SCENES OF TERROR, DEATH AND HEROISM.
=Thrilling Escapes and Deeds of Daring--Sublime Bravery
and Self-Sacrifice by Men and Women--How the United
States Mint and the Treasuries Were Saved and Protected
by Devoted Employes and Soldiers--Pathetic Street
Incidents--Soldiers and Police Compel Fashionably
Attired to Assist in Cleaning Streets--Italians Drench
Homes with Wine.=
The week succeeding the quake was a remarkable one in the history of
the country. For a day or two the people had been horror-stricken by
the tales of suffering and desolation on the Pacific coast, but as the
truth became known they arose equal to the occasion.
And not all the large amounts contributed were confined to those
ranked as the great and strong of the nation. The laborers, too,
banded together and sent large contributions. The members of the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of Indianapolis realized
their brethren would be in dire need and they sent $10,000. The United
Mineworkers sent $1,000, and several other labor organizations were
equally generous.
During even the most awful moments of the catastrophe men and women
with sublimest heroism faced the most threatening terrors and dangers
to assist, to rescue and to save. Everywhere throughout the city
scenes of daring, self-sacrifice and bravery were witnessed and
thrilling escapes from imminent death aroused enthusiasm as well as
horror.
A landmark of San Francisco which escaped destruction, though every
building around it was destroyed, is the United States Mint at the
corner of Fifth and Mission streets. Harold French, an employe of the
mint, gave a graphic account of how the flames were successfully
fought.
"Nearly $200,000,000 in coin and bullion," said Mr. French, "is stored
in the vaults of the mint and for the preservation of this prize a
devoted band of employes, re-enforced by regular soldiers, fought
until the baffled flames fled to the conquest of stately blocks of
so-called fireproof buildings.
"For seven hours a sea of fire surged around this grand old federal
edifice, attacking it on all sides with waves of fierce heat. Its
little garrison was cut off from retreat for hours at a time, had such
a course been thought of by those on guard.
"Iron shutters shielded the lower floors, but the windows of the upper
story, on which are located the refinery and assay office, were
exposed.
"When the fire leaped Mint avenue in solid masses of flames the
refinery men stuck to their windows as long as the glass remained in
the frames. Seventy-five feet of an inch hose played a slender stream
upon the blazing window sill, while the floor was awash with diluted
sulphuric acid. Ankle deep in this soldiers and employes stuck to the
floor until the windows shattered. With a roar, the tongues of fire
licked greedily the inner walls. Blinding and suffocating smoke
necessitated the abandonment of the hose and the fighters retreated to
the floor below.
"Then came a lull. There was yet a fighting chance, so back to the
upper story the fire-fighters returned, led by Superintendent Leach.
At length the mint was pronounced out of danger and a handful of
exhausted but exultant employes stumbled out on the hot cobblestone to
learn the fate of some of their homes."
* * * * *
A number of men were killed while attempting to loot the United States
Mint, where $39,000,000 was kept, while thirty-four white men were
shot and killed by troops in a raid on the ruins of the burned United
States Treasury. Several millions of dollars are in the treasury
ruins.
* * * * *
Among the many pathetic incidents of the fire was that of a woman who
sat at the foot of Van Ness avenue on the hot sands on the hillside
overlooking the bay east of Fort Mason with four little children, the
youngest a girl of 3, the eldest a boy of 10.
They were destitute of water, food and money. The woman had fled with
her children from a home in flames in the Mission street district and
tramped to the bay in the hope of sighting the ship, which she said
was about due, of which her husband was the captain.
"He would know me anywhere," she said. And she would not move,
although a young fellow gallantly offered his tent back on a vacant
lot in which to shelter her children.
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 on the nerves of the soldiers and bade fair
to start a panic among the women and children. A 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.
A few Chinese made their way into the crowd. They were trembling,
pitifully scared, and willing to stop wherever the soldiers placed
them.
* * * * *
The soldiers and the police forced every available man in the downtown
district to work, no matter where they were found or under what
conditions. One party of four finely dressed men that came downtown in
an automobile were stopped by the soldiers and were ordered out of the
machine and compelled to assist in clearing the debris from Market
street. Then the automobile was loaded with provisions and sent out to
relieve the hungry people in the parks.
One young man who was pressed into service by the soldiers, came clad
in a fashionable summer suit, straw hat and kid gloves.
* * * * *
An incident of the fire in the Latin quarter on the slope of Telegraph
Hill is worthy of note. The only available water supply was found in a
well dug in early days. At a critical moment the pump suddenly sucked
dry and the water in the well was exhausted.
"There is a last chance, boys!" was shouted and Italian residents
crashed in their cellar doors with axes and, calling for assistance,
began rolling out barrels of red wine.
The cellars gave forth barrel after barrel until there was fully 500
gallons ready for use. Then barrel heads were smashed in and the
bucket brigade turned from water to wine. Sacks were dipped in the
wine and used for beating out the fire. Beds were stripped of their
blankets and these were soaked in the wine and hung over the exposed
portions of the cottages and men on the roofs drenched the shingles
and sides of the house with wine.
Past huddled groups of sleepers an unending stream of refugees was
seen wending their way to the ferry, dragging trunks over the uneven
pavement by ropes tethered to wheelbarrows laden with the household
lares and penates. The bowed figures crept about the water and ruins
and looked like the ghosts about the ruins of Troy, and unheeding save
where instinct prompted them to make a detour about some still burning
heap of ruins.
At the ferry the sleepers lay in windrows, each man resting his head
upon some previous treasures that he had brought from his home. No one
was able to fear thieves or to escape pillage, because of absolute
physical inertia forced upon him.
Mad, wholly stark mad, were some of the unfortunates who had not fled
from the ruins. In many instances the soldiers were forced to tear men
and women away from the bodies of their dead. Two women were stopped
within a distance of a few blocks and forced to give up the dead
bodies of their babes, which they were nursing to their bosoms.
A newsgatherer passing through Portsmouth square noticed a mother
cowering under a bush. She was singing in a quavering voice a lullaby
to her baby. The reporter parted the bushes and looked in. Then he saw
what she held in her arms was only a mangled and reddened bit of
flesh. The baby had been crushed when the shock of earthquake came and
its mother did not know that its life had left it thirty hours before.
* * * * *
When law and order were strained a crew of hell rats crept out of
their holes and in the flamelight plundered and reveled in
bacchanalian orgies like the infamous inmates of Javert in "Les
Miserables." These denizens of the sewer traps and purlieus of "The
Barbary Coast" exulted in unhindered joy of doing evil.
Sitting crouched among the ruins or sprawling on the still warm
pavement they could be seen brutally drunk. A demijohn of wine placed
on a convenient corner of some ruin was a shrine at which they
worshiped. They toasted chunks of sausage over the dying coals of the
cooling ruin even as they drank, and their songs of revelry were
echoed from wall to wall down in the burnt Mission district.
Some of the bedizened women of the half world erected tents and
champagne could be had for the asking, although water had its price.
One of these women, dressed in pink silk with high heeled satin
slippers on her feet, walked down the length of what had been Natoma
street with a bucket of water and a dipper, and she gave the precious
fluid freely to those stricken ones huddled there by their household
goods and who had not tasted water in twenty-four hours.
"Let them drink and be happy," said she, "water tastes better than
beer to them now."
* * * * *
Soon after the earthquake San Francisco was practically placed under
martial law with Gen. Fred Funston commanding and later Gen. Greely.
The regiment has proven effective in subduing anarchy and preventing
the depredations of looters. A detail of troops helped the police to
guard the streets and remove people to places of safety.
The martial law dispensed was of the sternest. They have no records
existing of the number of executions which had been meted out to
offenders. It is known that more than one sneaking vandal suffered for
disobedience of the injunction given against entering deserted houses.
There was a sharp, businesslike precision about the American soldier
that stood San Francisco in good stead. The San Francisco water rat
thug and "Barbary Coast" pirate might flout a policeman, but he
discovered that he could not disobey a man who wears Uncle Sam's
uniform without imminent risk of being counted in that abstract
mortuary list usually designated as "unknown dead."
For instance: When Nob Hill was the crest of a huge wave of flame,
soldiers were directing the work of saving the priceless art treasures
from the Mark Hopkins institute.
Lieut. C. C. McMillan of the revenue cutter Bear impressed volunteers
at the point of a pistol to assist in saving the priceless art
treasures which the building housed.
"Here you," barked Lieutenant McMillan to the great crowd of dazed
men, "get in there and carry out those paintings."
"What business have you got to order us about?" said a burly citizen
with the jowl of a Bill Sykes.
The lieutenant gave a significant hitch to his arm and the burly man
saw a revolver was hanging from the forefinger of the lieutenant's
right hand.
"Look here," said the lieutenant. "You see this gun? Well, I think it
is aimed at your right eye. Now, come here. I want to have a little
talk with you."
The tough stared for a moment and then the shade of fear crept over
his face, and with an "All right, boss," he started in upon the labor
of recovering the art treasures from the institute.
"This is martial law," said the determined lieutenant. "I don't like
it, you may not like it, but it goes. I think that is understood."
* * * * *
John H. Ryan and wife of Chicago after spending their honeymoon in
Honolulu and Jamaica reached San Francisco just before the earthquake.
They were stopping at the St. Francis Hotel, which was destroyed
partially by the earthquake and totally by the fire following the
shock. They lost many of their personal effects, but are thankful that
they escaped with their lives.
"When the first shock came," said Mr. Ryan, "I was out of bed in an
instant. I immediately was thrown to the floor. Arising, I held on by
a chair and by the door knob until I could get around the room to the
window to see if I could find out what was the matter. I saw people
running and heard them in the corridors of the hotel. I also heard
women screaming. I hastily called one of my friends and he and myself
threw on our overcoats, stuck our feet into our shoes and ran
downstairs. I ran back to tell my wife, when I found her coming down
the stairs.
"The first shock lasted, according to a professor in the university,
sixty seconds. I thought it lasted about as many days.
"At the second shock all the guests piled into the streets. We stood
in the bitter cold street for fully a quarter of an hour with nothing
about us but our spring overcoats. I said 'bitter cold.' So it was.
People there said it was the coldest spell that has struck Frisco in
years.
"After standing in the streets for a while my friend and myself, with
my wife, started back into the hotel to get our clothes. The guard was
at the foot of the stairs and he told us that we would not be allowed
to go to our rooms. I told him we merely wanted to get some clothes on
so we would not freeze to death and he told us to go up, but to come
right down as soon as possible, for there was no telling what would
happen. We rushed into our rooms and hurriedly threw on our clothes,
and started out to reconnoiter. We stopped near a small building. Just
then a policeman on guard came up and ordered everybody to assist in
rescuing the persons within. We did not hesitate, but rushed into the
building heedless of the impending falling of the walls. We found
there a man lying unconscious on the floor. He revived sufficiently to
make us understand that his wife and child were in the building and
that he thought they were dead. We looked and finally found them,
dead.
"We saw ambulances and undertakers' wagons by the score racing down
Market street. They were filled with the bodies of the injured and in
many cases with dead. The injured were piled into the wagons
indiscriminately without respect for any consequences in the future of
the patients."
* * * * *
R. F. Lund of Canal Dover, O., was asleep in apartments when the shock
rent the city. "I awoke to find myself on the floor," said Mr. Lund.
"The building to me seemed to pitch to the right, then to the left,
and finally to straighten itself and sink. I had the sensation of
pitching down in an elevator shaft--that sudden, sickening wave that
sweeps over you and leaves you breathless.
"I got into my clothes and with some difficulty wrenched open the door
of my room. Screams of women were piercing the air. Together with a
dozen other men, inmates of the apartments, I assembled the women
guests and we finally got them into the streets. Few of them tarried
long enough to dress. We went back again and then returned with more
women.
"In one room particularly there was great commotion. It was occupied
by two women and they were in a state of hysterical terror because
they could not open their door and get out. The sudden settling of the
building had twisted the jambs.
"Finally I put my two hundred and thirty pounds of weight against the
panels and smashed them through. I helped them wrap themselves in
quilts and half led, half carried them to the street.
"While passing through a narrow street in the rear of the Emporium I
came upon a tragedy. A rough fellow, evidently a south of Market
street thug, was bending over the unconscious form of a woman. She was
clothed in a kimono and lay upon the sidewalk near the curb. His back
was toward me. He was trying to wrench a ring from her finger and he
held her right wrist in his left hand. A soldier suddenly approached.
He held a rifle thrust forward and his eyes were on the wretch.
"Involuntarily I stopped and involuntarily my hand went to my hip
pocket. I remember only this, that it seemed in that moment a good
thing to me to take a life. The soldier's rifle came to his shoulder.
There was a sharp report and I saw the smoke spurt from the muzzle.
The thug straightened up with a wrench, he shot his right arm above
his head and pitched forward across the body of the woman. He died
with her wrist in his grasp. It may sound murderous, but the feeling I
experienced was one of disappointment. I wanted to kill him myself.
"Along in the afternoon in my walking I came upon a great hulking
fellow in the act of wresting food from an old woman and a young girl
who evidently had joined their fortunes. No soldiers were about and I
had the satisfaction of laying him out with the butt of my pistol. He
went down in a heap. I did not stay to see whether or not he came to."
"Strange is the scene where San Francisco's Chinatown stood," said
W. W. Overton, after reaching Los Angeles among the refugees. "No heap
of smoking ruins marks the site of the wooden warrens where the
slant-eyed men of the orient dwelt in thousands. The place is pitted
with deep holes and seared with dark passageways, from whose depths
come smoke wreaths. All the wood has gone and the winds are streaking
the ashes.
"Men, white men, never knew the depth of Chinatown's underground
city. They often talked of these subterranean runways. And many of
them had gone beneath the street levels, two and three stories. But
now that Chinatown has been unmasked, for the destroyed buildings were
only a mask, men from the hillside have looked on where its inner
secrets lay. In places they can see passages 100 feet deep.
"The fire swept this Mongolian section 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, grocery stores and opium dens, gambling hells and
theaters--all of them went. The buildings blazed up like tissue paper
lanterns used when the guttering candles touched their sides.
"From this place I, following the fire, saw hundreds of crazed yellow
men flee. In their arms they bore their opium pipes, their money bags,
their silks, and their children. Beside them ran the baggy trousered
women, and some of them hobbled painfully.
"These were the men and women of the surface. Far beneath the street
levels in those cellars and passageways were many others. Women who
never saw the day from their darkened prisons and their blinking
jailors were caught like rats in a huge trap. Their bones were eaten
by the flames.
"And now there remain only the holes. They pit the hillside like a
multitude of ground swallow nests. They go to depths which the police
never penetrated. The secrets of those burrows will never be known,
for into them the hungry fire first sifted its red coals and then
licked eagerly in tongues of creeping flames, finally obliterating
everything except the earth itself."
"The scenes to be witnessed in San Francisco were beyond description,"
said Mr. Oliver Posey, Jr.
"Not alone did the soldiers execute the law. One afternoon, in front
of the Palace Hotel, a crowd of workers in the ruins discovered a
miscreant in the act of robbing a corpse of its jewels. Without delay
he was seized, a rope was procured, and he was immediately strung up
to a beam which was left standing in the ruined entrance of the Palace
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 secure 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."
Jack Spencer, well known here, also returned home yesterday, and had
much to say of the treatment of those caught in the act of rifling the
dead of their jewels.
"At the corner of Market and Third streets on Wednesday," said Mr.
Spencer of Los Angeles, "I saw a man attempting to cut the fingers
from the hand of a dead woman in order to secure the rings. Three
soldiers witnessed the deed at the same time and ordered the man to
throw up his hands. Instead of obeying he drew a revolver from his
pocket and began to fire 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 eleven bullets were found to have entered it."
Here is an experience typical of hundreds told by Sam Wolf, a guest at
the Grand Hotel:
"When I awakened the house was shaken as a terrier would shake a rat.
I dressed and made for the street which seemed to move like waves of
water. On my way down Market street the whole side of a building fell
out and came so near me that I was covered and blinded by the dust.
Then I saw the first dead come by. They were piled up in an automobile
like carcasses in a butcher's wagon, all over blood, with crushed
skulls and broken limbs, and bloody faces.
"A man cried out to me, 'Look out for that live wire.' I just had time
to sidestep certain death. On each side of me the fires were burning
fiercely. I finally got into the open space before the ferry. The
ground was still shaking and gaping open in places. Women and children
knelt on the cold asphalt and prayed God would be merciful to them. At
last we got on the boat. Not a woman in that crowd had enough clothing
to keep her warm, let alone the money for fare. I took off my hat, put
a little money in it, and we got enough money right there to pay all
their fares."
W. H. Sanders, consulting engineer of the United States geological
survey, insisted on paying his hotel bill before he left the St.
Francis. He says:
"Before leaving my room I made my toilet and packed my grip. The other
guests had left the house. As I hurried down the lobby I met the clerk
who had rushed in to get something. I told him I wanted to pay my
bill. 'I guess not,' he said, 'this is no time for settlement.'
"As he ran into the office I cornered him, paid him the money, and got
his receipt hurriedly stamped."
Dr. Taggart of Los Angeles, a leader of the Los Angeles relief bureau,
accidentally shot himself while entering a hospital at the corner of
Page and Baker streets, Saturday, April 21. He was mounting the
stairs, stumbled and fell. A pistol which he carried in his inside
coat pocket was discharged, the bullet entering near the heart. He
rose to his feet and cried, "I am dying," and fell into the arms of a
physician on the step below. Death was almost instantaneous.
Mrs. Lucien Shaw, of Los Angeles, wife of Judge Shaw of the State
Supreme Court, disappeared in the war of the elements that raged in
San Francisco.
At day dawn Thursday morning, April 19, the Shaw apartments, on Pope
street, San Francisco, were burned. Mrs. Shaw fled with the refugees
to the hills.
Judge Lucien Shaw went north on that first special on Wednesday that
cleared for the Oakland mole.
[Illustration: Copyright 1906 by Tom M. Phillips.
=FREE WATER.=
The most welcome visitor to the Mission district.]
[Illustration: Copyright 1906 by Tom M. Phillips.
=DISTRIBUTING CLOTHES.=
Handing out clothes to all who need them.]
[Illustration: Copyright 1906 by Tom M. Phillips.
=WIRES DOWN.=
The earthquake shook down wires and poles.]
[Illustration: Copyright 1906 by Tom M. Phillips.
=MILITARY CAMP.=
View in Golden Gate Park. Too much praise cannot be given our
soldiers.]
Thursday morning at daybreak he reached his apartments on Pope
street. Flames were burning fiercely. A friend told him that his wife
had fled less than fifteen minutes before. She carried only a few
articles in a hand satchel.
For two days and nights Judge Shaw wandered over hills and through the
parks about San Francisco seeking among the 200,000 refugees for his
wife.
During that heart-breaking quest, according to his own words, he had
"no sleep, little food and less water." At noon Saturday he gave up
the search and hurried back to Los Angeles, hoping to find that she
had arrived before him. He hastened to his home on West Fourth street.
"Where's mother?" was the first greeting from his son, Hartley Shaw.
Judge Shaw sank fainting on his own doorstep. The search for the
missing woman was continued but proved fruitless.
One of the beautiful little features on the human side of the disaster
was the devotion of the Chinese servants to the children of the
families which they served. And this was not the only thing, for often
a Chinaman acted as the only man in families of homeless women and
children. Except for the inevitable panic of the first morning, when
the Chinese tore into Portsmouth square and fought with the Italians
for a place of safety, the Chinese were orderly, easy to manage, and
philosophical. They staggered around under loads of household goods
which would have broken the back of a horse, and they took hard the
order of the troops which commanded all passengers to leave their
bundles at the ferry.
A letter to a friend in Fond du Lac, Wis., from Mrs. Bragg, wife of
General E. S. Bragg, late consul general at Hong Kong, and one-time
commander of the Iron Brigade, gave the following account of the
escape of the Braggs in the Frisco quake. Mrs. Bragg says under date
of April 20:
"We reached San Francisco a week ago today, but it seems a month, so
much have we been through. We were going over to Oakland the very
morning of the earthquake, so, of course, we never went, as it is as
bad there as here.
"General Bragg had to wait to collect some money on a draft, but the
banks were all destroyed. The chimneys fell in and all hotels were
burned as well as public buildings. There was no water to put out the
fires which raged for blocks in every square and provisions were
running low everywhere. Eggs were $5 a dozen, etc.; no telegraph, no
nothing.
"We went from the Occidental to the Plymouth and from there to the
Park Nob hill, where we lay, not slept, all Wednesday night, the day
of the earthquake. From there we took refuge on the Pacific with
friends who were obliged to get out also and we all came over together
to Fort Mason, leaving there last night. We came from there to the
flagship Chicago, the admiral having sent a boat for us.
"General Bragg is very well and we have both stood it wonderfully. The
Chicago fire was bad enough, but this is worse in our old age. May we
live till we reach home. So many here have lost everything, homes as
well, we consider ourselves quite fortunate. May I never live to see
another earthquake.
"The General had a very narrow escape from falling plaster; never
thought to leave the first hotel alive. Many were killed or burned.
God is good to us. Our baggage was rescued by our nephews alone. No
one else's was to be got out for love or money. The baggage was sent
to the Presidio, not four miles from us."