third when Major H. C. Tilden, a prominent member of the General Relief Committee, was shot and killed in his automobile by members of the citizen's patrol. Two others in the car were struck by bullets. The automobile had been used as an ambulance, and the red cross flag was displayed on it. The excuse of the shooters was that they did not see the flag, and that the car did not stop when challenged. This act led to an order forbidding the carrying of firearms by the citizen's committees and to stricter regulation of the soldiers in the use of their weapons. Later on, Looting took a new form different from that at first shown, and was practiced by a different class of people. These were the sightseers, many of them people of prominence, who entered upon a crusade of relic hunting in Chinatown, gathering and carrying off from the ashes of this quarter valuable pieces of chinaware, bronze ornaments, etc. It became necessary to put a stop to this, and on April 30th, four militiamen were arrested while digging in the ruins of the Chinese bazaars, and others were frightened away by shots fired over their heads. A strong military line was then drawn around the district, and this last resource of the looter came to an end. The panic flight of a homeless host. The scene that was visible in the streets of San Francisco on that dread Wednesday morning was one to make the strongest shutter with horror. Those three minutes of devastating earth tremors were moments never to be forgotten. In such a time it is the human instinct to get into the open air, and the people stumbled from their heaving and quivering houses to find even the solid earth was swaying and rising and falling, so that here and there great rents opened in the streets. To the panic-stricken people the minutes that followed seemed years of terror. Doubtless some among them died of sheer fright, and more went mad with terror. There was a roar in the air like a burst of thunder, and from all directions came the crash of falling walls. They would run forward, then stop, as another shock seemed to take the earth from under their feet, and many of them flung themselves face downward on the ground in an agony of fear. Two or three minutes seemed to pass before the fugitives found their voices. Then the screams of women and the wild cries of men rent the air, and with one impulse the terror-stricken host fled toward the parks, to get themselves as far as possible from the tottering and falling walls. These speedily became packed with people, most of them in the nightclothes in which they had leaped or been flung from their beds, screaming and moaning at the little shocks that at intervals followed the great one. The dawn was just breaking, the gas and electric mains were gone and the street lamps were all out. The sky was growing white in the east, but before the sun could fling his early rays from the horizon there came another light, a lurid and threatening one, that of the flames that had begun to rise in the warehouse district. The braver men and those without families to watch over set out for this endangered region, half dressed as they were, in the early morning light they could see the business district below them, many of the buildings in ruins and the flames showing readily in five or six places. Through the streets came the fire engines, called from the outlying districts by a general alarm. The firemen were not yet aware that no water was to be had. The Panic in the Slums On Portsmouth Square the panic was indescribable. This old tree plaza, about which the early city was built, is now in the center of Chinatown, of the Italian district and of the Barbary Coast, the tenderloin of the western metropolis. It is the chief slum district of the city. The tremor here ran up the Chinatown hill and shook down part of the crazy buildings on its southern edge. It brought ruin also to some of the Italian tenements. Portsmouth Square became the refuge of the terrified inhabitants. Out from their underground burrows like so many rats fled the Chinese, trembling in terror into the square and seeking by beating gongs and other noise making instruments to scare off the underground demons. Into the square from the other side came the Italian refugees. The panic became a madness. Knives were drawn in the insanity of the moment and two Chinamen were taken to the morgue, stabbed to death for no other reason than pure madness. Here on one side dwelt twenty thousand Chinese and on the other thousands of Italians, Spaniards, and Mexicans, while close at hand lived the riff-raff of the Barbary Coast. Seemingly the whole of these rushed for that one square of open ground, the two streams meeting in the center of the square and heaping up on its edges. There they squabbled and fought in the madness of panic and despair, as so many mad wolves might have fought when caught in the red whirl of a prairie fire. Until the soldiers broke in and at bayonet's point brought some semblance of order out of the confusion of panic terror. This scene in Portsmouth Square but illustrated the madness of fear everywhere prevailing. On every side thousands were fleeing from the roaring furnace that minute by minute seemed to extend its boundaries. THE FLIGHT FOR SAFETY In the awful scramble for safety the half crazed survivors disregarded everything but the thought of themselves and their property. In every excavation and hole throughout the North Beach householders buried household effects, throwing them into ditches and covering the holes. Attempts were made to mark the graves of the property so that it could be recovered after the flames were appeased. The streets were filled with struggling people, some crying and weeping and calling for missing loved ones. Crowding the sidewalks were thousands of householders attempting to drag some of their effects to places of safety. In some instances men with ropes were dragging trunks, tandem style, while others had sewing machines strapped to the trunks. Again women were rushing for the hills, carrying on their arms only the family cat or a birdcage. There were two ideas in the minds of the fugitives and in many cases these two only. One of these was to escape to the open ground of Golden Gate Park and the Presidio Reservation. The other was to reach the ferry and make their way out of the seemingly doomed city. At the ferry building a crowd numbering thousands gathered begging for food and transportation across the bay. Hundreds had not even the ten cents fare to Oakland. Most of the refugees at this point were Chinaman and Italians, who had fled from their burned tenements with little or no personal property. Residents of the hillsides in the central portion of the city seemingly were safe from the inferno of flames that was consuming the business section. They watched the towering mounds of flames and speculated as to the extent of the territory that was doomed. Suddenly there was a whispered alarm up and down the long line of watchers and they hurried away to drag clothing, cooking utensils, and scant provisions through the streets. From Grant Avenue the procession moved westward. Men and women dragged trunks, packed huge bundles of blankets, boxes of provisions, everything. Wagons could not be hired except by paying the most extortionate rates. Thank heaven for the open space of the Presidio and for Golden Gate Park was the unspoken thank offering of many hearts. The Great Park, with its thousands of more acres of area, extending from the thinly populated part of the city across the sand dunes to the Pacific, seemed in that awful hour a God-given place of refuge. Near it and extending to the Golden Gate Channel is the Presidio Military Reservation, containing 1,480 acres, and with only a few houses on its broad extent. Here also was a place of safety, provided that the forests, which form a part of its area, did not burn. The Exodus from the Burning City To these open spaces, to the suburbs, in every available direction, the fugitives streamed. In thousands, in tens of thousands, finally in hundreds of thousands, safety from those towering flames, from the tottering walls of their dwellings, from a possible return of the earthquake, their one over-mastering thought. There were many persons with scanty clothing, women in underskirts and thin wastes, and men in shirt sleeves. Many women carried children, while others wheeled baby carriages. It was a strange and weird procession, that kept up unceasingly all that dreadful day and through the night that followed, as the all-conquering flames spread the area of terror. At intervals news came of what was doing behind the smoke-cloud. The area of the flames spread all night. People who had decided that their houses were outside of the dangerous area, and had decided to pass the night, even after the terrible experience of the shake-up, under their roofs, hourly gave up the idea and struggled to the parks. There they lay in blankets, their choicest valuables by their sides, and the soldiers kept watch and order. Many lay on the bare grass of the park, with nothing between them and the chill-night air. Fortunately the weather was clear and mild, but among those who lay under the open sky were men and women who were delicately reared, accustomed all their lives to luxurious surroundings, and these must have suffered severely during that night of terror. The fire was going on in the district south of them, and at intervals all night exhausted firefighters made their way to the plaza and dropped, with the breath out of them, among the huddled people and the bundles of household goods. The soldiers, who were administering affairs with all the justice of judges and all the devotion of heroes, kept three or four buckets of water, even from the women, for these men, who continued to come all the night long. There was a little food, also kept by the soldiers for these emergencies, and the sergeant had in his charge one precious bottle of whiskey, from which he doled out drinks to those who were utterly exhausted. But there was no panic. The people were calm, stunned. They did not seem to realize the extent of the calamity. They heard that the city was being destroyed. They told each other, in the most natural tone that their residences were destroyed by the flames, but there was no hysteria, no outcry, no criticism. The trip to the hills and to the waterfront was one of terrible hardship. Famishing women and children and exhausted men were compelled to walk seven miles around the North Shore in order to avoid the flames and reach the fairies. Many dropped to the street under the weight of their loads, and willing fathers and husbands, their strength almost gone, strove to pick up and urge them forward again. In the panic many mad things were done, even soldiers were obliged in many instances to prevent men and women, made insane from the misfortune that had engulfed them, from rushing into doomed buildings in the hope of saving valuables from the ruins. In nearly every instance such action resulted in death to those who tried it. At Larkin and Sutter Streets two men and a woman broke from the police and rushed into a burning apartment house, never to reappear. The rush to the parks and the dunes was followed in the days that followed by, as wild a rush to the fairies, due to the mad desire to escape anywhere, in any way from the burning city. The wild rush to the fairies. At the fairies station on Wednesday night there was much confusion. Mingled in an inextricable mass were people of every race and class on earth. A common misfortune and hunger obliterated all distinctions. Chinese lying on pallets of rags slept near exhausted white women with babies in their arms. Bedding household furniture of every description, pet animals and trinkets, and luggage and packages of every sort packed almost every foot of space near the fairy building. Men spread bedding on the pavement and calmly slept the sleep of exhaustion, while all around a bedlam of confusion reigned. Many of those who sought the fairy on that fatal Wednesday met a solid wall of flames extending for squares in length and utterly impassable. In their half-insane eagerness to escape some of them would have rushed into fatal danger but for the soldiers, who guarded the fire-line and forced them back. Only those reached the fairy who had come in precedence of the flames, or who made a long detour to reach that avenue aflight. When the news came to the camps of refugees that it was safe to cross the burned area, a procession began from the Golden Gate Park across the city and down Market Street. The thoroughfare which had long been the pride of the citizens, and a second from the Presidio, along the curving shoreline of the North Bay, thence southward along the waterfront. Throughout these routes, eight miles long, a continuous flow of humanity dragged its weary way all day and far into the night amidst hundreds of vehicles, from the clumsy garbage cart to the modern automobile. Almost every person and every vehicle carried luggage. Drivers of vehicles were disregardful of these exhausted, hungry refugees and drove straight through the crowd. So dazed and deadened to all feeling were some of them that they were bumped aside by carriage wheels or bumped out of the way by persons. Scenes of Humour and Pethos. As already stated, the scene had its humorous as well as its pathetic side, and various amusing stories are told by those who were in a frame of mind to notice ludicrous incidents in the horrors of the situation. Two racetrack men met in the drive. Hello, Bill. Where are you living now? asked one. You see that tree over there? That big one? said Bill. Well, you climbed that. My room was on the third branch to the left. And they went away laughing. Another observer tells these incidents of the flight. I saw one big fat man calmly walking up Market Street, carrying a huge birdcage, and the cage was empty. He seemed to enjoy looking at direct buildings. Another man was leading a huge Newfoundland dog and carrying a kitten in his arms. He kept talking to the kitten. On Fell Street I noticed an old woman, half dressed, pushing a sewing machine up the hill. A drawer fell out, and she stopped to gather the fallen spools. Poor little seamstress, it was now her all. A more amusing instance of the spirit of saving is that told by another narrator, who says that he saw a lone woman patiently pushing an upright piano along the pavement a few inches at a time. Evidently in this case, too, it was the poor soul's one great treasure on earth. He also tells of a guest berating the proprietor of a hotel, a few minutes after the shock, because he had not obeyed orders to call him at five o'clock. He vowed he would never stop at that house again. A vow he might well keep as the house is no more. In one room where two girls were dressing, the floor gave way and one of them disappeared. Where are you, Mary? screamed her companion. Oh, I'm in the parlor, said Mary calmly, as she wriggled out of the mass of plaster and mortar below. At the handsome residence of Rudolph Spreckles, the wealthy financier, the lawn was ribbon from end to end in great gashes, while the ornamental Italian rail leading to the imposing entrance was a battered heap. But the family, with the philosophy notable for the occasion, calmly set up housekeeping on the sidewalk. The women seated in armchairs taken from the mansion and wrapped in rugs and coverlets. The silver breakfast service was laid out on the stone coping, and their morning meal spread out on the sidewalk. This scene was repeated at other houses of the wealthy, the family's too fearful of another shock to venture within doors. Another story of much interest in this connection is told. On Friday afternoon, two days and some hours after the scene just narrated, Mrs. Rudolph Spreckles presented her husband with an heir on the lawn in front of their mansion, while the family were awaiting the coming of the dynamite squad to blow up their magnificent residence. An Irish woman, who had been called in to plait the part of midwife at a berth elsewhere on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one's eyes were open to the walls of its tent home. God sends earthquakes and babies, she said, but he might, in his mercy, cut out sending them both together. There were many pathetic incidents. Families had been sadly separated in the confusion of the flight. Husbands had lost their wives, wives had lost their husbands, and anxious mothers sought some word of their children. The stories were very much the same. One pretty-looking woman in an expensive tailor-made costume, badly torn, had lost her little girl. I don't think anything has happened to her, she said, hopefully. She is almost eleven years old, and someone will be sure to take her in and care for her. I only want to know where she is. That is all I care about now. A well-known young lady of good social position, when asked where she had spent the night, replied, on a grave. I thank God, I thank Uncle Sam and the people of this nation, said a woman, clad in a red woolen wrapper, seated in front of a tent at the Presidio nursing one child and feeding three others from a board-prop on two bricks. We have lost our home and all we had, but we have never been hungry, nor without shelter. The spirit of forty-nine was vital in many of the refugees. One man wanted to know whether the fire had reached his home. He was informed that there was not a house standing in that section of the city. He shrugged his shoulders and whistled. There's lots of others in the same boat, as he turned away. Going to build, repeated one man, who had lost family and home inside of two hours. Of course I am. They tell me that the money in the banks is still all right, and I have some insurance. Fifteen years ago I began with these, showing his hands, and I guess I'm game to do it over again. Build again, well I wonder. Among the many pathetic incidents of the disaster was that of a woman who sat at the foot of Van Ness Avenue on the hot sands on the hillside overlooking the bay east of Fort Mason, with four little children, the youngest a girl of three, the eldest a boy of ten years. They were destitute of water, food, and money. The woman had fled, with her children, from a home in flames in the Mission Street District, and tramped to the bay in the hope of siding the ship which she said was about due, of which her husband was the captain. He would know me anywhere, she said, and she would not move, although a young fellow gallantly offered his tent back on a vacant lot in which to shelter her children. The Golden Gate Camp In the Golden Gate Park there was the most woefully grotesque camp of sufferers imaginable. There was no caste, no distinction of rich and poor, social lines had been obliterated by the common misfortune, and the late owners of property and wealth were glad to camp by the side of the day laborer. As for shelter, there were a few army tents, and some others which afforded a fair degree of comfort, but nine out of ten are the poorest suggestions of tents made out of bedclothes, rugs, raincoats, and in some cases of lace curtains. None of the tents or huts has a floor, and it is impossible to see how a large number of women and children can escape the most disastrous physical effects. The unspeakable chaos that prevailed was apparent in no way more than in the system, or lack of system, of registration and location. At the entrance to Golden Gate Park stands a billboard, twenty feet high and a hundred feet long. Originally it bore the praises of somebody's beer. Covering this billboard to a height of ten or twelve feet were slips of paper, business cards, letter heads, and other notices addressed to those interested, friends and relatives, or to some individual telling of the whereabouts of refugees. One notice read, Mrs. Rogers will find her husband in Isadora Park, Oakland, W. H. Rogers. Another style was this, Sue Harry and Will Solenberger, All Safe, call it number 250 27th Avenue. There were thousands of these dramatic notices on this billboard, and one larger than the others read, Death Notices can be left here, get as many as possible. Another method of finding friends and relatives was by printing notices on vehicles. On the side curtains of a buggy being driven to Golden Gate Park was the following sign, I am looking for I. E. Hall. That searchers for lost ones might have the least trouble, all the tents, here known as camps, were tagged with the names or numbers. For instance, one tent of bed quilts carried this sign. Number 40, Bush Street Camp. Most of the tents were merely named for the family name of the occupants, the former street's number usually being given. But these tent tags told a wonderful story of human nature. A small army tent bore the name Camp Thankful. The one next to it was placarded Camp Glory, and a few feet further on an Irishman had posted the sign Camp Hell. The cooking was all done on a dozen bricks for a stove, with such utensils as may usually be picked up in the ordinary residential alley. But in all of the camps the badge of the eternal feminine was to be found in the form of small pieces of broken mirrors or hand mirrors fastened to trees or tent walls. In some cases the polished bottom of a tomato can serving the purposes of the feminine toilet. One woman, in whose improvised tents screeched a parrot, sat ministering to the wounds of the other family pet, a badly singed cat. The number of canaries, parrots, dogs, and cats was one of the amusing features of the disaster. Among the interesting and thrilling incidents of the disaster is that connected with the telegraph service. For many hours virtually all the news from San Francisco came over the wires of the postal telegraph company. The postal has about 15 wires running into San Francisco. They go under the bay in cables from Oakland, and then run underground for several blocks down Market Street to the postal building. About 40 operators are employed to handle the business, but evidently there was only about one on duty when the earthquake began. What became of him nobody knows, but he seems to have sent the first word of the disaster. It came over the postal wires about nine o'clock, just when the day's business had started in the east. It will long be preserved in the records of the company. This was the dispatch. There was an earthquake hit us at 5.13 this morning, wrecking several buildings and wrecking our offices. They are carting dead from the fallen buildings. Fire all over town. There is no water and we lost our power. I'm going to get out of office as we have had a little shake every few minutes, and it's me for the simple life. R. San Francisco, 5.50 a.m. Mr. R evidently got out, for there was nothing doing for a brief interval after that. The operator in the east pounded and pounded at his key, but San Francisco was silent. The postal people were wondering if it was all the dream of some crazy operator or a calamity when the wire woke up again. It was the superintendent of the San Francisco force this time. We are on the job and are going to try and stick, was the way the first message came from him. This was what came over the wire a little later. Terrific earthquake occurred here at 5.13 this morning. A number of people were killed in the city. None of the postal people were killed. They are now carting the dead from the fallen buildings. There are many fires, with no one to fight them. Postal building roof wrecked, but not entire building. The fire got nearer and nearer to the postal building. All of the water mains had been destroyed around the building, the operator said, and there was no hope if the fire came on. They also said that they could hear the sounds of dynamite blowing up buildings. All this time the operators were sticking to their posts and sending and receiving all the business the wires could stand. At 12.45 the wire began to click again with a message for the little group of waiting officials. This message came in jerks. Fire still coming up Market Street. It's one block from the post office now. Back of the Palace Hotel is a furnace. I am afraid that the Grand Hotel and the Palace Hotel will get it soon. The Southern Pacific offices on California Street are safe, so far, but can't tell what will happen. California Street is on fire. Almost everything east of Montgomery Street and north of Market Street is on fire now. There was a pause then. We are beginning to pack up our instruments. Instruments are all packed up and we are ready to run, was another message. It was evident that just one instrument had been left connected with the world outside. In about 10 minutes it began to click. Those who knew the telegraphers language caught the words goodbye and then the ticks stopped. At the end of an hour the instrument in the office began to click again. It was from an electrician by the name of Swain. I'm back in the building but they are dynamiting the building next door and I've got to get out. Was the way his message was translated. Dynamite ended the story and the Postal's domicile in San Francisco ceased to exist. End of Chapter 5. Recording by Kathleen Nelson, Austin, Texas, May 2010. Section 6 of The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. Edited by Charles Morris, Chapter 6. Facing Famine and Praying for Relief. Frightful was the emergency of the vast host of fugitives who fled in terror from the blazing city of San Francisco to the open gates of Golden Gate Park and the military reservation of the Presidio. Food was wanting, scarcely any water was to be had. Death by hunger and thirst threatened more than a quarter million of souls, thus driven without warning from their comfortable and happy homes and left without food or shelter. Provisions, shelter tents, means of relief of various kinds were being hurried forward in all haste. But for several days the host of fugitives had no beds but the bare ground, no shelter but the open heavens, scarcely a crumb of bread to eat, scarcely a gill of water to drink. Those first days that followed the disaster were days of horror and dread. Rich and poor were mingled together. The delicately reared with the rough sons of toil to whom privation was no new experience. Those who had food to sell sought to take advantage of the necessities of the suffering by charging famine prices for their supplies. But the soldiers put a quick stop to this. When Thursday morning broke lines of buyers formed before the stores whose supplies had not been commandeered. In one of these the first man was charged seventy-five cents for a loaf of bread. The corporal in charge at that point brought his gun down with the slam. Bread is ten cents a loaf in this shop, he said. It went. The soldier fixed the schedule of prices a little higher than in ordinary times and to make up for that he forced the storekeeper to give free food to several hungry people in line who had no money to pay. In several other places the soldiers used the same brand of horse cents. A man with a loaf of bread in his hands ran up to a policeman on Washington Street. Here, he said, this man is trying to charge me a dollar for this loaf of bread. Is that fair? Give it to me, said the policeman. He broke off one end of it and stuck it in his mouth. I am hungry myself, he said when he had his mouth clear. Take the rest of it. It's appropriated. As an example of the prices charged for food and service by the unscrupulous, we may quote the experience of a Los Angeles millionaire named John Singleton, who had been staying a day or two at the Palace Hotel. On Wednesday, he had to pay twenty-five dollars for an express wagon to carry himself, his wife, and her sister to the casino, near Golden Gate Park, and on Thursday was charged a dollar a piece for eggs and a dollar for a loaf of bread. Others tell of having to pay fifty dollars for a ride to the ferry. One of the refugees on the shores of Lake Herced Thursday morning spied a flock of ducks and swans which the city maintained there for the decoration of the lake. He plunged into the lake, swam out to them, and captured a fat drake. Other men and boys saw the point and followed. The municipal ducks were all cooking in five minutes. The soldiers were prompt to take charge of the famine situation, acting on their own responsibility and clearing out the supplies of the little grocery stores left standing and distributing them among the people in need. The principal food of those who remained in the city was composed of canned goods and crackers. The refugees who succeeded in getting out of San Francisco were met as soon as they entered the neighboring towns by representatives of bakers who had made large supplies of bread and who immediately dealt them out to the hungry people. The food question urgent. But the needs of the three hundred thousand homeless and hungry people in the fire could not be met in this way, and immediate supplies in large quantities were necessary to prevent a reign of famine from succeeding the ravages of the fire. Danger from thirst was still more insistent than that from hunger. There was some food to be had, bakeries were quickly built within the military reservation there, and General Thunston announced that rations would soon reach the city and the people would be supplied from the Presidio. But there was scarcely any water to relieve the thirst of the suffering. Water became the incessant cry of firemen and people alike. The one wanting it to fight the fire, the other to drink. But even for the latter the supply was very scant. There was water in plenty in the reservoirs, but they were distant and difficult to reach. And all night of the day succeeding the earth shock, wagons mounted with barrels and guarded by soldiers drove through the park, doling out water. There was a steady crush around these wagons, but only one drink was allowed to a person. Toward midnight a black, staggering body of men began to weave through the entrance. They were volunteer firefighters, looking for a place to throw themselves down and sleep. These men dropped out all along the line and were rolled out of the driveways by the troops. There was much splendid unselfishness here. Women gave up their blankets and sat up or walked about all night to cover the exhausted men who had fought fire until there was no more fight in them. The common destitution and suffering had, as we have said, wiped out all social, financial, and racial distinctions. The man who last Tuesday was a prosperous merchant was obliged to occupy with his family a little plot of ground that adjoined the open-air home of a laborer. The white man of California forgot his antipathy to the Asiatic race and maintained friendly relations with his new Chinese and Japanese neighbors. The society-bell, who Tuesday night was a butterfly of fashion at the Grand Opera Performance, now assisted some factory girl in the preparation of humble daily meals. Money had little value. The family that had had foresight to lay in the largest stock of foodstuffs on the first day of the disaster was rated highest in the scale of wealth. A few of the families that could secure wagons were possessors of cook stoves, but over ninety-five percent of the refugees did their cooking on little campfires made of brick or stone. Battered kitchen utensils that the week before would have been regarded as useless had become articles of high value. In fact, man had to come back to nature and all lines of cast had been obliterated, while the very thought of luxury had disappeared. It was, in the exigency of the moment, considered good fortune to have a scant supply of the barest necessaries of life. As for clothing, it was in many cases of the scantiest. While numbers of the people had brought comfortable clothing and bedding, many others had fled in their nightgarbs, and comparatively few of these had had the self-possession to return and don their daytime clothes. As a result there had been much improvisation of garments suitable for life in the open air, and as the days went on many of the women arrayed themselves in homemade bloomer costumes, a sensible innovation under the circumstances and in view of the active outdoor work they were obliged to perform. The grave question to be faced at this early stage was, how soon would an adequate supply of food arrive from outside points to avert famine? Little remained in San Francisco beyond the area swept by the fire, and the available supply could not last more than a few days. Fresh meat disappeared early on Wednesday, and only canned foods and breadstuffs were left. All the foodstuffs coming in on cars were at once seized by order of the mayor and added to the scanty supply, the names of the consignees being taken that this material might eventually be paid for. The bakers agreed to work their plants to the utmost capacity and to send all their surplus output to the Relief Committee. By working night and day thousands of loaves could be provided daily. A big bakery in the Saved District started its ovens and arranged to bake 50,000 loaves before night. The provisions were taken charge of by a committee and sent to the various depots from which the people were being fed. Instructions were issued by Mayor Schmitz on Thursday to break open every store containing provisions and to distribute them to the thousands under police supervision. A policeman reported that two grocery stores in the neighborhood were closed, although the clerks were present, smashed the stores open, ordered the mayor, and guard them. In towns across the bay the master bakers have met and fixed the price of bread at five cents the loaf. With the understanding that they will refuse to sell to retailers who attempt to charge famine prices, the Committee of Citizens in charge of the situation in the Stricken City proposed to use every effort to keep food down to the ordinary price and check the efforts of speculators, who, in one instance, charged as much as three dollars and fifty cents for two loaves of bread and a can of sardines. Orders were issued by the War Department to Army officers to purchase at Los Angeles immediately 200,000 rations, and at Seattle 300,000 rations and hurry them to San Francisco. The department was informed that there were 120,000 rations at the Presidio, that thousands of refugees were being sheltered there and that the Army was feeding them. One million rations already had been started to San Francisco by the department, but in view of the fact that there were 300,000 fugitives to be fed, the supply available was likely to be soon exhausted. Such was the state of affairs at the end of the second day of the great disaster. But meanwhile the entire country had been aroused by the tidings of the awful calamity. The sympathetic instinct of Americans everywhere was awakened, and it was quickly made evident that the people of the stricken city would not be allowed to suffer for the necessaries of life. On all sides money was contributed in large sums. The United States government setting the example by an immediate appropriation of one million dollars, and in the briefest possible interval relief trains were speeding toward the stricken city from all quarters, carrying supplies of food, shelter tents, and other necessaries of a kind that could not await deliberate action. Shelter was needed almost as badly as food, for a host of the refugees had nothing but their thin clothing to cover them, and, though the weather at first was fine and mild, a storm might come at any time. In fact, a rain did come, a severe one, early in the week after the disaster, pouring nearly all night long on the shivering campers in the parks, wetting them to the skin and soaking through the rudely improvised shelters which many of the refugees had put up. A few days afterward came a second shower, rendering still more evident the need of haste in providing suitable shelter. All this was foreseen by those in charge, and the most strenuous efforts were made to provide the absolute necessities of life. Huge quantities of supplies were poured into the city. From all parts of California, train loads of food were rushed there in all haste. A steamer from the Orient, laden with food, reached the city in its hour of need. Another was dispatched in all haste from Tacoma, bearing twenty-five thousand dollars worth of food and medical supplies, ordered by Mayor Weaver, of Philadelphia, as a first installment of that city's contribution. Money was telegraphed from all quarters to the governor of California, to be expended for food and other supplies, and so prompt was the response to the insistent demand that by Saturday all danger of famine was at an end. The people were being fed. Water for the Thirsty The broken water pipes were also repaired with all possible haste. The Spring Valley Water Company putting about one thousand men at work upon their shattered mains, and in a very brief time water began to flow freely in many parts of the residence section, and the great difficulty of obtaining food and water was practically at an end. Never in the history of the country has there been a more rapid and complete demonstration of the resourcefulness of Americans, than in the way this frightful disaster was met. Food, water, and shelter were not the only urgent needs. At first there was absolutely no sanitary provision, and the danger of an epidemic was great. This was a peril which the Board of Health addressed itself vigorously to meet, and steps for improving the sanitary conditions were hastily taken. Quick provision for sheltering the unfortunates was also made. Eight temporary structures, 150 feet in length by 28 feet wide and 13 feet high, were erected in Golden Gate Park, and in these sheds thousands found reasonably comfortable quarters. This was but a beginning. More of these buildings were rapidly erected, and by their aid the question of shelter was in part solved. The buildings were divided into compartments large enough to house a family, each compartment having an entrance from the outside. This work was done under the control of the Engineering Department of the United States Army, which had taken steps to obtain a full supply of lumber and had put 135 carpenters to work. Those of the refugees who were without tents were the first to be provided for in these temporary buildings. The Camps in the Parks To those who made an inspection of the situation a few days after the earthquake, the hills and beaches of San Francisco looked like an immense, tented city. For miles through the park, and along the beaches from Ingleside to the sea wall at North Beach, the homeless were camped in tents, makeshifts rigged up from a few sticks of wood and a blanket or sheet. Some few of the more fortunate secured vehicles on which they loaded regulation tents and were, therefore, more comfortably housed than the great majority. Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle looked like one vast campaign ground. It is said that fully 100,000 persons, rich and poor alike, sought refuge in Golden Gate Park alone, and 200,000 more homeless ones located at other places of refuge. At the Presidio Military Reservation, where probably 50,000 persons were camped, affairs were conducted with military precision. Water was plentiful and rations were dealt out all day long. The refugees stood patiently in line and there was not a murmur. This characteristic was observable all over the city. The people were brave and patient, and the wonderful order preserved by them proved of great assistance. In Golden Gate Park, a huge supply station had been established and provisions were dealt out. Six hundred men from the Ocean Shore Railway arrived on Saturday night with wagons and implements to work on the sewer system. Inspectors were kept going from house to house, examining chimneys and issuing permits to build fires. In fact, activity manifested itself in all quarters in the attempt to bring order out of confusion, and in an astonishingly short time the Tenton City was converted from a scene of wretched disorder into one of order and system. At Jefferson Park were camped thousands of people of every class in life. On the western edge of this park is the old Scott House, where Mrs. McKinley lay sick for two weeks in 1901. Three times a day the people all gathered in line before the provision wagons for their little handouts. Yesterday, says an observer, I saw, in order before the wagons, a last-gar sailor in his turban, about as low a Chinatown bum as I have ever set eyes on, a woman of refined appearance, a bare-footed child, two Chinaman, and a pretty girl. They were squeezed up together by the line, which extended for a quarter of a mile. It is civilization in the bare bones. The great and rich are on a level with the poor and the struggle for bare existence, and over them all is the perfect, unbroken discipline of the soldiery. They came into the city and took charge on an hour's notice. They saved the city from itself in the three days of hell, and but for them the city, even with enough provisions to feed them in the stores and warehouses, must have gone hungry for a lack of distributive organization. Comedy and pathos in the breadline. At one of the parks on Tuesday morning a handsomely dressed woman with two children at her skirt stood in a line of many hundreds, where supplies were being given out. She took some uncooked bacon, and as she reached for it, jewels sparkled on her fingers. One of the tots took a can of condensed milk. The other a bag of cakes. I have money, she said. If I could get it and use it. I have property. If I could realize on it. I have friends. If I could get to them. Meantime I am going to cook this piece of bacon on bricks and be happy. She was only one of thousands like her. In a walk through the city this note of cheerfulness of the people in the face of an almost incredible week of horror was to a correspondent the mitigating elements to the awfulness of disaster. In the streets of the residential district in the western addition, which the fire did not reach, women of the houses were cooking meals on the pavement. In most cases they had moved out the family ranges and were preparing the food which they had secured from the Relief Committee. Out on Broderick Street near the panhandle a piano sounded. It was nine ten o'clock and the stars were shining after the rain. Fires gleamed up and down through the shrubbery and the refugees sat huddled together about the flames with their blankets about their heads, Apache-like, in an effort to dry out after the wedding of the afternoon. The piano, dripping with moisture, stood on the curb near the front of a cottage which had been wrecked by the earthquake. A youth with a shock of red hair sat on a cracker box and pecked at the libraries. Home ain't nothing like this was thrummed from the rusting wires with true vaudeville dash and syncopation. Bill Bailey, good ol' summertime, Dixie, and in toyland followed. Three young men with handkerchiefs wrapped around their throats in lieu of collars stood near the pianist and with him lifted up their voices in melody. The harmony was excruble, the time without excuse, but the songs ran through the trees of the panhandle and the crows, forgetting their misery for a time, joined the strange chorus. The people had their tales of comedy, one being that on the morning of the fire a richly dressed woman who lived in one of the aristocratic Sutter Street apartments came hurrying down the street. Faultlessly gowned as to silks and sables, save that one dainty foot was shot with a high-heeled French slipper, and the other was encased in a laborer's brogan. They say that as she walks she careened like a bark-rigged ship before a typhoon. An hour spent behind the counter of the food supply depot in the park Tennis Court yielded a rich reward to the seeker after the outlandish. The Tennis Court was piled high with the plunder of several grocery stores and the cargoes of many relief cars. A square cut in the wire screen permitted the insertion of a counter, behind which stood members of the militia acting as food dispensers, before the improvised window passed the line of refugees, a line which stretched back fully three hundred yards to Speedway Track. I want a can of condensed cream so I can feed my baby and my dog, said a large, florid-faced woman in a gaudy kimono, and I don't care for crackers, but you can throw in some potted chicken if you have it. What's in that bottle over there? queried the next applicant. Tomato ketchup? Well, of all the luck! Say, young man, just give me three. A little gray-haired woman in an India shawl peered timorously through the window. Just a little bit of anything you may have handy, please, she whispered, and she cast a careful eye about to see if any of her neighbors had recognized her standing there in the bread-line. Yesterday at the Western Union office, says one writer, I saw a woman drive up in a large motor-car and beg that the telegram on which a boy had asked a delivery fee of twenty-five cents be handed to her. She said she had not a penny and did not know when she would have any money, but that as soon as she had any she would pay for the message. It was given to her and the manager told me that there were hundreds of similar cases. Many weddings resulted from the disaster. Women driven out of their homes and left destitute, appealed to the men to whom they were engaged, and immediate marriages took place. After the first day of the disaster an increase in the marriage licenses issued was noticed by county clerk Cook. This increase grew until seven marriage licenses were issued in an hour. I don't live anywhere, was the answer given in many cases when the applicant for a license was asked the locality of his residence. I used to live in San Francisco. Births seemed to have been about as common as marriages, in one night five children being born in Golden Gate Park. In Buena Vista Park eight births were recorded and others elsewhere, the population thus being increased at a rate hardly in accordance with the exigencies of the situation. The Exodus from San Francisco We have spoken only of the camps of refugees within the municipal limits of San Francisco, but in addition to these was the multitude of fugitives who made all haste to escape from that city. This was with the full consent of the authorities who felt that everyone gone lessened the immediate weight upon themselves and who issued a strict edict that those who went must stay. That there could be no return until a counter edict should be made public. From the start this was one of the features of the situation. Down Market Street, once San Francisco's pride, now leading through piles of tottering walls, piles of still hot bricks and twisted iron, and heaps of smoldering debris, poured a huge stream of pedestrians. Men bending under the weight of great bundles pushed baby carriages loaded with brickabrack and children. Women toiled along with their arms full, but a large proportion were able to ride, for the relief corps had been thoroughly organized and wagons were being pressed into service from all sides. In constant procession they moved toward the ferry, once the Southern Pacific was transporting them with baggage free wherever they wished to go. Automobiles, meanwhile, shot in all directions, carrying the Red Cross flag and usually with a soldier carrying a rifle in the front seat. They had the right of way everywhere, carrying messages and transporting the ill to temporary hospitals and bearing succor to those in distress. Oakland, the nearest place of resort on the base shore opposite San Francisco, soon became a great city of refuge. Fugitives gathering there until fifty thousand or more were sheltered within its charitable limits. Having suffered very slightly from the earthquake that had wrecked the great city across the bay, it was in condition to offer shelter to the unfortunate. All day Wednesday and Thursday a stream of humanity poured from the ferries, every one carrying personal baggage and articles saved from the conflagration. Hundreds of Chinese men, women and children, all carrying baggage to the limit of their strength, made their way into the limited Chinatown of Oakland. Multitudes of persons besieged the telegraph offices, and the crush became so great that the soldiers were stationed at the doors to keep them in line and allow as many as possible to find standing room at the counters. Messages were stacked yards high in the offices waiting to be sent throughout the world. Every boat from San Francisco brought hundreds of refugees, carrying luggage and bedding in large quantities. Many women were bare-headed and all showed fatigued as the result of sleeplessness and exposure to the chill air. Hundreds of these persons lined the streets of Oakland, waiting for someone to provide them with shelter, for which the utmost possible provision was quickly made. No one was allowed to go hungry in Oakland and few lacked shelter. At the Oakland First Presbyterian Church, 1,800 were fed, and 1,000 people were provided with sleeping accommodations. Pews were turned into beds. Cots stood in the aisles, in the gallery and in the Sunday school room. Every available inch of space was occupied by some substitute for a bed. As the days wore on the number of refugees somewhat decreased, although they still came in large numbers, many left on every train for different points. Requests for free transportation were investigated as closely as possible, and all the deserving were sent away. Women and children and married men who wished to join their families in different parts of the state were given preference. The Transportation Bureau was on a street corner, where a man stood on a box and called the names of those entitled to passes. Along the principal streets of Oakland, there was a picturesque pilgrimage of former householders who dragged or carried the meager effects they had been able to save. The refugees who could not be cared for in Oakland made an exodus to Berkeley and other surrounding cities, where relief committees were actively at work. Utter despair was pictured on many faces, which showed the effects of sleepless days and nights and the want of proper food. Oakland was only one of the outside camps of refuge. At Berkeley, over 6,000 refugees sought quarters, the big gymnasium of the State University being turned into a lodging house, while hundreds were provided with blankets to sleep in the open air under the University Oaks. The students and professors of the University did all they could for their relief, and the Citizens Relief Committee supplied them with food. The same benevolent sympathy was manifested at all the places near the ruined city which had escaped disaster, this aid materially reducing that needed within San Francisco itself. Worship in the Open Air. Sunday dawned in San Francisco. Sunday in the camp of refugees. On a green knoll in Golden Gate Park between the conservatory and the tennis courts, a white-haired minister of the gospel gathered his flock. It was the Sabbath day, and in the turmoil and confusion the minister did not forget his duty. Two upright stakes and a crosspiece gave him a rude pulpit, and beside him stood a young man with a battered brass cornet. Far over the park stole a melody that drew hundreds of men and women from their tents. Of all denominations and all creeds they gathered on that green knoll, and the men uncovered while the solemn voice repeated the words of a grand old hymn, known wherever men and women meet to worship the Lord. Other refuge I have none hangs my helpless soul on thee. Leave, oh leave me not alone, still support and comfort me. A moment before there had been shouting and confusion in the driveway where some red-striped artillery men were herding a squad of gesticulating Chinaman, as men heard sheep. The shouting died away as the minister's voice rose and fell, and out of the stillness came the sobs of women. One little woman in blue was making no sound, but the tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her husband, a sturdy young fellow in his shirt sleeves, put his arm about her shoulders and tried to comfort her as the reading went on. All my trust on thee has stayed. All my help from thee I bring. Cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing. Then the cornet took up the air again, and those helpless persons followed it in quivering tones, the white-haired man of God leading them with closed eyes. When the last verse was over the minister raised his hands. Let us pray, said he, and his congregations sank down in the grass before him. It was a simple prayer. Such a prayer might be offered by a man without a home or shelter over his head, and nothing left to him but an unshaken faith in his creator. O Lord, thy ways are past finding out, but we still have faith in thee. We know not why thou hast visited these people and left them homeless. Thou knowest the reason of this desolation and of our utter helplessness. We call on thee for help in the hour of our great need. Bless the people of the city, the sorrowing ones, the bereaved. Gather them under thy mighty wing and soothe aching hearts this day. The women were crying again, and one big man dug his knuckles into his eyes without shame. The man who could have listened to such a prayer unmoved was not in Golden Gate Park that day. The Frightful Loss of Life and Wealth While multitudes escaped from toppling buildings and crashing walls in the dread disaster of that fatal Wednesday morning of April 18th in San Francisco, hundreds of the less fortunate met their death in the ruins, and horrifying scenes were witnessed by the survivors. Many of those who escaped had tales of terror to tell. Mr. J. P. Anthony, as he fled from the Ramona Hotel, saw a score or more of people crushed to death, and as he walked the streets at a later hour saw bodies of the dead being carried in garbage wagons and all kinds of vehicles to the improvised morgues, while hospitals and storerooms were already filled with the injured. Mr. G. A. Raymond of Tamales, California, gives evidence to the same effect. As he rushed into the street he says the air was filled with falling stones and people around him were crushed to death on all sides. Others gave testimony to the same effect. Samuel Wolfe of Salt Lake City tells us that he saved one woman from death in the hotel. She was rushing blindly toward an open window from which she would have fallen fifty feet to the stone pavement below. On my way down Market Street, he says, the whole side of a building fell out and came so near me that I was covered and blinded by the dust. Then I saw the first dead come by. They were piled up in an automobile like carcasses in a butcher's wagon, all bloody with crushed skulls, broken limbs, and bloody faces. These are frightful stories, exaggerated probably from the nervous excitement of those terrible moments, as are also the following statements which form part of the early accounts of the disaster. Thus we are told that, from a three-story lodging-house at Fifth and Minna Streets, which collapsed Wednesday morning, more than seventy-five bodies were taken today. There are fifty other bodies in sight in the ruins. This building was one of the first to take fire on Fifth Street. At least one hundred persons are said to have been killed in the Cosmopolitan on Fourth Street. More than one hundred and fifty persons are reported dead in the Brunswick Hotel at Seventh and Mission Streets. Another statement is to the effect that, at Seventh and Howard Streets, a great lodging-house took fire after the first shock before the guests had escaped. There were few exits and nearly all the lodgers perished. Mrs. J. J. Munson, one of those in the building, leaped with her child in her arms from the second floor to the pavement below and escaped unhurt. She says she was the only one who escaped from the house. Such horrors as this were repeated at many points. B. Baker was killed while trying to get a body from the ruins. Other rescuers heard a pitiful wail of a little child, but were unable to get near the point from which the cry issued. Soon the onrushing fire ended the cry and the men turned to other tasks. Estimates of the Deaths List The questionable point in those statements is that the numbers of dead spoken of in these few instances exceed the whole number given in the official records issued two weeks after the disaster. Yet they go to illustrate the actual horrors of the case and are of importance for this reason. As regards the whole number killed, in fact there is not, and probably never will be, a full and accurate statement. While about three hundred and fifty bodies had been recovered at the end of the second week, it was impossible to estimate how many lay buried under the ruins, to be discovered, only as the work of excavation went on, and how many more had been utterly consumed by the flames, leaving no trace of their existence. The estimates of the probable loss of life ran up to fifteen hundred and more, while the injured were very numerous. The shock of the earthquake, the pulse of deep horror to which it gave rise, the first wild impulse to flee for life, gave way in the minds of many to a feeling of intense sympathy as agonized cries came from those pinned down to the ruins of buildings, or felled by falling bricks or stones, and as the sight of dead bodies encrimsoned with blood met the eyes of the survivors in the streets. From wandering aimlessly about, many of these went earnestly to work to rescue the wounded and recover the bodies of the slain. In this merciful work the police and the soldiers lent their aid, and soon there was a large core of rescuers actively engaged, burying the dead. Soon numbers were taken, alive or dead, from the ruins. Passing vehicles were pressed into the service, and the labor of mercy went on rapidly, several buildings being quickly converted into temporary hospitals while the dead were conveyed to the Mechanics Pavilion and other available places. Portsmouth Square became, for a time, a public morgue. Between twenty and thirty corpses were laid side by side upon the trodden grass in the absence of more suitable accommodations. It is said that when the flames threatened to reach the square, the dead, mostly unknown, were removed to Columbia Square, where they were buried when danger threatened that quarter. Others were taken to the Presidio, and here the soldiers pressed into service all men who came near and forced them to labor at burying the dead, a temporary cemetery being opened there. So thick were the corpses piled up that they were becoming a menace, and early in the day the order was issued to bury them at any cost. The soldiers were needed for other work, so, at the point of rifles, the citizens were compelled to take to the work of burying. Some objected at first, but the troops stood no trifling, and every man who came within reach was forced to work. Rich men, unused to physical exertion, labored by the side of the working men digging trenches in which to bury the dead. The abled body being engaged in fighting the flames, General Funston ordered that the old men and the weaklings should take the work in hand. They did it willingly enough, but had they refused, the troops on guard would have forced them. It was ruled that every man physically capable of handling a spade or a pick should dig for an hour. When the first shallow graves were ready, the men under the direction of the troops lowered the body, several in a grave, and a strange burial began. The women gathered about crying. Many of them knelt while a Catholic priest read the burial service and pronounced absolution. All Thursday afternoon this went on. In this connection the following stories are told. Dr. George V. Shram, a young medical graduate, said, As I was passing down Market Street with a new found friend, an automobile came rushing along with two soldiers in it. My doctor's badge protected me, but the soldiers invited my companion, a husky six-footer, to get into the automobile. He said, I don't want to ride and have plenty of business to attend to. Once more they invited him, and he refused. One of the soldiers pointed a gun at him and said, We need such men as you to save women and children and to help fight the fire. The man was on his way to find his sister, but he yielded to the inevitable. He worked all day with the soldiers, and when released to get lunch he felt that he could conscientiously desert to go and find his own loved ones. Half a block down the street the soldiers were stopping all pedestrians without the official pass which showed that they were on relief business, and putting them to work heaving bricks off the pavement. Two dapper men with canes, the only clean people I saw, were caught at the corner by a sergeant, who showed great joy, as he said, I give you time to get off those kid gloves and then hustle, damn you, hustle. The soldiers took delight in picking out the best dressed men and keeping them at the brick piles for long terms. I passed them in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid that even my pass would not save me. Two men are reported shot because they refused to turn in and help. Many of the dead, of course, will never be identified, though the names were taken of all who were known and descriptions written of the others. A story comes to us of one young girl who had followed for two days the body of her father, her only relative. It had been taken from a house on Mission Street to an undertaker's shop just after the quake. The fire drove her out with her charge and it was placed in Mechanics Pavilion. That went and the body rested for a day at the Presidio, waiting burial. With many others she wept on the border of the burned area, while the women cared for her. Victims taken from the ruins. On Friday eleven postal clerks, all alive, were taken from the debris of the post office. All at first were thought to be dead, but it was found that, although they were buried under the stone and timber, everyone was alive. They had been for three days without food or water. Two theatrical people were in a hotel in Santa Rosa when the shot came. The room was on the fourth floor. The roof collapsed. One of them was thrown from the bed and both were caught by the descending timbers and pinned helplessly beneath the debris. They could speak to each other and could touch one another's hands, but the weight was so great that they could do nothing to liberate themselves. After three hours rescuers came, cut a hole in the roof, and both were released uninjured. Even the docks were converted into hospitals in the stringent exigency of the occasion. About one hundred patients being stretched on Folsom Street dock at one time. In the evenings, tugs conveyed them to Goat Island, where they were lodged in the hospital. The docks from Howard Street to Folsom Street had been saved. The fire at this point not being permitted to creep farther east than Main Street. Another series of fatalities occurred, caused by the stampeding of a herd of cattle at Sixth and Folsom Streets. Three hundred of the panicked, stricken animals ran amuck when they saw and felt the flames and charged wildly down the street, trampling underfoot, all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons, it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the janitor of a big building. The first he knew of the catastrophe he found himself in the basement, his dead wife beside him. The building had simply split into and thrown them down. In the camps of refuge the deaths came frequently. Physicians were everywhere in evidence, but without medicine or instruments, were fearfully handicapped. Men staggered in from their Herculean efforts at the fire lines only to fall gasping on the grass. There was nothing to be done. Injured leg groaning. Tender hands were willing, but of water there was none. Water, water, for God's sakes, get me some water, was the cry that struck into thousands of souls of San Francisco. The list of dead was not confined to San Francisco, but extended to many of the neighboring towns, especially to Santa Rosa, where sixty were reported dead and a large number missing, and to the Assane Asylum in its vicinity from the ruins of which a hundred or more of dead bodies were taken. The Free Use of Rifles A citizen tells us that, in the early part of the evening, and while the twilight lasts, there is a good deal of trafficking up and down the sidewalks. Having finished their dinners of government provisions, cooked on the street or in the parks, the people promenade for a half an hour or so. By half past eight the town is closed tight. A rat scurrying in the street will bring a soldier's rifle to his shoulder. Anyone not wearing a uniform or a Red Cross badge is a suspicious character and may be shot unless he halts at command. Even the men in uniform do well to stop still, for it is hard to tell a uniform in the half light thrown up by the burning town in the great shadows. Last night two of us ventured out on Van Ness Avenue a little late. There came up the noise of some kind of a shooting scrape far down the street. We hurried in that direction to see what was doing. An eighteen-year-old boy in a uniform barred the way, leveled his rifle, and said in a preemptory way, Go home. We took a course down the block where an older soldier, more communicative but equally paramptory, informed us that we were trifling with our lives, news or no news. We shot about three hundred people for one thing or another, he said. Now dodge trouble, get! That ended the expedition. The Loss in Wealth If we pass now from the record of the loss of lives to that of the destruction of wealth, the estimates exceed by far any fire losses recorded in history. The truth is that when flames eat out the heart of a great city, devour its vast business establishments, storehouses, and warehouses, sweep through its centers of opulence, destroy its wharves with their accumulation of goods, spread ruin and havoc everywhere, it is impossible at first to estimate the loss. Only gradually, as time goes on, it is the true loss discovered, and never perhaps very accurately, since the owners and the records of riches often disappear with the wealth itself. In regard to San Francisco, the early estimate was that three fourths of the city, valued at five hundred million dollars, was destroyed, but early estimates are apt to be exaggerated, and on Friday, two days after the disaster, we find this estimate reduced to two hundred and fifty million dollars. A few more days passed and these figures shrunk still further, though it was still largely conjectural, the means of making a trustworthy estimate being very restricted. Later on the pendulum swung upward again, and two weeks after the fire the closest estimates that could be made fixed, the property loss, at close to three hundred and fifty million dollars, or double that of the Chicago fire, but as the actual loss in the latter case proved considerably below the early estimates, the same may prove to be the case with San Francisco. Special personal losses were in many cases great, thus the Palace Hotel was built at a cost of six million dollars, and the St. Francis, which originally cost four million dollars, was being enlarged at great expense. Several of the great mansions on Knobbs Hill cost a million or more. The City Hall was built at a cost of seven million dollars. The new post office was injured to the extent of half a million, while a large number of other buildings might be named whose value, with their contents, was measured in the millions. It was not until May 3rd that news came over the wires of another serious item of loss. The merchants had waited until then for their fire-proof safes and vaults to cool off before attempting to open them. When this was at length done the results proved disheartening. Out of five hundred and seventy-six vaults and safes opened in the district east of Powell and north of Market Street, where the flames had raged with the greatest fury, it was found that fully forty percent had not performed their duty. When opened they were found to contain nothing but heaps of ashes. The valuable account books, papers, and in some cases large sums of money had vanished. The loss of the accounts being a severe calamity in a business sense. As all the banks were equipped with the best fire-proof vaults no fear was felt for the safety of their contents. Looters in Chinatown Chinatown suffered severely. The merchants of that locality possessing large stocks of valuable goods, many of which were looted by seemingly respectable sightseers after the ruins had cooled off, bronze, porcelain, and other valuable goods being taken from the ruins. One example consisted in a mass of gold and silver valued at twenty-five hundred dollars, which had been melted by the fire in the store of Tai Sing, a Chinese merchant. This was found by the police on May 3rd in a place where it had been hidden by looters. But with all its losses San Francisco does not despair. The spirit of its citizens is heroic and there are some hopeful signs in the air. The insurances due are estimated to approximate a hundred and seventy-five million dollars and there are other monies likely to be spent on building during the coming year, making a total of over two hundred million dollars. Eastern capitalists also talk of investing a hundred million dollars of new capital in the rebuilding of the city, while the San Francisco authorities have a project of issuing two hundred million dollars of new municipal bonds, the payment to be guaranteed by the United States government. Thus, two weeks after the earthquake daylight was already showing strongly ahead and hope was fast beginning to replace despair. End of Chapter 7. Recording by Kathleen Nelson, Austin, Texas, May 2010