CHAPTER XXXI.

MUD VOLCANOES, GEYSERS AND HOT SPRINGS

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALAMITY BY EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE

CHAPTER I.

San Francisco and Its Terrific Earthquake.

On the splendid Bay of San Francisco, one of the noblest harbors on the

whole vast range of the Pacific Ocean, long has stood, like a Queen of

the West on its seven hills, the beautiful city of San Francisco, the

youngest and in its own way one of the most beautiful and attractive of

the large cities of the United States. Born less than sixty years ago,

it has grown with the healthy rapidity of a young giant, outvieing many

cities of much earlier origin, until it has won rank as the eighth city

of the United States, and as the unquestioned metropolis of our far

Western States.

It is on this great and rich city that the dark demon of destruction has

now descended, as it fell on the next younger of our cities, Chicago, in

1872. It was the rage of the fire-fiend that desolated the metropolis

of the lakes. Upon the Queen City of the West the twin terrors of

earthquake and conflagration have descended at once, careening through

its thronged streets, its marts of trade, and its abodes alike of

poverty and wealth, and with the red hand of devastation sweeping one

of the noblest centres of human industry and enterprise from the face of

the earth. It is this story of almost irremediable ruin which it is our

unwelcome duty to chronicle. But before entering upon this sorrowful

task some description of the city that has fallen a prey to two of the

earth’s chief agents of destruction must be given.

San Francisco is built on the end of a peninsula or tongue of land lying

between the Pacific Ocean and the broad San Francisco Bay, a noble body

of inland water extending southward for about forty miles and with a

width varying from six to twelve miles. Northward this splendid body of

water is connected with San Pablo Bay, ten miles long, and the latter

with Suisun Bay, eight miles long, the whole forming a grand range of

navigable waters only surpassed by the great northern inlet of Puget

Sound. The Golden Gate, a channel five miles long, connects this

great harbor with the sea, the whole giving San Francisco the greatest

commercial advantages to be found on the Pacific coast.

THE EARLY DAYS OF SAN FRANCISCO.

The original site of the city was a grant made by the King of Spain of

four square leagues of land. Congress afterwards confirmed this grant.

It was an uninviting region, with its two lofty hills and its various

lower ones, a barren expanse of shifting sand dunes extending from their

feet. The population in 1830 was about 200 souls, about equal to that

of Chicago at the same date. It was not much larger in 1848, when

California fell into American hands and the discovery of gold set in

train the famous rush of treasure seekers to that far land. When 1849

dawned the town contained about 2,000 people. They had increased to

20,000 before the year ended. The place, with its steep and barren hills

and its sandy stretches, was not inviting, but its ease of access to the

sea and its sheltered harbor were important features, and people settled

there, making it a depot of mining supplies and a point of departure for

the mines.

The place grew rapidly and has continued to grow. At first a city of

flimsy frame buildings, it became early a prey to the flames, fire

sweeping through it three times in 1850 and taking toll of the young

city to the value of $7,500,000. These conflagrations swept away most of

the wooden houses, and business men began to build more substantially

of brick, stone and iron. Yet to-day, for climatic reasons, most of the

residences continue to be built of wood. But the slow-burning redwood

of the California hillsides is used instead of the inflammable pine, the

result being that since 1850 the loss by fire in the residence section

of the city has been remarkably small. In 1900 the city contained 50,494

frame and only 3,881 stone and brick buildings, though the tendency to

use more durable materials was then growing rapidly.

Before describing the terrible calamity which fell upon this beautiful

city on that dread morning of April 18, 1906, some account of the

character of the place is very desirable, that readers may know what San

Francisco was before the rage of earthquake and fire reduced it to what

it is to-day.

THE CHARACTER OF THE CITY.

The site of the city of San Francisco is very uneven, embracing a series

of hills, of which the highest ones, known as the Twin Peaks, reach to

an elevation of 925 feet, and form the crown of an amphitheatre of lower

altitudes. Several of the latter are covered with handsome residences,

and afford a magnificent view of the surrounding country, with its

bordering bay and ocean, and the noble Golden Gate channel, a river-like

passage from ocean to bay of five miles in length and one in width. This

waterway is very deep except on the bar at its mouth, where the depth of

water is thirty feet.

Since its early days the growth of the city has been very rapid. In 1900

it held 342,782 people, and the census estimate made from figures of the

city directory in 1904 gave it then a population of 485,000, probably

a considerable exaggeration. In it are mingled inhabitants from most

of the nations of the earth, and it may claim the unenviable honor of

possessing the largest population of Chinese outside of China itself,

the colony numbering over 20,000.

Of the pioneer San Francisco few traces remain, the old buildings having

nearly all disappeared. Large and costly business houses and splendid

residences have taken their place in the central portion of the city,

marble, granite, terra-cotta, iron and steel being largely used as

building material. The great prevalence of frame buildings in the

residence sections is largely due to the popular belief that they

are safer in a locality subject to earthquakes, while the frequent

occurrence of earth tremors long restrained the inclination to erect

lofty buildings. Not until 1890 was a high structure built, and few

skyscrapers had invaded the city up to its day of ruin. They will

probably be introduced more frequently in the future, recent experience

having demonstrated that they are in considerable measure earthquake

proof.

The city before the fire contained numerous handsome structures,

including the famous old Palace Hotel, built at a cost of $3,000,000 and

with accommodations for 1,200 guests; the nearly finished and splendid

Fairmount Hotel; the City Hall, with its lofty dome, on which $7,000,000

is said to have been spent, much of it, doubtless, political plunder;

a costly United States Mint and Post Office, an Academy of Science, and

many churches, colleges, libraries and other public edifices. The city

had 220 miles of paved streets, 180 miles of electric and 77 of cable

railway, 62 hotels, 16 theatres, 4 large libraries, 5 daily newspapers,

etc., together with 28 public parks.

Sitting, like Rome of old, on its seven hills, San Francisco has long

been noted for its beautiful site, clasped in, as it is, between the

Pacific Ocean and its own splendid bay, on a peninsula of some five

miles in width. Where this juts into the bay at its northernmost point

rises a great promontory known as Telegraph Hill, from whose height

homeless thousands have recently gazed on the smoke rising from their

ruined homes. In the early days of golden promise a watchman was

stationed on this hill to look out for coming ships entering the Golden

Gate from their long voyage around the Horn and signal the welcome news

to the town below. From this came its name.

Cliffs rise on either side of the Golden Gate, and on one is perched the

Cliff House, long a famous hostelry. This stands so low that in storms

the surf is flung over its lower porticos, though its force is broken

by the Seal Rocks. A chief attraction to this house was to see the seals

play on these rocks, their favorite place of resort. The Cliff House was

at first said to have been swept bodily by the earthquake into the sea,

but it proved to be very little injured, and stands erect in its old

picturesque location.

In the vicinity of Telegraph Hill are Russian and Nob Hills, the latter

getting its peculiar title from the fact that the wealthy “nobs,” or

mining magnates, of bonanza days built their homes on its summit level.

Farther to the east are Mount Olympus and Strawberry Hill, and beyond

these the Twin Peaks, which really embrace three hills, the third being

named Bernal Heights. Farther to the south and east is Rincan Hill, the

last in the half moon crescent of hills, within which is a spread of

flat ground extending to the bay. Behind the hills on the Pacific side

stretches a vast sweep of sand, at some places level, but often gathered

into great round dunes. Part of this has been transformed into the

beautiful Golden Gate Park, a splendid expanse of green verdure which

has long been one of San Francisco’s chief attractions.

Beneath the whole of San Francisco is a rock formation, but everywhere

on top of this extends the sand, the gift of the winds. This is of such

a character that a hole dug in the street anywhere, even if only to the

depth of a few feet, must be shored up with planking or it will fill as

fast as it is excavated, the sand running as dry as the contents of

an hour glass. When there is an earthquake--or a “temblor,” to use the

Spanish name--it is the rock foundation that is disturbed, not the sand,

which, indeed, serves to lessen the effect of the earth tremor.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CITY.

Leaving the region of the hills and descending from their

crescent-shaped expanse, we find a broad extent of low ground, sloping

gently toward the bay. On this low-lying flat was built all of San

Francisco’s business houses, all its principal hotels and a large part

of its tenements and poorer dwellings. It was here that the earthquake

was felt most severely and that the fire started which laid waste the

city.

Rarely has a city been built on such doubtful foundations. The greater

part of the low ground was a bay in 1849, but it has since been filled

in by the drifting sands blown from the ocean side by the prevailing

west winds and by earth dumped into it. Much of this land was “made

ground.” Forty-niners still alive say that when they first saw San

Francisco the waters of the bay came up to Montgomery Street. The Palace

Hotel was in Montgomery Street, and from there to the ferry docks--a

long walk for any man--the water had been driven back by a “filling-in”

process.

This is the district that especially suffered, that south of Market

and east of Montgomery Streets. Nearly all the large buildings in this

section are either built on piles driven into the sand and mud or were

raised upon wooden foundations. It is on such ground as this that the

costly Post Office building was erected, despite the protests of nearly

the entire community, who asserted that the ground was nothing but a

filled-in bog.

In none of the earthquakes that San Francisco has had was any serious

damage except to houses in this filled-in territory, and to houses built

along the line of some of the many streams which ran from the hills down

to the bay, and which were filled in as the town grew--for instance,

the Grand Opera House was built over the bed of St. Anne’s Creek. A bog,

slough and marsh, known as the Pipeville Slough, was the ground on which

the City Hall was built, and which was originally a burying ground. Sand

from the western shore had blown over and drifted into the marsh and

hardened its surface.

When the final grading scheme of the city was adopted in 1853, and

work went on, the water front of the city was where Clay Street now is,

between Montgomery and Sansome Streets. The present level area of San

Francisco of about three thousand acres is an average of nine feet

above or below the natural surface of the ground and the changes made

necessitated the transfer of 21,000,000 cubic yards from hills to

hollows. Houses to the number of thousands were raised or lowered,

street floors became subcellars or third stories and the whole natural

face of the ground was altered.

Through this infirm material all the pipes of the water and sewer system

of San Francisco in its business districts and in most of the region

south of Market street were laid. When the earthquake came, the

filled-in ground shook like the jelly it is. The only firm and rigid

material in its millions of cubic yards of surface area and depth were

the iron pipes. Naturally they broke, as they would not bend, and San

Francisco’s water system was therefore instantly disabled, with the

result that the fire became complete master of the situation and raged

uncontrolled for three days and nights.

Although the earthquake wrecked the business and residential portions

of the city alike, on the hills the land did not sink. All “made ground”

sank in consequence of the quaking, but on the high ground the upper

parts of the buildings were about the only portions of the structures

wrecked. Most of the damage on the hills was done by falling chimneys.

On Montgomery Street, half a block from the main office of the Western

Union Company, the middle of the street was cracked and blown up, but

during the shocks which struck the Western Union building only the

top stories were cracked. Similar phenomena were experienced in other

localities, and the bulk of the disaster, so far as the earthquake was

concerned, was confined to the low-lying region above described.

THE BANE OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

From the origin of San Francisco the earthquake has been its bane.

During the past fifty years fully 250 shocks have been recorded, while

all California has been subject to them. But frequency rather than

violence of shocks has been the characteristic of the seismic history of

the State, there having been few shocks that caused serious damage, and

none since 1872 that led to loss of life.

There was a violent shock in 1856, when the city was only a mining town

of small frame buildings. Several shanties were overthrown and a few

persons killed by falling walls and chimneys. There was a severe shock

also in 1865, in which many buildings were shattered. Next in violence

was the shock of 1872, which cracked the walls of some of the public

buildings and caused a panic. There was no great loss of life. In April,

1898, just before midnight, there was a lively shakeup which caused

the tall buildings to shake like the snapping of a whip and drove the

tourists out of the hotels into the streets in their nightclothes. Three

or four old houses fell, and the Benicia Navy Yard, which is on made

ground across the bay, was damaged to the extent of about $100,000. The

last severe shock was in January, 1900, when the St. Nicholas Hotel was

badly damaged.

These were the heaviest shocks. On the other hand, light shocks, as

above said, have been frequent. Probably the sensible quakes have

averaged three or four a year. These are usually tremblings lasting from

ten seconds to a minute and just heavy enough to wake light sleepers

or to shake dishes about on the shelves. Tourists and newcomers are

generally alarmed by these phenomena, but old Californians have

learned to take them philosophically. To one who is not afraid of them,

the sensation of one of these little tremblers is rather pleasant than

otherwise, and the inhabitants grew so accustomed to them as rarely to

let them disturb their equanimity.

After 1900 the forces beneath the earth seemed to fall asleep. As it

proved, they were only biding their time. The era was at hand when they

were to declare themselves in all their mighty power and fall upon the

devoted city with ruin in their grasp. But all this lay hidden in the

secret casket of time, and the city kept up to its record as one of the

liveliest and in many respects the most reckless and pleasure-loving

on the continent, its people squandering their money with thoughtless

improvidence and enjoying to the full all the good that life held out to

them.

On the 17th of April, 1906, the city was, as usual, gay, careless, busy,

its people attending to business or pleasure with their ordinary vim as

inclination led them, and not a soul dreaming of the horrors that lay in

wait. They were as heedless of coming peril and death as the inhabitants

of Sodom and Gomorrah before the rain of fire from heaven descended upon

their devoted heads. This is not to say that they were doomed by God to

destruction like these “cities of the plains.” We should more wisely

say that the forces of ruin within the earth take no heed of persons or

places. They come and go as the conditions of nature demand, and if man

has built one of his cities across their destined track, its doom comes

from its situation, not from the moral state of its inhabitants.

THE GREAT DISASTER OF 1906.

That night the people went, with their wonted equanimity, to their beds,

rich and poor, sick and well alike. Did any of them dream of disaster in

the air? It may be so, for often, as the poet tells us, “Coming events

cast their shadows before.” But, forewarned by dreams or not, doubtless

not a soul in the great city was prepared for the terrible event so

near at hand, when, at thirteen minutes past five o’clock on the dread

morning of the 18th, they felt their beds lifted beneath them as if by

a Titan hand, heard the crash of falling walls and ceilings, and saw

everything in their rooms tossed madly about, while through their

windows came the roar of an awful disaster from the city without.

It was a matter not of minutes, but of seconds, yet on all that coast,

long the prey of the earthquake, no shock like it had ever been felt,

no such sudden terror awakened, no such terrible loss occasioned as in

those few fearful seconds. Again and again the trembling of the earth

passed by, three quickly repeated shocks, and the work of the demon of

ruin was done. People woke with a start to find themselves flung from

their beds to the floor, many of them covered with the fragments of

broken ceilings, many lost among the ruins of falling floors and walls,

many pinned in agonizing suffering under the ruins of their houses,

which had been utterly wrecked in those fatal seconds. Many there were,

indeed, who had been flung to quick if not to instant death under their

ruined homes.

Those seconds of the reign of the elemental forces had turned the

gayest, most careless city on the continent into a wreck which no words

can fitly describe. Those able to move stumbled in wild panic across the

floors of their heaving houses, regardless of clothing, of treasures, of

everything but the mad instinct for safety, and rushed headlong into the

streets, to find that the earth itself had yielded to the energy of its

frightful interior forces and had in places been torn and rent like the

houses themselves. New terrors assailed the fugitives as fresh tremors

shook the solid ground, some of them strong enough to bring down

shattered walls and chimneys, and bring back much of the mad terror of

the first fearful quake. The heaviest of these came at eight o’clock.

While less forcible than that which had caused the work of destruction,

it added immensely to the panic and dread of the people and put many of

the wanderers to flight, some toward the ferry, the great mass in the

direction of the sand dunes and Golden Gate Park.

The spectacle of the entire population of a great city thus roused

suddenly from slumber by a fierce earthquake shock and sent flying into

the streets in utter panic, where not buried under falling walls or

tumbling debris, is one that can scarcely be pictured in words, and can

be given in any approach to exact realization only in the narratives of

those who passed through its horrors and experienced the sensations to

which it gave rise. Some of the more vivid of these personal accounts

will be presented later, but at present we must confine ourselves to a

general statement of the succession of events.

The earthquake proved but the beginning and much the least destructive

part of the disaster. In many of the buildings there were fires, banked

for the night, but ready to kindle the inflammable material hurled down

upon them by the shock. In others were live electric wires which the

shock brought in contact with woodwork. The terror-stricken fugitives

saw, here and there, in all directions around them, the alarming vision

of red flames curling upward and outward, in gleaming contrast to the

white light of dawn just showing in the eastern sky. Those lurid gleams

climbed upward in devouring haste, and before the sun had fairly risen

a dozen or more conflagrations were visible in all sections of the

business part of the city, and in places great buildings broke with

startling suddenness into flame, which shot hotly high into the air.

While the mass of the people were stunned by the awful suddenness of the

disaster and stood rooted to the ground or wandered helplessly about in

blank dismay, there were many alert and self-possessed among them who

roused themselves quickly from their dismay and put their energies

to useful work. Some of these gave themselves to the work of rescue,

seeking to save the injured from their perilous situation and draw

the bodies of the dead from the ruins under which they lay. Those base

wretches to whom plunder is always the first thought were as quickly

engaged in seeking for spoil in edifices laid open to their plundering

hands by the shock. Meanwhile the glare of the flames brought the

fire-fighters out in hot haste with their engines, and up from the

military station at the Presidio, on the Golden Gate side of the city,

came at double quick a force of soldiers, under the efficient command of

General Funston, of Cuban and Philippine fame. These trained troops were

at once put on guard over the city, with directions to keep the best

order possible, and with strict command to shoot all looters at sight.

Funston recognized at the start the necessity of keeping the lawless

element under control in such an exigency as that which he had to face.

Later in the day the First Regiment of California National Guards was

called out and put on duty, with similar orders.

RESCUERS AND FIRE-FIGHTERS.

The work of fighting the fire was the first and greatest duty to be

performed, but from the start it proved a very difficult, almost a

hopeless, task. With fierce fires burning at once in a dozen or more

separate places, the fire department of the city would have been

inadequate to cope with the demon of flame even under the best of

circumstances. As it was, they found themselves handicapped at the start

by a nearly total lack of water. The earthquake had disarranged and

broken the water mains and there was scarcely a drop of water to be had,

so that the engines proved next to useless. Water might be drawn from

the bay, but the centre of the conflagration was a mile or more away,

and this great body of water was rendered useless in the stringent

exigency.

The only hope that remained to the authorities was to endeavor to check

the progress of the flames by the use of dynamite, blowing up buildings

in the line of progress of the conflagration. This was put in practice

without loss of time, and soon the thunder-like roar of the explosions

began, blasts being heard every few minutes, each signifying that some

building had been blown to atoms. But over the gaps thus made the flames

leaped, and though the brave fellows worked with a desperation and

energy of the most heroic type, it seemed as if all their labors were

to be without avail, the terrible fire marching on as steadily as if a

colony of ants had sought to stay its devastating progress.

THE HORROR OF THE PEOPLE.

It was with grief and horror that the mass of the people gazed on this

steady march of the army of ruin. They were seemingly half dazed by the

magnitude of the disaster, strangely passive in the face of the ruin

that surrounded them, as if stunned by despair and not yet awakened to

a realization of the horrors of the situation. Among these was the

possibility of famine. No city at any time carries more than a few days’

supply of provisions, and with the wholesale districts and warehouse

regions invaded by the flames the shortage of food made itself apparent

from the start. Water was even more difficult to obtain, the supply

being nearly all cut off. Those who possessed supplies of food and

liquids of any kind in many cases took advantage of the opportunity to

advance their prices. Thus an Associated Press man was obliged to pay

twenty-five cents for a small glass of mineral water, the only kind of

drink that at first was to be had, while food went up at the same rate,

bakers frequently charging as much as a dollar for a loaf. As for the

expressmen and cabmen, their charges were often practically prohibitory,

as much as fifty dollars being asked for the conveyance of a passenger

to the ferry. Policemen were early stationed at some of the retail

shops, regulating the sale and the price of food, and permitting only

a small portion to be sold to each purchaser, so as to prevent a few

persons from exhausting the supply.

The fire, the swaying and tottering walls, the frequent dynamite

explosions, each followed by a crashing shower of stones and bricks,

rendered the streets very unsafe for pedestrians, and all day long

the flight of residents from the city went on, growing quickly to the

dimensions of a panic. The ferryboats were crowded with those who wished

to leave the city, and a constant stream of the homeless, carrying such

articles as they had rescued from their homes, was kept up all day

long, seeking the sand dunes, the parks and every place uninvaded by

the flames. Before night Golden Gate Park and the unbuilt districts

adjoining on the ocean side presented the appearance of a tented city,

shelter of many kinds being improvised from bedding and blankets, and

the people settling into such sparse comfort as these inadequate means

provided.

A strange feature of the disaster was a rush to the banks by people who

wished to get their money and flee from the seemingly doomed city. The

fire front was yet distant from these institutions, which were destined

to fall a prey to the flames, and all that morning lines of dishevelled

and half-frantic men stood before the banks on Montgomery and Sansome

Streets, braving in their thirst for money the smoke and falling embers

and beating in wild anxiety upon the doors. Their effort was vain; the

doors remained closed; finally the police drove these people away, and

the banks went on with the work of saving their valuables. As for the

people who wildly fled toward the ferries, in spite of the fact that

ten blocks of fire, as the day went on, stopped all egress in that

direction, it became necessary for them to be driven back by the police

and the troops, and they were finally forced to seek safety in the

sands. And thus, with incident manifold, went on that fatal Wednesday,

the first day of the dread disaster.

OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

It is important here to give the official record of the earthquake

shocks, as given by the scientists. Professor George Davidson, of the

University of California, says of them:

“The earthquake came from north to south, and the only description I am

able to give of its effect is that it seemed like a terrier shaking a

rat. I was in bed, but was awakened by the first shock. I began to count

the seconds as I went towards the table where my watch was, being able

through much practice closely to approximate the time in that manner.

The shock came at 5.12 o’clock. The first sixty seconds were the most

severe. From that time on it decreased gradually for about thirty

seconds. There was then the slightest perceptible lull. Then the shock

continued for sixty seconds longer, being slighter in degree in this

minute than in any part of the preceding minute and a half. There were

two slight shocks afterwards which I did not time. At 8.14 o’clock

I recorded a shock of five seconds’ duration, and one at 4.15 of two

seconds. There were slight shocks which I did not record at 5.17 and at

5.27. At 6.50 P. M. there was a sharp shock of several seconds.”

Professor A. O. Louschner, of the students’ observatory of the

University of California, thus records his observations:

“The principal part of the earthquake came in two sections, the first

series of vibrations lasting about forty seconds. The vibrations

diminished gradually during the following ten seconds, and then occurred

with renewed vigor for about twenty-five seconds more. But even at

noon the disturbance had not subsided, as slight shocks are recorded

at frequent intervals on the seismograph. The motion was from

south-southeast to north-northwest.

“The remarkable feature of this earthquake, aside from its intensity,

was its rotary motion. As seen from the print, the sum total of all

displacements represents a very regular ellipse, and some of the

lines representing the earth’s motion can be traced along the whole

circumference. The result of observation indicates that our heaviest

shocks are in the direction south-southeast to north-northwest. In that

respect the records of the three heaviest earthquakes agree entirely.

But they have several other features in common. One of these is

that while the displacements are very large the vibration period is

comparatively slow, amounting to about one second in the last two big

earthquakes.”

If we seek to discover the actual damage done by the earthquake, the

fact stands out that the fire followed so close upon it that the traces

of its ravages were in many cases obliterated. So many buildings in the

territory of the severest shock fell a prey to the flames or to dynamite

that the actual work of the earth forces was made difficult and in

many places impossible to discover. This fact is likely to lead to

considerable dispute and delay when the question of insurance adjustment

comes up, many of the insurance companies confining their risk to fire

damage and claiming exemption from liability in the case of damage due

to earthquake.

Among the chief victims of the earth-shake was the costly and showy City

Hall, with its picturesque dome standing loftily above the structure.

This dome was left still erect, but only as a skeleton might stand, with

its flesh gone and its bare ribs exposed to the searching air. Its roof,

its smaller towers came tumbling down in frightful disarray, and the

once proud edifice is to-day a miserable wreck, fire having aided

earthquake in its ruin. The new Post Office, a handsome government

building, also suffered severely from the shock, its walls being badly

cracked and injury done by earthquake and fire that it is estimated will

need half a million dollars to repair.

FREAKS OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

One observer states that the earthquake appeared to be very irregular in

its course. He tells us that “there are gas reservoirs with frames all

twisted and big factories thrown to the ground, while a few yards away

are miserable shanties with not a board out of place. Wooden, steel and

brick structures hardly felt the earthquake in some parts of the city,

while in other places all were wrecked.

“Skirting the shore northwest from the big ferry building--which was

so seriously injured that it will have to be rebuilt--the first thing

observed was the extraordinary irregularity of the earthquake’s course.

Pier No. 5, for instance, is nothing but a mass of ruins, while Pier No.

3, on one side of it and Pier No. 7, on the other side, similar in size

and construction, are undamaged. Farther on, the Kosmos Line pier is a

complete wreck.”

The big forts at the entrance to the Golden Gate also suffered seriously

from the great shake-up, and the emplacements of the big guns were

cracked and damaged. The same is the case with the fortifications

back of Old Fort Point, the great guns in these being for the present

rendered useless. It will take much time and labor to restore their

delicate adjustment upon their carriages.

The buildings that collapsed in the city were all flimsy wooden

buildings and old brick structures, the steel frame buildings, even

the score or more in course of construction, escaping injury from the

earthquake shock. Of the former, one of the most complete wrecks was

the Valencia Hotel, a four-story wooden building, which collapsed into a

heap of ruins, pinning many persons under its splintered timbers.

SKYSCRAPERS EARTHQUAKE PROOF.

In fact, as the reports of damage wrought by the earthquake came in,

the conviction grew that one of the safest places during the earthquake

shock was on one of the upper floors of the skyscraper office buildings

or hotels. As a matter of fact, not a single person, so far as can be

learned, lost his or her life or was seriously injured in any of the

tall, steel frame structures in the city, although they rocked during

the quake like a ship in a gale.

The loss of life was caused in almost every case by the collapse of

frame structures, which the native San Franciscan believed was the

safest of all in an earthquake, or by the shaking down of portions of

brick or stone buildings which did not possess an iron framework. The

manner in which the tall steel structures withstood the shock is a

complete vindication of the strongest claims yet made for them, and it

is made doubly interesting from the fact that this is the first occasion

on which the effect of an earthquake of any proportions on a tall steel

structure could be studied.

The St. Francis Hotel, a sixteen-story structure, can be repaired at an

expenditure of about $400,000, its damage being almost wholly by fire.

The steel shell and the floors are intact. Although the building rocked

like a ship in a gale while the quake lasted, its foundations are

undamaged. Other steel buildings which are so little damaged as to admit

of repairs more or less extensive are the James Flood, the Union Trust,

the CALL building, the Mutual Savings Bank, the Crocker-Woolworth

building and the Postal building. All of these are modern buildings of

steel construction, from sixteen to twenty stories.

A peculiar feature of the effect of the earthquake on structures of this

kind is reported in the case of the Fairmount Hotel, a fourteen-story

structure. The first two stories of the Fairmount are found to be so

seriously damaged that they will have to be rebuilt, while the other

twelve stories are uninjured.

Various explanations are being made of the surprising resistance shown

by the skyscrapers. The great strength and binding power of the steel

frame, combined with a deep-seated foundation and great lightness as

compared with buildings of stone, are the main reasons given. The iron,

it is said, unlike stone, responded to the vibratory force and passed it

along to be expended in other directions, while brick or stone offered

a solid and impenetrable front, with the result that the seismic force

tended to expend itself by shaking the building to pieces.

Whether there is any scientific basis for the latter theory or not, it

seems reasonable enough, in view of the descriptions given us of the

manner in which the steel buildings received the shock. All things

considered, the modern steel building has afforded in the San Francisco

earthquake the most convincing evidence of its strength.

From Golden Gate Park came news of the total destruction of the large

building covering a portion of the children’s playground. The walls

were shattered beyond repair, the roof fell in, and the destruction was

complete. The pillars of the new stone gates at the park entrance were

twisted and torn from their foundations, some of them, weighing nearly

four tons, being shifted as though they were made of cork. It is a

little singular that the monuments and statues in the city escaped

without damage except in the case of the imposing Dewey Monument, in

Union Square Park, which suffered what appears to be a minor injury.

In this connection an incident of extraordinary character is narrated.

Among the statues on the buildings of the Leland Stanford, Jr.,

University, all of which were overthrown, was a marble statue of Carrara

in a niche on the building devoted to zoology and physiology. This in

falling broke through a hard cement pavement and buried itself in the

ground below, from which it was dug. The singular fact is that when

recovered it proved to be without a crack or scratch. This university

seemed to be a central point in the disturbance, the destruction of

its buildings being almost total, though they had been built with the

especial design of resisting earthquake shocks.

Such was the general character of the earthquake at San Francisco and in

its vicinity. It may be said farther that all, or very nearly all, the

deaths and injuries were due to it directly or indirectly, even those

who perished by fire owing their deaths to the fact of their being

pinned in buildings ruined by the earthquake shock, while others were

killed by falling walls weakened by the same cause.

On the night of April 23d the earth tremor returned with a slight shock,

only sufficient to cause a temporary alarm. On the afternoon of the 25th

came another and severer one, strong enough to shake down some tottering

walls and add another to the list of victims. This was a woman named

Annie Whitaker, who was at work in the kitchen of her home at the time.

The chimney, which had been weakened by the great shock, now fell,

crashing through the roof and fracturing her skull. Thus the earth

powers claimed a final human sacrifice before their dread visitation

ended.

CHAPTER II.

The Demon of Fire Invades the Stricken City.

The terrors of the earthquake are momentary. One fierce, levelling shock

and usually all is over. The torment within the earth has passed on and

the awakened forces of the earth’s crust sink into rest again, after

having shaken the surface for many leagues. Rarely does the dread agent

of ruin leave behind it such a terrible follower to complete its work

as was the case in the doomed city of San Francisco. All seemed to lead

towards such a carnival of ruin as the earth has rarely seen. The demon

of fire followed close upon the heels of the unseen fiend of the earth’s

hidden caverns, and ran red-handed through the metropolis of the West,

kindling a thousand unhurt buildings, while the horror-stricken people

stood aghast in terror, as helpless to combat this new enemy as they

were to check the ravages of the earthquake itself.

Why not quench the fire at its start with water? Alas! there was no

water, and this expedient was a hopeless one. The iron mains which

carried the precious fluid under the city streets were broken or injured

so that no quenching streams were to be had. In some cases the engine

houses had been so damaged that the fire-fighting apparatus could not be

taken out, though even if it had it would have been useless. A sweeping

conflagration and not an ounce of water to throw upon it! The situation

of the people was a maddening one. They were forced helplessly and

hopelessly to gaze upon the destruction of their all, and it is no

marvel if many of them grew frantic and lost their reason at the sight.

Thousands gathered and looked on in blank and pitiful misery, their

strong hands, their iron wills of no avail, while the red-lipped fire

devoured the hopes of their lives.

In a dozen, a hundred, places the flames shot up redly. Huge, strong

buildings which the earthquake had spared fell an unresisting prey

to the flames. The great, iron-bound, towering Spreckles building,

a steeple-like structure, of eighteen stories in height, the tallest

skyscraper in the city, had resisted the earthquake and remained proudly

erect. But now the flames gathered round and assailed it. From both

sides came their attack. A broad district near by, containing many large

hotels and lodging houses, was being fiercely burnt out, and soon the

windows of the lofty building cracked and splintered, the flames shot

triumphantly within, and almost in an instant the vast interior was a

seething furnace, the wild flames rushing and leaping within until only

the blackened walls remained.

THE RESISTLESS MARCH OF THE FLAMES.

This was the region of the newspaper offices, and they quickly

succumbed. The Examiner, standing across Third Street from Spreckles,

collapsed from the earthquake shock. A flimsy edifice, it had long been

looked upon as dangerous. Another building in the rear of this alone

resisted both flames and smoke. Across Market Street from the Examiner

stood the Chronicle building, a dozen stories high. Firmly built, it

had borne the earthquake assault unharmed, but the flames were an enemy

against which it had no defense, and it was quickly added to the victims

of the fire-fiend.

Farther down Market Street, the chief business thoroughfare of the city,

stood that great caravansary, the Palace Hotel, which for thirty years

had been a favorite hostelry, housing the bulk of the visitors to the

Californian metropolis. Its time had come. Doom hovered over it. Its

guests had fled in good season, as they saw the irresistible approach of

the conquering flames. Soon it was ablaze; quickly from every window of

its broad front the tongues of flame curled hotly in the air; it became

a thrice-heated furnace, like so many of the neighboring structures,

adding its quota to the vast cloud of smoke that hung over the burning

city, and rapidly sinking in red ruin to the earth.

All day Wednesday the fire spread unchecked, all efforts to stay its

devouring fury proving futile. In the business section of the city

everything was in ruins. Not a business house was left standing.

Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission

houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like

that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by

Nero’s command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been

nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames

swept to ruin that queen city of the Great Lakes.

When night fell and the sun withdrew his beams the spectacle was one at

once magnificent and awe-inspiring. The city resembled one vast blazing

furnace. Looking over it from a high hill in the western section, the

flames could be seen ascending skyward for miles upon miles, while in

the midst of the red spirals of flame could be seen at intervals the

black skeletons and falling towers of doomed buildings. Above all

this hung a dense pall of smoke, showing lurid where the flames were

reflected from its dark and threatening surface. To those nearer the

scene presented many pathetic and distressing features, the fire glare

throwing weird shadows over the worn and panic-stricken faces of the

woe-begone fugitives, driven from their homes and wandering the streets

in helpless misery. Many of them lay sleeping on piles of blankets and

clothing which they had brought with them, or on the hard sidewalks, or

the grass of the open parks.

THE CARE OF THE WOUNDED.

Through all the streets ambulances and express wagons were hurrying,

carrying dead and injured to morgues and hospitals. But these refuges

for the wounded or receptacles for the dead were no safer than the

remainder of the city. In the morgue at the Hall of Justice fifty bodies

lay, but the approach of the flames rendered it necessary to remove

to Jackson Square these mutilated remnants of what had once been men.

Hospitals were also abandoned at intervals, doctors and nurses being

forced to remove their patients in haste from the approaching flames.

There is an open park opposite City Hall. Here the Board of Supervisors

met, and, with fifty substantial citizens who joined them, formed a

Committee of Safety, to take in hand the direction of affairs and

to seek safe quarters for the dying and the dead. Strangely enough,

Mechanics’ Pavilion, opposite City Hall, had escaped injury from the

earthquake, though it was only a wooden building. It had the largest

floor in San Francisco, and was pressed into service at once. The police

and the troops, working in harmony together, passed the word that the

dead and injured should be brought there, the hospitals and morgue

having become choked, and the order was quickly obeyed, until about

400 of the hurt, many of them terribly mangled, were laid in improvised

cots, attended by all the physicians and trained nurses who could be

obtained.

The corpses were much fewer, the workers being too busy in fighting the

fire and caring for the wounded to give time and attention as yet to

the dead. But one of the first wagons to arrive brought a whole

family--father, mother and three children--all dead except the baby,

which had a broken arm and a terrible cut across the forehead. They had

been dragged from the ruins of their house on the water front. A large

consignment of bodies, mostly of workingmen, came from a small hotel on

Eddy Street, through the roof of which the upper part of a tall building

next door had fallen, crushing all below.

FIRE ATTACKS THE MINT.

To return to the story of the conflagration, the escape of the United

States Mint was one of the most remarkable incidents. Within the vaults

of this fine structure was the vast sum of $300,000,000 in gold and

silver coin and a value of $8,000,000 in bullion, and toward this mighty

sum of wealth the flames swept on all sides, as if eager to add the

reservoir of the precious metals to their spoils. The Mint building

passed through the earthquake with little damage, though its big

smokestacks were badly shaken. The fire seemed bent on making it its

prey, every building around it being burned to the ground, and it

remaining the only building for blocks that escaped destruction.

Its safety was due to the energy and activity of its employees.

Superintendent Leach reached it shortly after the shock and found a

number of men already there, whom he stationed at points of vantage

from roof to basement. The fire apparatus of the Mint was brought into

service and help given by the fire department, and after a period of

strenuous labor the flames were driven back. The peril for a time was

critical, the windows on Mint Avenue taking fire and also those on the

rear three stories, and the flames for a time pouring in and driving

back the workers. The roof also caught fire, but the men within fought

like Titans, and efficient aid was given by a squad of soldiers sent

to them. In the end the fire fiend was vanquished, though considerable

damage was done to the adjusting rooms and the refinery, while the heavy

stone cornice on that side of the building was destroyed. The total loss

to the Mint was later estimated at $15,000.

Late on Wednesday evening the fire front crept close up to Mechanics’

Pavilion, where a corps of fifty physicians and numerous nurses were

active in the work of relief to the wounded. Ambulances and automobiles

were busy unloading new patients rescued from the ruins when word came

that the building would have to be vacated in haste. Every available

vehicle was at once pressed into service and the patients removed as

rapidly as possible, being taken to hospitals and private houses in the

safer parts of the city. Hardly had the last of the injured been carried

through the door when the roof was seen to be in a blaze, and shortly

afterward the whole building burst into a whirlwind of flame.

At midnight the fire was raging and roaring with unslacked rage, and at

dawn of Thursday its fury was undiminished. The work of destruction

was already immense. In much of the Hayes Valley district, south of

McAllister and north of Market Street, the destruction was complete.

From the Mechanics’ Pavilion and St. Nicholas Hotel opposite down to

Oakland Ferry the journey was heartrending, the scene appalling. On each

side was ruin, nothing but ruin, and hillocks of masonry and heaps of

rubbish of every description filled to its middle the city’s greatest

thoroughfare.

Across an alley from the Post Office stood the Grant Building, one of

the headquarters of the army. Of this only the smoke-darkened walls were

left. On Market Street opposite this building the beautiful front of

the Hibernian Savings Bank, the favorite institution of the middle and

poorer classes, presented a hideous aspect of ruin. At eleven o’clock

of Wednesday night the north side of Market Street stood untouched, and

hopes were entertained that the great Flood, Crocker, Phelan and other

buildings would be spared, but the hunger of the fire fiend was not yet

satiated, and the following day these proud structures had only their

blackened ruins to show. On both sides of Market Street, down to the

ferry, the tale was the same. The handsome and gigantic St. Francis

Hotel, on Powell Street, fronting on Union Square, was left a ruined

shell. This was one of the lofty steel structures that bore unharmed the

earthquake shock, but quickly succumbed to the flames. Among the other

skyscrapers north of Market Street that perished were the fourteen-story

Merchants’ Exchange, and the great Mills Building, occupying almost an

entire block.

One section of the city that went without pity, as it had long stood

with reprobation, was that group of disreputable buildings known as

Chinatown, the place of residence of many thousands of Celestials.

The flames made their way unchecked in this direction, and by noon on

Thursday the whole section was a raging furnace, the denizens escaping

with what they could carry of their simple possessions. On the farther

western side the flames cut a wide swath to Van Ness Avenue, a wide

thoroughfare, at which it was hoped the march of the fire in this

direction might be checked, especially as the water mains here furnished

a weak supply.

In the Missouri district, to the south of Market Street, the zone of

ruin extended westward toward the extreme southern portion, but was

checked at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets by the wholesale use of

dynamite. At this point were located the Southern Pacific Hospital,

the St. Francis Hospital and the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

In order to save these institutions, buildings were blown up all around

them, and by noon the danger was averted. It later became necessary to

destroy the Southern Pacific Hospital with dynamite, the patients having

been removed to places of safety.

THE PALACES ON NOB’S HILL.

In the centre of San Francisco rises the aristocratic elevation known

as Nob’s Hill, on which the early millionaires built their homes, and on

which stood the city’s most palatial residences. It ascends so abruptly

from Kearney Street that it is inaccessible to any kind of vehicle, the

slope being at any angle little short of forty-five degrees. It is as

steep on the south side, and the only approach by carriage is from the

north. To this hill is due the pioneer cable railway, built in the early

‘70’s.

Here the “big four” of the railroad magnates--Stanford, Hopkins,

Huntington and Crocker--had put millions in their mansions, the Mark

Hopkins residence being said to have cost $2,500,000. These men are all

dead, and the last named edifice has been converted into the Hopkins Art

Institute, and at the time of the fire was well filled with costly art

treasures. The Stanford Museum, which also contains valuable objects of

art, is now the property of the Leland Stanford University. The

Flood mansion, which cost more than $1,000,000, was one of the showy

residences on this hill, west of it being the Huntington home and

farther west the Crocker residence, with its broad lawns and magnificent

stables. Many other beautiful and costly houses stood on this hill, and

opposite the Stanford and Hopkins edifices the great Fairmount Hotel had

for two years past been in process of construction and was practically

completed. On the northeastern slope of this hill stood the famous

Chinatown, through which it was necessary to pass to ascend Nob’s Hill

from the principal section of the wholesale district.

This region of palaces was the next to fall a prey to the insatiable

flames. Early Thursday morning a change in the wind sent the fire

westward, eating its way from the water front north of Market Street

toward Nob’s Hill. Steadily but surely it climbed the slope, and the

Stanford and Hopkins edifices fell victims to its fury. Others of the

palaces of millionairedom followed. Huge clouds of smoke enveloped the

beautiful white stone Fairmount Hotel, and there was a general feeling

of horror when this magnificent structure seemed doomed. To it the

Committee of Safety had retreated, but the flames from the burning

buildings opposite reached it, and the committee once more migrated in

search of safe quarters. Fortunately, it escaped with little damage, its

walls remaining intact and much of the interior being left in a state

of preservation, warranting its managers to offer space within it to the

committees whose aim it was to help the homeless or to store supplies.

Some of the woodwork of the building was destroyed by the fire, but

the structure was in such good condition that work on it was quickly

resumed, with the statement that its completion would not be delayed

more than three months beyond the date set, which was November, 1906.

In the district extending northwestwardly from Kearney Street and

Montgomery Avenue, untouched during the first day, the fire spread

freely on the second. This district embraces the Latin quarter,

peopled by various nationalities, the houses being of the flimsiest

construction. Once it had gained a foothold there, the fire swept onward

as though making its way through a forest in the driest summer season.

An apochryphal incident is told of the fire in this quarter, which may

be repeated as one example of the fables set afloat. It is stated that

water to fight the fire here was sadly lacking, the only available

supply being from an old well. At a critical moment the pump sucked

dry, the water in the well being exhausted. The residents were not yet

conquered. Some of them threw open their cellar doors and, calling for

assistance, began to roll out barrels of red wine. Barrel after barrel

appeared, until fully five hundred gallons were ready for use. Then the

barrel heads were smashed in and the bucket brigade turned from water to

wine. Sacks were dipped in the wine and used for fighting the fire. Beds

were stripped of their blankets and these soaked in the wine and hung

over exposed portions of the cottages, while men on the roofs drenched

the shingles and sides of the houses with wine. The postscript to this

queer story is that the wine won and the firefighters saved their homes.

The story is worth retelling, though it may be added that wine, if

it contained much alcohol, would serve as a feeder rather than as an

extinguisher of flame.

A striking description of the aspect of the city on that terrible

Wednesday is told by Jerome B. Clark, whose home was in Berkeley, but

who did business in San Francisco. He left for the city early Wednesday

morning, after a minor shake-up at home, which he thus describes:

A VIVID FIRE PICTURE.

“I was asleep and was awakened by the house rocking. With the exception

of water in vases, and milk in pans being spilled, and one of our

chimneys badly cracked, we escaped with nothing but a bad scare, but I

can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying experience to feel that

old house rocking, jolting and jumping under us, with the most terrible

roar, dull, deep and nerve-racking. It calmed down after that and we

went back to bed, only to get up at six o’clock to find that neighbors

had suffered by having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked

around, tiles knocked out of grates and scarcely a chimney left

standing. We thought that we had had the worst of it, so I started over

to the city as usual, reaching there about eight o’clock, and it is just

impossible to describe the scenes that met my eyes.

“In every direction from the ferry building flames were seething, and

as I stood there, a five-story building half a block away fell with a

crash, and the flames swept clear across Market Street and caught a

new fireproof building recently erected. The streets in places had sunk

three or four feet, in others great humps had appeared four or five feet

high. The street car tracks were bent and twisted out of shape. Electric

wires lay in every direction. Streets on all sides were filled with

brick and mortar, buildings either completely collapsed or brick fronts

had just dropped completely off. Wagons with horses hitched to them,

drivers and all, lying on the streets, all dead, struck and killed by

the falling bricks, these mostly the wagons of the produce dealers,

who do the greater part of their work at that hour of the morning.

Warehouses and large wholesale houses of all descriptions either down,

or walls bulging, or else twisted, buildings moved bodily two or three

feet out of a line and still standing with walls all cracked.

“The Call building, a twelve-story skyscraper, stood, and looked all

right at first glance, but had moved at the base two feet at one end out

into the sidewalk, and the elevators refused to work, all the interior

being just twisted out of shape. It afterward burned as I watched it. I

worked my way in from the ferry, climbing over piles of brick and mortar

and keeping to the centre of the street and avoiding live wires that

lay around on every side, trying to get to my office. I got within two

blocks of it and was stopped by the police on account of falling walls.

I saw that the block in which I was located was on fire, and seemed

doomed, so turned back and went up into the city.

“Not knowing San Francisco, you would not know the various buildings,

but fires were blazing in all directions, and all of the finest and best

of the office and business buildings were either burning or surrounded.

They pumped water from the bay, but the fire was soon too far away from

the water front to make any efforts in this direction of much avail.

The water mains had been broken by the earthquake, and so there was no

supply for the fire engines and they were helpless. The only way out

of it was to dynamite, and I saw some of the finest and most beautiful

buildings in the city, new modern palaces, blown to atoms. First they

blew up one or two buildings at a time. Finding that of no avail, they

took half a block; that was no use; then they took a block; but in spite

of them all the fire kept on spreading.

“The City Hall, which, while old, was quite a magnificent building,

occupying a large square block of land, was completely wrecked by the

earthquake, and to look upon reminded one of the pictures of ancient

ruins of Rome or Athens. The Palace Hotel stood for a long time after

everything near it had gone, but finally went up in smoke as the rest.

You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass

of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one

street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour

after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another

of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed

to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built

frame buildings. The former lost some of the outside shell, but the

frame stood all right, and in some cases after fire had eaten them all

to pieces, the steel skeleton, although badly twisted and warped, still

stood.

“When I finally left the city, it was all in flames as far as Eighth

Street, which is about a mile and a quarter or half from the water

front. I had to walk at least two miles around in order to get to the

ferry building, and when I got there you could see no buildings standing

in any direction. Nearly all the docks caved in or sheds were knocked

down, and all the streets along the water front were a mass of seams,

upheavals and depressions, car tracks twisted in all shapes. Cars that

had stood on sidings were all in ashes and still burning.”

Wednesday’s conflagration continued unabated throughout Thursday, and it

was not until late on Friday that the fire-fighters got it safely

under control. They worked like heroes, struggling almost without rest,

keeping up the nearly hopeless conflict until they fairly fell in their

tracks from fatigue. Handicapped by the lack of water, they in one

case brought it from the bay through lines of hose well on to a mile

in length. Yet despite all they could do block after block of San

Francisco’s greatest buildings succumbed to the flames and sank in red

ruin before their eyes.

THE LANDMARKS CONSUMED.

On all sides famous landmarks yielded to the fury of the flames.

For three miles along the water front the ground was swept clean

of buildings, the blackened beams and great skeletons of factories,

warehouses and business edifices standing silhouetted against a

background of flames, while the whole commercial and office quarter of

Market Street suffered a similar fate. We may briefly instance some of

these victims of the flames.

Among them were the Occidental Hotel, on Montgomery Street, for years

the headquarters for army officers; the old Lick House, built by James

Lick, the philanthropist; the California Hotel and Theatre, on Bush

Street; and of theatres, the Orpheum, the Alcazar, the Majestic, the

Columbia, the Magic, the Central, Fisher’s and the Grand Opera House, on

Missouri Street, where the Conried Opera Company had just opened for a

two weeks’ opera season.

The banks that fell were numerous, including the Nevada National Bank,

the California, the Canadian Bank of Commerce, the First National, the

London and San Francisco, the London, Paris and American, the Bank

of British North America, the German-American Savings Bank and the

Crocker-Woolworth Bank building. A large number of splendid apartment

houses were also destroyed, and the tide of destruction swept away a

host of noble buildings far too numerous to mention.

At Post Street and Grant Avenue stood the Bohemian Club, one of the

widest known social organizations in the world. Its membership included

many men famous in art, literature and commerce. Its rooms were

decorated with the works of members, many of whose names are known

wherever paintings are discussed and many of them priceless in their

associations. Most of these were saved. There were on special exhibition

in the “Jinks” room of the Bohemian Club a dozen paintings by old

masters, including a Rembrandt, a Diaz, a Murillo and others, probably

worth $100,000. These paintings were lost with the building, which went

down in the flames.

One of the great losses was that of St. Ignatius’ Church and College, at

Van Ness Avenue and Hayes Street, the greatest Jesuitical institution

in the west, which cost a couple of millions of dollars. The Merchants’

Exchange building, a twelve-story structure, eleven of whose floors were

occupied as offices by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, was added

to the sum of losses.

THE FIRE UNDER CONTROL.

For three long days the terrible fire fiend kept up his work, and the

fight went on until late on Friday, when the sweep of the flames was at

length checked and the fire brought under control. The principal agent

in this victory was dynamite, which was freely used. To its work

a separate chapter will be devoted. When at length the area of the

conflagration was limited the wealthiest part of the city lay in embers

and ashes, one of the principal localities to escape being Pacific

Heights, a mile west from Nob’s Hill, on which stood many costly homes

of recent construction.

On Friday night the fire that had worked its way from Nob’s Hill to

North Beach Street, sweeping that quarter clean of buildings, veered

before a fierce wind and made its way southerly to the great sea wall,

with its docks and grain warehouses. The flames reached the tanks of the

San Francisco Gas Company, which had previously been pumped out, and on

Saturday morning the grain sheds on the water front, about half a mile

north of the ferry station, were fiercely burning. But the fire here was

confined to a small area, and, with the work of fireboats in the bay and

of the firemen on shore, who used salt water pumped into their engines,

it was prevented from reaching the ferry building and the docks in that

vicinity.

The buildings on a high slope between Van Ness and Polk Streets, Union

and Filbert Streets, were blazing fiercely, fanned by a high wind, but

the blocks here were so thinly settled that the fire had little

chance of spreading widely from this point. In fact, it was at length

practically under control, and the entire western addition of the city

west of Van Ness Avenue was safe from the flames. The great struggle was

fairly at an end, and the brave force of workers were at length given

some respite from their strenuous labors.

During the height of the struggle and the days of exhaustion and

depression that followed, exaggerated accounts of the losses and of the

area swept by the flames were current, some estimate making the extent

of the fire fifteen square miles out of the total of twenty-five square

miles of the city’s area. It was not until Friday, the 27th, that an

official survey of the burned district, made by City Surveyor Woodward,

was completed, and the total area burned over found to be 2,500 acres, a

trifle less than four square miles. This, however, embraced the heart of

the business section and many of the principal residence streets, much

of the saved area being occupied by the dwellings of the poorer people,

so that the money loss was immensely greater than the percentage of

ground burned over would indicate.

CHAPTER III.

Fighting the Flames With Dynamite.

Shaken by earthquake, swept by flames, the water supply cut off by the

breaking of the mains, the authorities of the doomed city for a time

stood appalled. What could be done to stay the fierce march of the

flames which were sweeping resistlessly over palace and hovel alike,

over stately hall and miserable hut? Water was not to be had; what was

to take its place? Nothing remained but to meet ruin with ruin, to make

a desert in the path of the fire and thus seek to stop its march. They

had dynamite, gunpowder and other explosives, and in the frightful

exigency there was nothing else to be used. Only for a brief interval

did the authorities yield to the general feeling of helplessness. Then

they aroused themselves to the demands of the occasion and prepared to

do all in the power of man in the effort to arrest the conflagration.

While the soldiers under General Funston took military charge of the

city, squads of cavalry and troops of infantry patrolling the streets

and guarding the sections that had not yet been touched by the flames,

Mayor Schmitz and Chief of Police Dinan sprang into the breach and

prepared to make a desperate charge against the platoons of the fire.

This was not all that was needed to be done. From the “Barbary Coast,”

as the resort of the vicious and criminal classes was called, hordes of

wretches poured out as soon as night fell, seeking to slip through the

guards and loot stores and rob the dead in the burning section. Orders

were given to the soldiers to kill all who were engaged in such work,

and these orders were carried out. An associated Press reporter saw

three of these thieves shot and fatally wounded, and doubtless others of

them were similarly dealt with elsewhere.

A band of fire-fighters was quickly organized by the Mayor and Chief

of Police, and the devoted firemen put themselves in the face of the

flames, determined to do their utmost to stay them in their course. Cut

off from the use of their accustomed engines and water streams, which

might have been effective if brought into play at the beginning of the

struggle, there was nothing to work with but the dynamite cartridge and

the gunpowder mine, and they set bravely to work to do what they could

with these. On every side the roar of explosions could be heard, and

the crash of falling walls came to the ear, while people were forced

to leave buildings which still stood, but which it was decided must be

felled. Frequently a crash of stone and brick, followed by a cloud of

dust, gave warning to pedestrians that destruction was going on in the

forefront of the flames, and that travel in such localities was unsafe.

FIGHTING THE FLAMES.

All through the night of Wednesday and the morning of Thursday this

work went on, hopelessly but resolutely. During the following day blasts

could be heard in different sections at intervals of a few minutes, and

buildings not destroyed by fire were blown to atoms, but over the gaps

jumped the live flames, and the disheartened fire-fighters were driven

back step by step; but they continued the work with little regard for

their own safety and with unflinching desperation.

One instance of the peril they ran may be given. Lieutenant Charles

O. Pulis, commanding the Twenty-fourth Company of Light Artillery,

had placed a heavy charge of dynamite in a building at Sixth and Jesse

Streets. For some reason it did not explode, and he returned to relight

the fuse, thinking it had become extinguished. While he was in the

building the explosion took place, and he received injuries that seemed

likely to prove fatal, his skull being fractured and several bones

broken, while he was injured internally. In the early morning, when the

fire reached the municipal building on Portsmouth Square, the nurses,

with the aid of soldiers, got out fifty bodies which were in the

temporary morgue and a number of patients from the receiving hospital.

Just after they reached the street with their gruesome charge a building

was blown up, and the flying bricks and splinters came falling upon

them. The nurses fortunately escaped harm, but several of the

soldiers were hurt, and had to be taken with the other patients to the

out-of-doors Presidio hospital.

The Southern Pacific Hospital, at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets, was

among the buildings destroyed by dynamite, the patients having been

removed to places of safety, and the Linda Vista and the Pleasanton,

two large family hotels on Jones Street, in the better part of the

city, were also among those blown up to stay the progress of the

conflagration.

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FIRE.

The fire had continued to creep onward and upward until it reached the

summit of Nob Hill, a district of splendid residences, and threatened

the handsome Fairmount Hotel, then the headquarters of the Municipal

Council, acting as a Committee of Public Safety. As day broke the flames

seized upon this beautiful structure, and the Council was forced to

retreat to new quarters. They finally met in the North End Police

Station, on Sacramento Street, and there entered actively upon their

duties of seeking to check the progress of the flames, maintain order

in the city and control and direct the host of fugitives, many of whom,

still in a state of semi-panic, were moving helplessly to and fro and

sadly needed wise counsels and a helping hand.

The fire-fighters meanwhile kept up their indefatigable work under the

direction of the Mayor and the chief of their department. The engines

almost from the start had proved useless from lack of water, and were

either abandoned or moved to the outlying districts, in the vain hope

that the water mains might be repaired in time to permit of a final

stand against the whirlwind march of the flames. The cloud of despair

grew darker still as the report spread that the city’s supply of

dynamite had given out.

“No more dynamite! No more dynamite!” screamed a fireman as he ran up

Ellis Street past the doomed Flood building at two o’clock on Friday

morning, tears standing in his smoke-smirched eyes.

“No more dynamite! O God! no more dynamite! We are lost!” moaned the

throng that heard his despairing words.

A NEW SUPPLY OF EXPLOSIVES.

So, at that hour, the supply of the explosive exhausted, and not a

dozen streams of water being thrown in the entire fire zone, the stunned

firemen and the stupefied people stood helpless with their eyes fixed in

despair upon the swiftly creeping flames.

Had all been like these the entire city would have been doomed, but

there were those at the head of affairs who never for a moment gave

up their resolution. Dynamite and giant powder were to be had in

the Presidio military reservation, and a requisition upon the army

authorities was made. The louder reverberations as the day advanced and

night came on showed that a fresh supply had been obtained, and that a

new and determined campaign against the conflagration had been entered

upon. Hitherto much of the work had been ignorantly and carelessly done,

and by the hasty and premature use of explosives more harm than good had

been occasioned.

As the fire continued to spread in spite of the heroic work of the

fighting corps, the Committee of Safety called a meeting at noon on

Friday and decided to blow up all the residences on the east side of Van

Ness Avenue, between Golden Gate and Pacific Avenues, a distance of one

mile. Van Ness Avenue is one of the most fashionable streets of the city

and has a width of 125 feet, a fact which led to the idea that a safety

line might be made here too broad for the flames to cross.

The firemen, therefore, although exhausted from over twenty-four hours’

work and lack of food, determined to make a desperate stand at this

point. They declared that should the fire cross Van Ness Avenue and the

wind continue its earlier direction toward the west, the destruction of

San Francisco would be virtually complete. The district west of Van

Ness Avenue and north of McAllister constitutes the finest part of the

metropolis. Here are located all of the finer homes of the well-to-do

and wealthier classes, and the resolution to destroy them was the last

resort of desperation.

Hundreds of police, regiments of soldiers and scores of volunteers

were sent into the doomed district to warn the people to flee. They

heroically responded to the demand of law and went bravely on their way,

leaving their loved homes and trudging painfully over the pavements with

the little they could carry away of their treasured possessions.

The reply of a grizzled fire engineer standing at O’Farrell Street and

Van Ness Avenue, beside a blackened engine, may not have been as terse

as that of Hugo’s guardsman at Waterloo, but the pathos of it must have

been as great. In answer to the question of what they proposed to do, he

said:

“We are waiting for it to come. When it gets here we will make one more

stand. If it crosses Van Ness Avenue the city is gone.”

THE SAVERS OF THE CITY.

Yet the work now to be done was much too important to be left to the

hands of untrained volunteers. Skilled engineers were needed, men used

to the scientific handling of explosives, and it was men of this kind

who finally saved what is left to-day of the city. Three men saved San

Francisco, so far as any San Francisco existed after the fire had worked

its will, these three constituting the dynamite squad who faced and

defied the demon at Van Ness Avenue.

When the burning city seemed doomed and the flames lit the sky farther

and farther to the west, Admiral McCalla sent a trio of his most trusted

men from Mare Island with orders to check the conflagration at any cost

of property. With them they brought a ton and a half of guncotton. The

terrific power of the explosive was equal to the maniac determination

of the fire. Captain MacBride was in charge of the squad, Chief Gunner

Adamson placed the charges and the third gunner set them off.

Stationing themselves on Van Ness Avenue, which the conflagration was

approaching with leaps and bounds from the burning business section of

the city, they went systematically to work, and when they had ended a

broad open space, occupied only by the dismantled ruins of buildings,

remained of what had been a long row of handsome and costly residences,

which, with all their treasures of furniture and articles of decoration,

had been consigned to hideous ruin.

The thunderous detonations, to which the terrified city listened all

that dreadful Friday night, meant much to those whose ears were deafened

by them. A million dollars’ worth of property, noble residences

and worthless shacks alike, were blown to drifting dust, but that

destruction broke the fire and sent the raging flames back over their

own charred path. The whole east side of Van Ness Avenue, from the

Golden Gate to Greenwich, a distance of twenty-two blocks, or a mile and

a half, was dynamited a block deep, though most of the structures as yet

had stood untouched by spark or cinder. Not one charge failed. Not one

building stood upon its foundation.

Unless some second malicious miracle of nature should reverse the

direction of the west wind, by nine o’clock it was felt that the

populous district to the west, blocked with fleeing refugees and

unilluminated except by the disastrous glare on the water front, was

safe. Every pound of guncotton did its work, and though the ruins

burned, it was but feebly. From Golden Gate Avenue north the fire

crossed the wide street in but one place. That was at the Claus

Spreckels place, on the corner of California Street.

There the flames were writhing up the walls before the dynamiters could

reach the spot. Yet they made their way to the foundations, carrying

their explosives, despite the furnace-like heat. The charge had to be

placed so swiftly and the fuse lit in such a hurry that the explosion

was not quite successful from the trained viewpoint of the gunners. But

though the walls still stood, it was only an empty victory for the fire,

as bare brick and smoking ruins are poor food for flames.

Captain MacBride’s dynamiting squad had realized that a stand was

hopeless except on Van Ness Avenue, their decision thus coinciding with

that of the authorities. They could have forced their explosives farther

in the burning section, but not a pound of guncotton could be or was

wasted. The ruined blocks of the wide thoroughfare formed a trench

through the clustered structures that the conflagration, wild as it was,

could not leap. Engines pumping brine through Fort Mason from the bay

completed the little work that the guncotton had left, but for three

days the haggard-eyed firemen guarded the flickering ruins.

The desolate waste straight through the heart of the city remained

a mute witness to the most heroic and effective work of the whole

calamity. Three men did this, and when their work was over and what

stood of the city rested quietly for the first time, they departed as

modestly as they had come. They were ordered to save San Francisco,

and they obeyed orders, and Captain MacBride and his two gunners made

history on that dreadful night.

They stayed the march of the conflagration at that critical point,

leaving it no channel to spread except along the wharf region, in which

its final force was spent. One side of Van Ness Avenue was gone; the

other remained, the fire leaping the broad open space only feebly in a

few places, where it was easily extinguished.

In this connection it is well to put on record an interesting

circumstance. This is that there is one place within pistol shot of San

Francisco that the earthquake did not touch, that did not lose a chimney

or feel a tremor. That spot is Alcatraz Island. Despite the fact that

the island is covered with brick buildings, brick forts and brick

chimneys, not a brick was loosened nor a crack made nor a quiver felt.

When the scientist comes to write he will have his hands full explaining

why Alcatraz did not have any physical knowledge of the event. It was as

if New York were to be shaken to its foundation, and Governor’s Island,

quietly pursuing its military routine, should escape without a qualm.

CHAPTER IV.

The Reign 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 was the corps of night workers,

whose duties keep 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 reign 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 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 Iron

Works, with a dinner pail on his arm.

“Everywhere 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

main 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 the 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 fire 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 Sol, 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 to be

seen 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 theatres 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 warrens where the Orientals

dwelt in thousands. Only a cavern remains, pitted with deep holes and

lined with dark passageways, from whose depths come smoke wreaths. 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

theatres, 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 jailors 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 $500,000, 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 Sea birds 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 $1,000,000, 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 reign of fire in this institution,

while much that it held is gone beyond restoration.

LOSS 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

Nob’s 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 collections in the three buildings, valued in

the hundreds of thousands, in great part were 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 200,000 volumes, while that of the Mechanics

Institute possessed property valued at $2,000,000. The Public Library

occupied a part of the City Hall, the new building proposed by the city,

with aid to the extent of $750,000 by Andrew Carnegie, being fortunately

still in 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 parties concerned 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.

Such 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 spurted 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 top the hills.

Here is a story told by one observer of 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

fire-fighters 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 are 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 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 whisky, 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 about, 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 in bundles.

“There came out, too, tales of both heroism and crime. The firemen 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 corps of volunteer aides ran

along the edge of the fire, warning people out of the houses. But the

flames ran 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 the 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 electric 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 danger 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 this 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 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.

Willis Ames, a Salt Lake City man, tells of the kind of justice done to

thieves, as it came under his observation:

“I saw 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 grief, 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

afterward.”

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 5,000 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

disobeyed, and the death of nearly the whole of them followed.

DEATH FOR SLIGHT OFFENSE.

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 and

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 in the too free use of the rifle came on the 23d, when Major

H. C. Tilden, a prominent member of the General Relief Committee, was

shot and killed in his automobile by members of the citizens’ 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 citizens’ 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.

CHAPTER V.

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 shudder 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 night clothes 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 redly 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 aware as yet 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 centre 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 20,000

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 centre 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 the

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 bird cage.

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 Chinamen

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

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 thousand and 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 overmastering thought. There were many persons

with scanty clothing, women in underskirts and thin waists 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 fire-fighters 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 whisky, 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 water front 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 ferries. 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 ferries, due to the mad desire to

escape anywhere, in any way, from the burning city.

THE WILD RUSH TO THE FERRIES.

At the ferry 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, luggage and packages of every sort packed

almost every foot of space near the ferry building. Men spread bedding

on the pavement and calmly slept the sleep of exhaustion, while all

around a bedlam of confusion reigned.