The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire Part 4

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 const.i.tutes the finest part of the metropolis. Here are located all of the finer homes of the well-to-do and wealthier cla.s.ses, 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 const.i.tuting 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 s.p.a.ce, 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, n.o.ble 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 s.p.a.ce only feebly in a few places, where it was easily extinguished.

In this connection it is well to put on record an interesting circ.u.mstance. 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 pa.s.sed and the whole great city seemed tumbling around them, while sights of terror met the eyes of the awakened mult.i.tude 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 skysc.r.a.pers, 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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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 mult.i.tudes, dragging from the wreck whatever they could save of their treasured possessions. Much the same was the case with the j.a.panese 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 pa.s.sageways, 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sageways 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 inst.i.tution, while much that it held is gone beyond restoration.

LOSS TO ART AND SCIENCE.