California Historical Society
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At 5:13 o'clock on the morning of the 18th of April A. D. 1906, occurred the catastrophe in San Francisco and nearby towns that wrecked many fortunes and caused the loss of nearly five hundred lives, about 375 being killed in San Francisco; less, I believe, than were killed in the Iroquois fire in Chicago.
I was in bed at the time and did not get out until the shake was over. My feelings were like what I suppose a rat's are when vigorously shaken by a terrier and then slammed down on the ground. I was shaken in every direction, shaken until I thought my teeth would come out. The bed jumped up and down and sideways and at last it hit the floor with a harder and more vicious jam than any of the others, as if to say, "Now I've got you." We were not much excited, my wife only saying "Oh Papa, Richard," having her ming (sic) on our youngest boy who was in bed in the front room. I held on to her and told her not to jump out as it would be over in a moment. While I was thus engaged, the glassware, plaques, pictures, bottles, etc. were crashing to the floors and creating a din that was not reassuring. We were on the second floor of a very well built five-story wooden apartment house situated on the side of Nob Hill and within two blocks of the Fairmont Hotel on one side and four blocks from the St. Francis on the other and I expected every moment that the three stories above us would come crashing through the ceilings and cover us under tons of debris or the whole building break loose and roll down the hill. After the last shake, our little fellow came running in before we could get up, exclaiming "Gee, I thought my time had come." We were all unhurt, although several pictures fell on the boy who had covered his head with the bedclothes.
I am told that the shake only lasted 48 seconds but it seemed to me nearer 48 minutes.
We ran to the windows and saw that the streets were full of people, who looked like frenzied ants whose home had been stirred up with a stick. They were barefooted and in all stages of reckless dishabille, treading around on broken glass and brickbats, trying to find out what had hit them and I never felt so small and helpless in my life as I did that morning when I gazed upon the stricken city.
We concluded that indoors was the safest place for us for awhile so I shaved and dressed and, upon again going to the windows, I saw that fires had broken out all over the lower part of town. It occurred to me that it was very probable that all the cast iron water mains would be fractured and the pressure destroyed and I filled the bathtub with water, thinking we might need it later if the fires came our way.
When I looked out the pale moon was shining through the smoke from the fires just starting and I halted in surprise thinking, I suppose, that she should not be there; that by all the tokens she should have been shaken from her position and lain shattered and broken at our feet.
We then went up on our roof and found that the fires were making great headway and my wife's first remark was "The city is doomed, no power on earth can save it." After looking at it for a minute. I fully shared her conclusion but not to alarm her I said, "No, I guess not. They will probably stop it at Market Street, but I am going to take you out to Golden Gate Park and then send you on down the peninsula to Palo Alto."
Being in ill health, I was afraid the sight of the burning city would un-nerve her entirely so I packed a suit case for her and one for myself and was ready to go but concluded not to leave until we heard from our second son, Robert, who was stopping at a down town hotel and about whose safety we were much worried. Presently he came bouncing in, having secured a small run-about auto from one of his friends. After his mother had had a cry in his arms, I loaded them all in and Bob took them to Golden Gate Park and came back after me, although he had been stopped by the Police and told to report to the Chief with the machine. He told them he was willing to serve them but intended to save his own family first. When he returned for me, we went down and found Mrs. George and took her with us and when we reached the Park, we found several friends who had walked out, not being able to secure conveyances of any kind.
Mr. and Mrs. Rust, kind friends of ours, formerly from Denver, had an apartment near the entrance to the Park and fourteen of us stayed with them for three or four days, much to their inconvenience. I am sure - sleeping on the floor at night and spending most of our time in the Park during the day. We were lucky in securing a lot of canned goods, cheese and crackers and fruit from a little grocery that had not sold everything, so we were fixed all right on that score.
The strain was very great, however, as it appeared that the whole city was burning and we did not know at what time the fire might reach us so we stood watch in turns all through the first two nights and the next morning, we found that it was under control and we were consequently much relieved.
I had intended sending my wife on the first night to Palo Alto but the story was started during the day that the earthquake had cracked the roads and made them impassable. Rumors came thick and fast during these days of anxiety. One to the effect that the earthquake had extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the width of two and a half degrees of latitude; that New York had suffered worse than San Francisco; that Chicago was engulfed by a tidal wave; that Salt Lake had disappeared and that it was impossible to locate Seattle. These cheerful tidings, of course, complicated matters. We, who were safe, began to worry about the safety of our friends in other parts of the country so we were thrown back into our old condition of dread and perplexity. We were cut off from mail or telegraph and could not hear of our outside friends and relatives or let them hear from us.
The city authorities seemed unable to cope with the conditions and everything was in a chaotic state. The first day hundreds of plug-uglies, touts and thieves appeared on the streets wearing police badges, looting and robbing of all kinds was started, chiefly in the tenderloin and on the water front where whisky was stolen and
(What became of the estimated forty to fifty thousand tinhorns, thieves, thugs and touts who were habitues of the tenderloin, no fellow has been able to find out.)
The people of San Francisco owe a deep debt of gratitude to Uncle Sam and his boys in blue and I for one will never again kick against the expense of a large standing army. We should have a post near every large city for instant use as they were in our beautiful Presidio here.
Our minds were relieved many times from the horrible scenes we were obliged to witness during the stress by ridiculous things that happened. Golden Gate Park was the [illegible data] for most of the homeless and thousands upon thousands came trooping in there carrying on their backs or dragging along on improvised sleds or toy express wagons all they had saved and when you learn that the Park was two and one half to three miles from the burned districts, you can understand what strength and determination it took to reach it and carry anything with you.
People who had not saved a thing would stop in their tracks and laugh heartily at the sight of a full-grown man struggling along with a cheap picture in a heavy frame, worth probably two dollars, strapped carefully on his back and a couple of flatirons in one hand and a paper lamp shade in the other, or at ladies coming along in dressing gowns with their new Easter hat proudly flying its bright colors in an atmosphere so thick with soot, limedust and flying embers that you could almost cut it, or at hundreds of other ridiculous things that have passed from my mind now. One fat lady was rushing frantically towards the ferry with a parrot cage in one hand and a [illegible data] slip, into which she had hastily packed her treasures, in the other. She was stopped at the gate by the officer who asked her why she wanted to take up room by trying to crowd through with that cage. Her answer was "Sure I wouldn't let Polly burn if the whole town goes" and proudly lifted the cage up on a line with her vision only to find that the bottom had dropped out and Polly had been gone, probably a long time.
People would tie a string to a trunk and one would pull and the other shove until they had worn the castors off and then they would abandon it and hurry on to a place of safety. Fine pictures were taken down and boards thrown across them making a sled and then five times as much as they could drag was piled thereon and a start made, only to be abandoned before it was out of reach of the fire.
It was almost impossible to secure conveyances and when you did, the drivers would charge you anywhere from $30.00 to $50.00 to take a load to the park and there was not one man in one thousand that had $50.00 in cash in the house when he retired Tuesday night.
(I am acquiring the habit of wearing an old 49'er money belt with a few shining yellow twenties, enclosed therein for immediate use in case of another emergency.)
The soldiers got on to the fact that teamsters and expressmen were robbing the people where they had money and the second day they stopped many wagons as they entered the park and asked the owner of the goods what he had paid the driver and, if he named a high price, the soldiers would demand the whole amount of the driver and then give him back $5.00 and hand the balance over to the owner, much to the chagrin of the talented and accomplished chicken-thief of a driver. I saw this done at least a dozen times the second day, in fact, I "sicked" the soldiers on to a few of the cases myself, having learned of the owner, while the wagon was being un-loaded, what he had been compelled to pay.
It was surprising the number of ghouls that sprang up to prey upon the helpless people and the many schemes they immediately devised for separating the stricken citizen from his last cent.
One big grocery firm whose name, Goldberg, Bowen & Co., I wish I could publish in every paper in America, were caught by the soldiers, at noon of the first day, charging famished and homeless people $1.50 a dozen for eggs, a dollar a pound for butter, fifty cents a pound for ham, a dollar a loaf for bread and like prices all along the line. When notified of this contemptible trick, the soldiers immediately took possession of the store and made the clerks sell everything at old prices. Many smaller concerns tried the same tactics and were treated in the same manner.
Hundreds of trunks were delivered to expressmen to take to places of safety and not a word heard of then since. People were so excited that they failed to take the name and number of the wagon and this has given the drivers a chance to loot them outright without fear of detection.
Although it is now just a month since the quake, our efficient postmaster has not yet seen fit to deliver any second-class mail so we have not had many papers from the outside world but I bought an eastern paper of a date of three or four days after our trouble and if the stories told therein by the refugees from this city are a sample of what the other cities published, I no longer wonder that people in the East were frantic about the safety of their friends and relatives.
One I noticed particularly was that of a travelling man who was stopping at the Grand Hotel. He said that he was thrown out of bed and hastily making his toilet, he packed his grips and got out on the street only to see the asphalt pavement rolling like the waves of the ocean and buildings tumbling down all around him. Travelling men have always been considered "fast" but considering that the quake only lasted 48 seconds, this is the swiftest one of the clan that I ever heard of.
Another was asleep at the Palace Hotel and, in his interview, said that his bed was turned partly over and he fell out. Not
(I am going to ask the Coroner how he managed to get these bodies spirited away before anyone else saw them.)
Another told how he made a rush for the ferry to get out of town but was hampered very much in getting there by falling walls and horses and cattle that, seemingly driven frantic by fright, were tearing up and down the streets trampling the dead and dying as well as the living under their flying feet. There may have been a few horses out at that hour, and I think that may be all right, but I intend to enter a protest before the city council against the authorities allowing cattle to browse up and down Market Street in the early morning hours. They may bite some of these green drummers.
A lady survivor tells her experience in the same paper as follows: "I was awakened by an awful noise and, after dressing, I ran down stairs, then everything was still and no one in sight. I thought of the landlady and rushed to her room, only to be horrified at what I saw. The bathtub from above had fallen through the ceiling and had pinned her husband to the bed and stunned her and crouched over her on the bed was a man busily engaged in chewing off her ears to secure her diamond earrings." "This man's name," she goes on to say, as a clincher, I suppose, "was Jack something, I never heard his Last name but he was a regular boarder in the house."
Far be it from me to use levity in describing any of the horrible scenes that took place, and which I have no intention of trying to describe, but none of the above are true and my surprise is that a man with the ability to acquire a large newspaper and run it has not the sense and forethought to read over carefully and blue pencil such absolute idiocy as is given in the above interviews and save the nerves of his subscribers.
The whole catastrophe was a horrible nightmare realized and many cruel crimes were committed, men and women were assaulted and their purses and jewelry taken from them by ghouls drunken with whisky looted from the groggeries, but the soldiers soon stopped this.
No writer can depict the horrifying things that took place-none should try. No one person saw enough of them to make much of a record. All were busy with their own affairs. Lips were tense and faces drawn. Determination to save themselves was written on every face but they helped others when they could and all were kind. It was a great leveler. Rich and poor alike met on common ground
No one can describe the coming of the earthquake or the feeling that came over one when it had arrived in full force. There seems to be nothing to step on - the foundation of everything is gone, apparently. Your heart is in your mouth and circulation seems to cease. The domestic animals all set up a frightened cry on this account and through the long days following, when he had slight temblors, I noticed the horses would stop and hesitate as they do when treading an unsafe or rickety bridge.
There was not much suffering except to those who were hurt bodily. There was lots of inconvenience of course and even now, one month after, the people are still cooking in the gutters on improvised stoves on account of the lethargy of our [illegible data] board of Public Works who are too tired presumably to inspect the repaired chimneys and give the necessary permits for cooking indoors. If this were in the hands of Uncle Sam, it would be attended to promptly as was everything the Government did.
It will take ten years to rebuild the city, but it will be done. New fortunes will be builded - old ones retrieved. The appearance and condition of the city is much like that of a new mining camp except, thank God, that no liquor is sold and no poker chips rattle. There are no hotels or restaurants. Rag and card signs adorn all the residences along Fillmore and adjoining streets, which are now being used for offices.
I was not able to do much to help anyone. No one seemed to need help except such as was promptly furnished by the Government, but Robert gave his services to the Red Cross and drove a big auto loaded with the injured or with supplies for them for seven days and nights without sleep except an hour or two at a time when he was able to curl up in his car. At the end of this time, he had to be helped into bed but after a night's rest and a bath, he was up and at it again. Eugene, our oldest son, was at Monterey and thus escaped it all.
The services rendered the Government, and through them the people, by automobiles will never be forgotten. They made ten trips where a horse would make one, and almost every owner of one in town donated the use of it to the stricken city.
My experiences during this catastrophe convince me more than ever that Savings Banks, the telegraph and insurance, both life and fire, should be conducted by the Government and that postmasters who dabble in politics should be decapitated.
All of our wardrobes, except what we took in the suit cases, as well as our rugs, silverware and many little things picked up during our two years residence here, were destroyed. But we are happy in the thought that we are all united and all escaped bodily injury.
We have opened offices at 2327 California Street and are doing business.
I have located the family in a comfortable new building in Berkeley, which is a college town just across the bay, and the roses and geraniums and the poppies are blooming as serenely and the grass is as abundant and as green as if old mother earth had never cut a dido in her life.
Courtesy of California Historical Society, North Baker Research Library, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-4014; http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/collections/northbaker_research.html
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1f59n7q6&brand=oac4
Title: W.E. Alexander account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire : Berkeley, Calif.
By: Alexander, W. E.
Date: [ca. 1906]
Contributing Institution: California Historical Society, North Baker Research Library, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-4014; http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/collections/northbaker_research.html
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