The Great California Earthquake
By Adriel
A Sunday in Oakland and San Francisco — April 22, 1906 The streets of Oakland were like a holiday-celebration occasion—crowded. Special police and State militia were in evidence everywhere. Nearly every other man one met wore a badge, sometimes two and three and four—“Special Police,” “Relief Committee,” the “Red Cross,” and that of the particular order, perhaps, to which he belonged. And then there were many officials, some decidedly officious, others meeting the demands of the occasion with coolness and courtesy. Some of the streets were closed with ropes and special police. Buildings were dangerous, some of them much worse than they appeared to be. Great brick, stone, and wood cornices were in the streets, splendid plate-glass windows were shattered, and erstwhile solid brick and stone walls were broken and unsafe. All the fine school buildings of Oakland were greatly damaged. The church parlors of all houses of worship that were available were converted into soup kitchens and bedrooms for the refugees from San Francisco. Oakland, though wounded, was nobly forgetting her own injuries for the sake of others who had lost their all. Said the director of the Chabot Observatory, “I told them that the reception and assembly rooms of the observatory were open.” While walking a little way with two young men, each with a roll of blankets swung over his shoulder, we were met by a lady who said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, are you in need of dinner? If you are, there is a warm meal for you at the church right round the corner; and it is good, too, and perfectly free.” And such we met everywhere. Thank God, the mercenary spirit of the age has not wholly dried up the milk of human kindness. Yet there will be hundreds who will abuse the hospitality of Oakland and neighboring towns, and continue to stay and feed upon their generosity when they ought to be at work, and then these cities will be charged with niggardliness. Incidentally in this connection, San Jose suffered fearfully. Some of her finest buildings were ruined by the mighty trembler, yet thousands fled from San Francisco to that place, and the “Garden City” housed, tented, parked, and fed them, with none of the eastern supplies flowing to her. She ought to have a share in them. “How can I get from Oakland to San Francisco?” I asked of several. “Get a pass.” “How? Where? When?” “Go to the city hall, fall into line with those applying, and wait your turn. They may make you work, however. It is martial law over there; and they indiscriminately force men into service at the point of the bayonet, demanding from two to six hours’ work.” Hon. C. F. Curry, California’s secretary of state, was so conscripted, and made to labor, till an army official recognized him and ordered his release. The irresponsible soldier respected no one, and shot men with little or no provocation. Yet I concluded to go. I fell into line at 7:30 A. M. Men had already been there for two hours, and there were probably a thousand ahead of me. That line lasted all day nearly. After two hours more I reached the examiners; a fourth of the line, perhaps, were turned down; the rest were granted passes for the day only. After passing this examination, we were told to pass into a room and wait till our names were called. There were a hundred, more or less, waiting. I was getting impatient to go on. A new inspiration struck me. I broke from the ranks, sent my card to the governor, an old neighbor who knew me, and in five minutes received a personal, permanent pass in and out of the military lines of San Francisco, per order of the governor, signed by Adjutant-General Lauchs, and I was off. I had heard of the city’s desolation, of the work wrought by earthquake and fire. I had witnessed ruins and gazed upon pictures of more extensive ruins of the gray and olden past, but the terrible realities of San Francisco eclipsed them all. Those I had seen only as ruins. “The Queen City of the West” I had known in her glory and pride. The language of my heart was, “My God, what destruction, what desolation, what ruin, thou hast permitted to come!” Only the language of the prophets of old is adequate to tell of the awfulness of the scene. And yet when one had known the feel of the earthquake, he did not wonder. During the twenty-eight seconds—which to some measured minutes—it seemed as if no building could endure the strain. The gyratory twisting, the swift, beating waves, the up-and-down pounding, the commingling of every conceivable motion in swift and awful violence, blanched the stoutest heart, and caused strong men to cry like babies, women to scream and faint, and some persons to go stark, staring mad. Acres and acres of great ruined buildings loom before me through the smoky atmosphere, like specters of a forgotten past; square miles of a once populous city south of Market Street have been swept by the fire fiend, so that all that is left is a few chimney-stacks, iron telegraph poles, and now and then the broken walls of a building. The fire has burned down many buildings, dynamite has shattered many walls, but all the damage—estimated all the way from two hundred million to five hundred million dollars—was the result of that twenty-eight seconds. One church, St. Dominic’s, a huge structure on Steiner Street, seems to be utterly wrecked. One of its high towers stands a mere skeleton, stripped of everything, the other is also a skeleton surmounted only by the dome of the spire, like a parasol. Another part of the church has piled its tons of brick on a large rooming house adjacent, and crushed it to the ground. On the same street there are large three-story wood houses moved four or five feet off from their foundation, still standing. In some cases buildings sank one story. Streets were upheaved, car tracks were twisted, bent at sharp angles, or otherwise distorted. Great steel girders were broken like pipe-stems. The loss of life is probably not a unit less than one thousand. The San Francisco papers persistently minimize it, and the army officers give what is officially reported, about three hundred up to date. But we have been told of two hundred buried in one trench, very few of whom can be identified; one hundred and fifty or more were caught in the awful whirlwind of fire on Telegraph Hill and burned. This, that, and the other lodging-house went down with from scores to hundreds in them. The odor of burning flesh is still in evidence in many places, where no wholesale meat shops or horse stables existed. Sometime God’s books will tell the whole story. Till then we wait. So far as I am able to learn, none of our own people suffered serious physical injury. For this let us thank God. The extent of the earthquake in any kind of severity was from near San Luis Obispo on the south, where hot springs burst forth, to north of Ukiah. Its width was a narrow strip along the coast range; and yet it was recorded at Johns Hopkins University, at Baltimore. Professor Burckhalter, of Oakland, called it a great earthquake, ranking as the ninth in violence in a scale of ten. The earthquake has its usual number of freaks. It is common to find buildings utterly shattered, and close to them others no stronger unharmed. One part of a building is ruined, another part is uninjured. There is nothing which so clearly solves all these problems as the Word of the Lord, “The earth shall wax old as doth a garment.” One of the characteristics of old garments is their weak and strong places. Of course we know that the primal cause is sin; and sin is bearing its full fruitage. The feeling of many when it came was, “It is the last day;” “It is the10judgment day;” “The end of the world has come.” And men prayed who had erstwhile cursed. Subsequent events show that much of this is from the impulse of fear. As soon as the danger is over, the spirit of selfish carelessness returns. The great majority ridicule the idea that God has aught to do with such things in any way. We are told that people are too far from superstition in this age to look upon such events as related in any way to divinity; and so solacing themselves, they grow defiant. One leading paper has voiced the sentiment that San Francisco has only one enemy, fire, but she would be made “as safe from fire as the bottom of the sea,” and when it is finished, “it will burn again only when the caves of the ocean burst into flame.” They forget that God can from the very caves of ocean send forth flame; and that when the withdrawal of his rejected mercy permits a sin-perverted nation to work out its own combinations, the very “elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” If the Bible means anything, it means that the same God reigns still who said to a city of old, “She shall be visited of Jehovah of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.” It is so easy now in the “light” of higher criticism and pagan philosophy to reject God’s Book. Would to God that men might see or be made to see that these judgments are the fruitage of sin. Some do see it. I know a young Baptist and his wife who left the city two months ago, fearful of some such calamity because of the city’s wickedness. Shall we as a people be warned? Shall we as a people give God’s warning? Shall we make that our business?