The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire Part 10

"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 pa.s.s 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, d.a.m.n you, hustle!' The soldiers took delight in picking out the best dressed men and keeping them at the brick piles for long terms. I pa.s.sed them in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid that even my pa.s.s would not save me. Two men are reported shot because they refused to turn in and help."

Many of the dead, of course, will never be identified, though the names were taken of all who were known and descriptions written of the others.

A story comes to us of one young girl who had followed for two days the body of her father, her only relative. It had been taken from a house on Mission Street to an undertaker's shop just after the quake. The fire drove her out with her charge, and it was placed in Mechanics' Pavilion.

That went, and the body rested for a day at the Presidio, waiting burial. With many others, she wept on the border of the burned area, while the women cared for her.

VICTIMS TAKEN FROM THE RUINS.

On Friday eleven postal clerks, all alive, were taken from the debris of the Post Office. All at first were thought to be dead, but it was found that, although they were buried under the stone and timber, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 gra.s.s. There was nothing to be done. Injured lay groaning. Tender hands were willing, but of water there was none. "Water, water, for G.o.d'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.

THE FREE USE OF RIFLES.

A citizen tells us that "in the early part of the evening, and while the twilight lasts, there is a good deal of trafficking up and down the sidewalks. Having finished their dinners of government provisions, cooked on the street or in the parks, the people promenade for 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 sc.r.a.pe 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."

THE LOSS IN WEALTH.

If we pa.s.s 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 acc.u.mulation 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.b'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.

LOOTERS IN CHINATOWN.

Chinatown suffered severely, the merchants of that locality possessing large stocks of valuable goods, many of which were looted by seemingly respectable sightseers after the ruins had cooled off, bronze, porcelain and other valuable goods being taken from the ruins. One example consisted in a ma.s.s 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 munic.i.p.al 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

Wonderful Record of Thrilling Escapes.

Shuddering under the memories of what seems more like a nightmare than actual reality to the survivors of this frightful calamity, they have tried to picture in words far from adequate the days of terror and the nights of horror that fell to the lot of the people of the Golden Gate city and their guests.

They recount the roar of falling structures and the groans and pitiful cries of those pinned beneath the timbers of collapsing buildings. They speak of their climbing over dead bodies heaped in the streets, and of following tortuous ways to find the only avenue of escape--the ferry, where men and women fought like infuriated animals, bent on escape from a fiery furnace.

These refugees tell of the great caravan composed of homeless persons in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that great procession women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and tugging at the shafts, hauling all that was left of their earthly belongings, and a little food that foresight told them would be necessary to stay the pangs of hunger in the hours of misery that must follow.

We give below an especially accurate picture from the description of the well-known writer, Jane Tingley, who, an eye-witness of it all, did so much to help the sufferers, and who, with all the unselfishness of true American womanhood, sacrificed her own comfort and needs for those of others.

"May G.o.d be merciful to the women and children in this land of desolation and despair!" she wrote on April 21st.

"Men have done, are doing such deeds of sublime self-sacrifice, of magnificent heroism, that deserve to make the t.i.tle of American manhood immortal in the pages of history. The rest lies with the Almighty.

"I spent all of last night and to-day in that horror city across the bay. I went from this unharmed city of plenty, blooming with abounding health, thronged with happy mothers and joyous children, and spent hours among the blackened ruins and out on the windswept slopes of the sand hills by the sea, and I heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her children in the wilderness and mourning because she found them not.

"I climbed to the top of Strawberry Hill, in Golden Gate Park, and saw a woman, half naked, almost starving, her hair dishevelled and an unnatural l.u.s.tre in her eyes, her gaze fixed upon the waters in the distance, and her voice repeating over and over again: 'Here I am, my pretties; come here, come here.'

"I took her by the hand and led her down to the gra.s.s at the foot of the hill. A man--her husband--received her from me and wept as he said: 'She is calling our three little children. She thinks the sounds of the ocean waves are the voices of our lost darlings.'

"Ever since they became separated from their children in that first terrific onrush of the mult.i.tude when the fire swept along Mission Street these two had been tramping over the hills and parks without food or rest, searching for their little ones. To all whom they have met they have addressed the same pitiful question: 'Have you seen anything of our lost babies?' They will not know what has become of them until order has been brought out of chaos; until the registration headquarters of the military authorities has secured the names of all who are among the straggling wanderers around the camps of the homeless. Perhaps then it will be found that these children are in a trench among the corpses of the weaklings who have succ.u.mbed to the frightful rigors of the last three days.

"Last night a soldier seized me by the arm and cried: 'If you are a woman with a woman's heart, go in there and do whatever you can.'

"'In there' meant behind a barricade of brush, covered with a blanket that had been hastily thrown together to form a rude shelter. I went in and saw one of my own s.e.x lying on the bare gra.s.s naked, her clothing torn to shreds; scattered over the green beside her. She was moaning pitifully, and it needed no words to tell a woman what the matter was, I bade my man escort to find a doctor, or at least send more women at once. He ran off and soon two sympathetic ladies hastened into the shelter. In an hour my escort returned with a young medical student.

Under the best ministrations we could find, a new life was ushered into this h.e.l.l, which, a few hours before, was the fairest among cities.

"'There have been many such cases,' said the medical student. 'Many of the mothers have died--few of the babies have lived. I, personally, know of nine babies that have been born in the park to-day. There must have been many others here, among the sand hills, and at the Presidio.'"

"Think of it, you happy women who have become mothers in comfortable homes, attended with every care that loving hands can bestow. Think of the dreadful plight of these poor members of your s.e.x. The very thought of it is enough to make the hearts of women burst with pity.

"To-day I walked among the people crowded on the Panhandle. Opposite the Lyon Street entrance, on the north side, I saw a young woman sitting tailor-fashion in the roadway, which, in happier days, was the carriage boulevard. She held a dishpan and was looking at her reflection in the polished bottom, while another girl was arranging her hair. I recognized a young wife, whose marriage to a prominent young lawyer eight months ago was a gala event among that little handful of people who clung to the old-time fashionable district of Valencia Street, like the Phelan and Dent families, and refused to move from that aristocratic section when the new-made, millionaires began to build their palaces on n.o.b Hill and Pacific Heights. I spoke to the young woman about the disadvantages of making her toilet under such untoward circ.u.mstances.