WRECK AND RUIN by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 25, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 17.

WRECK AND RUIN.

By Editor

PACIFIC PRESS BADLY SHAKEN.

Damage from $10,000 to $20,000.

THE friends of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES will be made sad to hear of the awful calamity which has come to us. At 5:15 A. M., April 18, occurred one of the severest earthquakes which the Golden State has ever known, far surpassing those in the sixties. We have heard of no worse in its history.

At this writing no news can be obtained from San Francisco, forty miles to the north. All rumors are afloat from a harmless shake to the metropolis of the West to utter ruin. In suspense we wait for news.

San Jose, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, eleven miles to the south, is in ruins. The annex to Hotel Vendome is a mass of debris, and several persons are reported killed. St. James Hotel is a wreck, and two are reported dead. Agnews, insane asylum near San Jose, is said to be a mass of brick and mortar, with 100 killed.

One block is burning in San Jose and no water to quench the fire.

Brick buildings in Mountain View are utterly shaken to pieces. The largest store in town, the post-office, and an adjoining new building, in process of construction, brick-veneered, is a shapeless mass of ruins. Mr. Allen's furniture store is flat on the ground. Olympic Hall building is a ruin.

The town water works, with a tower of about 100 feet, surmounted by two water tanks of 20,000 gallons capacity each, is in kindling wood. No lives were lost in the town.

News from Stanford University is to the effect that all buildings are hopelessly shattered, save the museum, and that is greatly damaged.

Both ends of the Pacific Press building are but piles of brick, cracked and ruined walls, and general wreck. Many of the walls still stand, but are so broken that they will have to be torn down to the very foundation. To all appearances it is worse than rebuilding. All that will be gained in what is left standing will be more than lost in time and labor.

West End of Office, Upper Story Looking into Chapel.

For this we are grateful to God, who hath His way in the earthquake as in the storm, that no lives are lost; no one is injured.

Damage to our machinery is very light, all told amounting to perhaps $1,500. A water tower, belonging to the Pacific Press in another lot, is so damaged that it will have to be torn down.

Can You Help Us?

One more word to our friends who may be out of this calamity belt. Most of our employees here who have houses have suffered more or less, but we feel that our loss is nothing to the loss to our beloved office. There may be many among our readers who are touched by no calamity, who feel that it would be a privilege to give to this, one of the Lord's institutions, from $1.00 to $100 to help us in this time of trouble.

We are not singled out in this. There is damage and loss on every side of us. Will those help us who are in the midst of prosperity?

Let such send all money orders, drafts, checks, or express orders to Pacific Press Publishing Company, Mountain View, Cal.

East End of Office, Looking into Type-room and Foundry.

LATER DETAILS.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 18, Near Midnight.—Latest news from the city describes it as a great charnel-house. One gentleman who left there near midnight informs us that the death roll runs into the thousands. The city south of Market Street is on fire as far north as Tenth Street and is still burning. The Palace Hotel is ruined. The great Call building was badly broken with the first shock; it since caught fire and has been dynamited.

Great lodging-houses of brick shut their tens and scores and hundreds in like rats in a trap, where they perished.

The great stores, banks, and commercial buildings are heaps of debris. Some streets seem to be literally blotted out and unrecognizable. There were some buildings which sunk, others rose. Great steel girders were broken like pipe stems.

San Francisco practically ruined.

Oakland suffered but little comparatively. Only five deaths are reported.

Napa Valley towns are greatly damaged.

Los Angeles is reported a light sufferer.

Santa Cruz is said to be in the same condition as San Jose, greatly wrecked. Several were drowned along the beach.

Professor Burckhalter, director of Chabot Observatory, Oakland, reports the violence of this earthquake in a scale of 10, and calls it a very great earthquake. Its duration was 28 seconds. And all this loss of property and life was caused in less than one-half minute by the perverted forces of nature, forces which God designed should be for eternal good.