The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire | Page 3

of this "Small
Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, [email protected].

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALAMITY BY EARTHQUAKE AND
FIRE
A Complete and Accurate Account of the Fearful Disaster which
Visited the Great City and the Pacific Coast, the Reign of Panic and
Lawlessness, the Plight of 300,000 Homeless People and the
World-wide Rush to the Rescue.
TOLD BY EYE WITNESSES
INCLUDING GRAPHIC AND RELIABLE ACCOUNTS OF ALL
GREAT EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN THE
WORLD'S HISTORY, AND SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS OF

THEIR CAUSES.
EDITED BY
CHARLES MORRIS, LL. D.

PREFACE
Earthquake and famine, fire and sudden death--these are the destroyers
that men fear when they come singly; but upon the unhappy people of
California they came together, a hideous quartette, to slay human
beings, to blot from existence the wealth that represented prolonged
and strenuous effort, to bring hunger and speechless misery to three
hundred thousand homeless and terror-stricken people.
The full measure of the catastrophe can probably never be taken. The
summary cannot be made amid the panic, the confusion, the removal of
ancient landmarks, the complete subversion of the ordinary machinery
of society. When chaos comes, as it did in San Francisco, and all the
channels of familiar life are closed, and human anguish grows to be
intolerable, compilation of statistics is impossible, even if it were not
repugnant to the feelings. And when order is once more restored, after
the lapse of many weeks, months and perhaps years, the details of the
calamity have merged into one undecipherable mass of misery which
defies the analyst and the historian. It is the purpose of this book
faithfully to record the story of these awful days when years were lived
in a moment and to preserve an accurate chronicle of them, not only for
the people whose hearts yearn in sympathy to-day, but for their
posterity.
Other frightful catastrophes the world has known. The earthquake
which dropped Lisbon into the sea in 1755, and in a moment
swallowed up twenty-five thousand people, was perhaps more awful
than the convulsion which has brought woe to San Francisco. When
Krakatoa Mountain, in the Straits of Sunda, in 1883, split asunder and
poured across the land a mighty wave, in which thirty-six thousand

human beings perished, the results also were more terrible.
The whirlwind of fire which consumed St. Pierre, in the Island of
Martinique, and the devastation wrought by Vesuvius a few days
previous to that at San Francisco, need not be used for comparison with
the latter tragedy, but they may be referred to, that we may recall the
fact that this land of ours is not the only one which has suffered.
But since the western hemisphere was discovered there has been in this
quarter of the globe no violence of natural forces at all comparable in
destructive fury with that which was manifested upon the Pacific coast.
The only other calamity at all equalling it, or surpassing it, was the
Civil War, and that was the work of the evil passions of man inciting
him to slay his brother, while Nature would have had him live in peace.
The earthquake in San Francisco, which crumbled strong buildings as if
they were made of paper, would have been terrible enough; but
afterward came the horror of fire and of imprisoned men and women
burned alive, and now to it was added the suffering of multitudes from
hunger and exposure.
Public attention is fixed on the great city; but smaller cities had their
days and nights of destruction, horror and misery. Some were almost
destroyed. Others were partly ruined, and beyond their borders, over a
wide area, the trembling of the earth toppled houses, annihilated
property and transformed riches into poverty. The cost in life can be
reckoned. The money loss will never be computed, for the appraised
value of the wrecked property conveys no notion of the consequences
of the almost complete paralysis, for a time, of the commercial
operations by means of which men and women earn their bread.