San Francisco’s Loss of Life
By Editor
Loss of life in San Francisco has been minimized. We presume to say that the so-called "official" report of General Greely—358 the last we noted—is nearer one-fourth or one-fifth of the true record. The individual accounts given by the reporters, and seemingly well authenticated, will reach over 1,000, and Coroner Walsh is reported as declaring that the number of the dead will reach from 1,000 to 2,000. There were many remarkable escapes—escapes where the good hand of God was clearly manifest; but many were crushed or imprisoned when the great temblor wrecked San Francisco, some to be incinerated by the fierce heat which followed, intense enough to melt the inside of "fire-proof" vaults and safes; solid granite pillars and curb stones, sometimes scores of feet away from any actually consuming thing, were cracked and peeled by the fierce heat of the atmosphere in that furnace of hell. Forty miles south of San Francisco the temperature became torrid as the fierce heat of the city augmented the balmy, mild temperature of the sun. No one knows how many bodies were utterly consumed by this fearful furnace.