Selected American history

CHAPTER VII.

The Frightful Loss of Life and Wealth.

While multitudes escaped from toppling buildings and crashing walls in the dread disaster of that fatal Wednesday morning of April 18th in San Francisco, hundreds of the less fortunate met their death in the ruins, and horrifying scenes were witnessed by the survivors. Many of those who escaped had tales of terror to tell. Mr. J. P. Anthony, as he fled from the Ramona Hotel, saw a score or more of people crushed to death, and as he walked the streets at a later hour saw bodies of the dead being carried in garbage wagons and all kinds of vehicles to the improvised morgues, while hospitals and storerooms were already filled with the injured. Mr. G. A. Raymond, of Tomales, Cal., gives evidence to the same effect. As he rushed into the street, he says that the air was filled with falling stones and people around him were crushed to death on all sides.

Others gave testimony to the same effect. Samuel Wolf, of Salt Lake City, tells us that he saved one woman from death in the hotel. She was rushing blindly toward an open window, from which she would have fallen fifty feet to the stone pavement below. "On my way down Market Street," he says, "the whole side of a building fell out and came so near me that I was covered and blinded by the dust. Then I saw the first dead come by. They were piled up in an automobile like carcasses in a butcher's wagon, all bloody, with crushed skulls, broken limbs and bloody faces."

These are frightful stories, exaggerated probably from the nervous excitement of those terrible moments, as are also the following statements, which form part of the early accounts of the disaster. Thus we are told that "from a three-story lodging house at Fifth and Minna Streets, which collapsed Wednesday morning, more than seventy-five bodies were taken to-day. There are fifty other bodies in sight in the ruins. This building was one of the first to take fire on Fifth Street. At least 100 persons are said to have been killed in the Cosmopolitan, on Fourth Street. More than 150 persons are reported dead in the Brunswick Hotel, at Seventh and Mission Streets."

Another statement is to the effect that "at Seventh and Howard Streets a great lodging house took fire after the first shock, before the guests had escaped. There were few exits and nearly all the lodgers perished. Mrs. J. J. Munson, one of those in the building, leaped with her child in her arms from the second floor to the pavement below and escaped unhurt. She says she was the only one who escaped from the house. Such horrors as this were repeated at many points. B. Baker was killed while trying to get a body from the ruins. Other rescuers heard the pitiful wail of a little child, but were unable to get near the point from which the cry issued. Soon the onrushing fire ended the cry and the men turned to other tasks."

The questionable point in those statements is that the numbers of dead spoken of in these few instances exceed the whole number given in the official records issued two weeks after the disaster. Yet they go to illustrate the actual horrors of the case, and are of importance for this reason. As regards the whole number killed, in fact, there is not, and probably never will be, a full and accurate statement. While about 350 bodies had been recovered at the end of the second week, it was impossible to estimate how many lay buried under the ruins, to be discovered only as the work of excavation went on, and how many more had been utterly consumed by the flames, leaving no trace of their existence. The estimates of the probable loss of life ran up to 1,500 and more, while the injured were very numerous.

The shock of the earthquake, the pulse of deep horror to which it gave rise, the first wild impulse to flee for life, gave way in the minds of many to a feeling of intense sympathy as agonized cries came from those pinned down to the ruins of buildings or felled by falling bricks or stones, and as the sight of dead bodies incrimsoned with blood met the eyes of the survivors in the streets. From wandering aimlessly about, many of these went earnestly to work to rescue the wounded and recover the bodies of the slain. In this merciful work the police and the soldiers lent their aid, and soon there was a large corps of rescuers actively engaged.

Soon numbers were taken, alive or dead, from the ruins, passing vehicles were pressed into the service, and the labor of mercy went on rapidly, several buildings being quickly converted into temporary hospitals, while the dead were conveyed to the Mechanics' Pavilion and other available places. Portsmouth Square became for a time a public morgue. Between twenty and thirty corpses were laid side by side upon the trodden grass in the absence of more suitable accommodations. It is said that when the flames threatened to reach the square, the dead, mostly unknown, were removed to Columbia Square, where they were buried when danger threatened that quarter. Others were taken to the Presidio, and here the soldiers pressed into service all men who came near and forced them to labor at burying the dead, a temporary cemetery being opened there. So thick were the corpses piled up that they were becoming a menace, and early in the day the order was issued to bury them at any cost. The soldiers were needed for other work, so, at the point of rifles, the citizens were compelled to take to the work of burying. Some objected at first, but the troops stood no trifling, and every man who came within reach was forced to work. Rich men, unused to physical exertion, labored by the side of the workingmen digging trenches in which to bury the dead. The able-bodied being engaged in fighting the flames, General Funston ordered that the old men and the weaklings should take the work in hand. They did it willingly enough, but had they refused the troops on guard would have forced them. It was ruled that every man physically capable of handling a spade or a pick should dig for an hour. When the first shallow graves were ready the men, under the direction of the troops, lowered the bodies, several in a grave, and a strange burial began. The women gathered about crying. Many of them knelt while a Catholic priest read the burial service and pronounced absolution. All Thursday afternoon this went on.

In this connection the following stories are told:

Dr. George V. Schramm, a young medical graduate, said:

"As I was passing down Market Street with a new-found friend, an automobile came rushing along with two soldiers in it. My doctor's badge protected me, but the soldiers invited my companion, a husky six-footer, to get into the automobile. He said:

"'I don't want to ride, and have plenty of business to attend to.'

"Once more they invited him, and he refused. One of the soldiers pointed a gun at him and said:

"'We need such men as you to save women and children and to help fight the fire.'

"The man was on his way to find his sister, but he yielded to the inevitable. He worked all day with the soldiers, and when released to get lunch he felt that he could conscientiously desert to go and find his own loved ones."

"Half a block down the street the soldiers were stopping all pedestrians without the official pass which showed that they were on relief business, and putting them to work heaving bricks off the pavement. Two dapper men with canes, the only clean people I saw, were caught at the corner by a sergeant, who showed great joy as he said:

"'I give you time to git off those kid gloves, and then hustle, damn you, hustle!' The soldiers took delight in picking out the best dressed men and keeping them at the brick piles for long terms. I passed them in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid that even my pass would not save me. Two men are reported shot because they refused to turn in and help."

Many of the dead, of course, will never be identified, though the names were taken of all who were known and descriptions written of the others. A story comes to us of one young girl who had followed for two days the body of her father, her only relative. It had been taken from a house on Mission Street to an undertaker's shop just after the quake. The fire drove her out with her charge, and it was placed in Mechanics' Pavilion. That went, and the body rested for a day at the Presidio, waiting burial. With many others, she wept on the border of the burned area, while the women cared for her.

On Friday eleven postal clerks, all alive, were taken from the debris of the Post Office. All at first were thought to be dead, but it was found that, although they were buried under the stone and timber, every one was alive. They had been for three days without food or water.

Two theatrical people were in a hotel in Santa Rosa when the shock came. The room was on the fourth floor. The roof collapsed. One of them was thrown from the bed and both were caught by the descending timbers and pinned helplessly beneath the debris. They could speak to each other and could touch one another's hands, but the weight was so great that they could do nothing to liberate themselves. After three hours rescuers came, cut a hole in the roof and both were released uninjured.

Even the docks were converted into hospitals in the stringent exigency of the occasion, about 100 patients being stretched on Folsom street dock at one time. In the evening tugs conveyed them to Goat Island, where they were lodged in the hospital. The docks from Howard Street to Folsom Street had been saved, the fire at this point not being permitted to creep farther east than Main Street. Another series of fatalities occurred, caused by the stampeding of a herd of cattle at Sixth and Folsom Streets. Three hundred of the panic-stricken animals ran amuck when they saw and felt the flames and charged wildly down the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that "the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the janitor of a big building. The first he knew of the catastrophe he found himself in the basement, his dead wife beside him. The building had simply split in two, and thrown them down."

In the camps of refuge the deaths came frequently. Physicians were everywhere in evidence, but, without medicine or instruments, were fearfully handicapped. Men staggered in from their herculean efforts at the fire lines, only to fall gasping on the grass. There was nothing to be done. Injured lay groaning. Tender hands were willing, but of water there was none. "Water, water, for God's sake get me some water," was the cry that struck into thousands of souls of San Francisco.

The list of dead was not confined to San Francisco, but extended to many of the neighboring towns, especially to Santa Rosa, where sixty were reported dead and a large number missing, and to the insane asylum in its vicinity, from the ruins of which a hundred or more of dead bodies were taken.

A citizen tells us that "in the early part of the evening, and while the twilight lasts, there is a good deal of trafficking up and down the sidewalks. Having finished their dinners of government provisions, cooked on the street or in the parks, the people promenade for half an hour or so. By half-past eight the town is closed tight. A rat scurrying in the street will bring a soldier's rifle to his shoulder. Any one not wearing a uniform or a Red Cross badge is a suspicious character and may be shot unless he halts at command. Even the men in uniform do well to stop still, for it is hard to tell a uniform in the half light thrown up by the burning town and the great shadows.

"Last night two of us ventured out on Van Ness Avenue a little late. There came up the noise of some kind of a shooting scrape far down the street. We hurried in that direction to see what was doing. An eighteen-year-old boy in a uniform barred the way, levelled his rifle and said in a peremptory way:

"'Go home.'

"We took a course down the block, where an older soldier, more communicative but equally peremptory, informed us that we were trifling with our lives, news or no news.

"'We've shot about 300 people for one thing or another,' he said. 'Now, dodge trouble. Git!' That ended the expedition."

If we pass now from the record of the loss of lives to that of the destruction of wealth, the estimates exceed by far any fire losses recorded in history.

The truth is that when flames eat out the heart of a great city, devour its vast business establishments, storehouses and warehouses, sweep through its centres of opulence, destroy its wharves with their accumulation of goods, spread ruin and havoc everywhere, it is impossible at first to estimate the loss. Only gradually, as time goes on, is the true loss discovered, and never perhaps very accurately, since the owners and the records of riches often disappear with the wealth itself. In regard to San Francisco, the early estimate was that three-fourths of the city, valued at $500,000,000, was destroyed.

But early estimates are apt to be exaggerated, and on Friday, two days after the disaster, we find this estimate reduced to $250,000,000. A few more days passed and these figures shrunk still further, though it was still largely conjectural, the means of making a trustworthy estimate being very restricted. Later on the pendulum swung upward again, and two weeks after the fire the closest estimates that could be made fixed the property loss at close to $350,000,000, or double that of the Chicago fire. But as the actual loss in the latter case proved considerably below the early estimates, the same may prove to be the case with San Francisco.

Special personal losses were in many cases great. Thus the Palace Hotel was built at a cost of $6,000,000, and the St. Francis, which originally cost $4,000,000, was being enlarged at great expense. Several of the great mansions on Nob's Hill cost a million or more, the City Hall was built at a cost of $7,000,000, the new Post Office was injured to the extent of half a million, while a large number of other buildings might be named whose value, with their contents, was measured in the millions.

It was not until May 3d that news came over the wires of another serious item of loss. The merchants had waited until then for their fire-proof safes and vaults to cool off before attempting to open them. When this was at length done the results proved disheartening. Out of 576 vaults and safes opened in the district east of Powell and north of Market Street, where the flames had raged with the greatest fury, it was found that fully forty per cent. had not performed their duty. When opened they were found to contain nothing but heaps of ashes. The valuable account books, papers and in some cases large sums of money had vanished, the loss of the accounts being a severe calamity in a business sense. As all the banks were equipped with the best fire-proof vaults, no fear was felt for the safety of their contents.

Chinatown suffered severely, the merchants of that locality possessing large stocks of valuable goods, many of which were looted by seemingly respectable sightseers after the ruins had cooled off, bronze, porcelain and other valuable goods being taken from the ruins. One example consisted in a mass of gold and silver valued at $2,500, which had been melted by the fire in the store of Tai Sing, a Chinese merchant. This was found by the police on May 3d in a place where it had been hidden by looters.

But with all its losses San Francisco does not despair. The spirit of its citizens is heroic, and there are some hopeful signs in the air. The insurances due are estimated to approximate $175,000,000, and there are other moneys likely to be spent on building during the coming year, making a total of over $200,000,000. Eastern capitalists also talk of investing $100,000,000 of new capital in the rebuilding of the city, while the San Francisco authorities have a project of issuing $200,000,000 of municipal bonds, the payment to be guaranteed by the United States Government. Thus, two weeks after the earthquake, daylight was already showing strongly ahead and hope was fast beginning to replace despair.