The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire eBook
Charles Morris
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.
