The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire | Page 9

repeated shocks, and the work of the demon of ruin
was done. People woke with a start to find themselves flung from their
beds to the floor, many of them covered with the fragments of broken
ceilings, many lost among the ruins of falling floors and walls, many
pinned in agonizing suffering under the ruins of their houses, which
had been utterly wrecked in those fatal seconds. Many there were,
indeed, who had been flung to quick if not to instant death under their
ruined homes.
Those seconds of the reign of the elemental forces had turned the
gayest, most careless city on the continent into a wreck which no words
can fitly describe. Those able to move stumbled in wild panic across
the floors of their heaving houses, regardless of clothing, of treasures,
of everything but the mad instinct for safety, and rushed headlong into
the streets, to find that the earth itself had yielded to the energy of its
frightful interior forces and had in places been torn and rent like the
houses themselves. New terrors assailed the fugitives as fresh tremors
shook the solid ground, some of them strong enough to bring down
shattered walls and chimneys, and bring back much of the mad terror of
the first fearful quake. The heaviest of these came at eight o'clock.
While less forcible than that which had caused the work of destruction,
it added immensely to the panic and dread of the people and put many
of the wanderers to flight, some toward the ferry, the great mass in the
direction of the sand dunes and Golden Gate Park.
The spectacle of the entire population of a great city thus roused
suddenly from slumber by a fierce earthquake shock and sent flying
into the streets in utter panic, where not buried under falling walls or
tumbling debris, is one that can scarcely be pictured in words, and can
be given in any approach to exact realization only in the narratives of
those who passed through its horrors and experienced the sensations to

which it gave rise. Some of the more vivid of these personal accounts
will be presented later, but at present we must confine ourselves to a
general statement of the succession of events.
The earthquake proved but the beginning and much the least
destructive part of the disaster. In many of the buildings there were
fires, banked for the night, but ready to kindle the inflammable material
hurled down upon them by the shock. In others were live electric wires
which the shock brought in contact with woodwork. The terror-stricken
fugitives saw, here and there, in all directions around them, the
alarming vision of red flames curling upward and outward, in gleaming
contrast to the white light of dawn just showing in the eastern sky.
Those lurid gleams climbed upward in devouring haste, and before the
sun had fairly risen a dozen or more conflagrations were visible in all
sections of the business part of the city, and in places great buildings
broke with startling suddenness into flame, which shot hotly high into
the air.
While the mass of the people were stunned by the awful suddenness of
the disaster and stood rooted to the ground or wandered helplessly
about in blank dismay, there were many alert and self- possessed
among them who roused themselves quickly from their dismay and put
their energies to useful work. Some of these gave themselves to the
work of rescue, seeking to save the injured from their perilous situation
and draw the bodies of the dead from the ruins under which they lay.
Those base wretches to whom plunder is always the first thought were
as quickly engaged in seeking for spoil in edifices laid open to their
plundering hands by the shock. Meanwhile the glare of the flames
brought the fire-fighters out in hot haste with their engines, and up
from the military station at the Presidio, on the Golden Gate side of the
city, came at double quick a force of soldiers, under the efficient
command of General Funston, of Cuban and Philippine fame. These
trained troops were at once put on guard over the city, with directions
to keep the best order possible, and with strict command to shoot all
looters at sight. Funston recognized at the start the necessity of keeping
the lawless element under control in such an exigency as that which he
had to face. Later in the day the First Regiment of California National

Guards was called out and put on duty, with similar orders.
RESCUERS AND FIRE-FIGHTERS.
The work of fighting the fire was the first and greatest duty to be
performed, but from the start it proved a very difficult, almost a
hopeless, task. With fierce fires burning at once in a dozen or