menu_book Chapter 8

VIII. THE RELIEF The Chicago flagship of the Pacific Squadron was cruising twenty miles off San Diego Bay on the morning of the eighteenth of April. From somewhere came a wireless message. Earthquake at 5124 A.M. San Francisco it ran. Nearly demolished city. Call building is down and palace hotel. Both telegraph offices. Wells Fargo building. All water pipes burst. City

fire department helpless. City is in flames. No signature. No way of telling whence it came. Admiral Goodrich was quick to act. Full speed ahead rang the bells in the engine room. Early Thursday evening the Chicago arrived off Fort Mason and communication was open with General Funston. On Saturday Admiral Goodrich took personal command of the struggle along the waterfront. Already there was quite a fleet of naval vessels in the harbor. The

fire boats Leslie and Active and the speedy torpedo destroyer Preble flying the Red Cross flag sent early Wednesday morning from Mare Island by Admiral McCullough, the Boston, the Marblehead, the Princeton, the Paul Jones and the Chicago. The Preble was doing good work removing many injured to the hospitals about the bay, from the wharves where they had been left, and bringing fresh water from Goat Island to the thirsty in the city. When

General Funston found that he could not raise Monterey, from whose presidio he needed troops, the Preble took the message for him. A hundred miles of open sea in five hours. The men in white caps and wide pants were on hand until an end was made of the conflagration and during the weeks that followed they worked beside the soldiers and citizen volunteers distributing supplies and policing the streets. In the same mysterious way that wireless had reached

the Chicago, the news of the calamity spread far and fast throughout the country, throughout the whole world. When the shot came the incessant clicking of the telegraph instruments connected with San Francisco ceased. The system was dead. As the unwanted silence continued it became known that there was something wrong near San Francisco. What no one knew. About six o'clock Pacific Time, about nine o'clock in New York, a strange message went out over

the postal wires. There was an earthquake hit us at five fifteen o'clock this morning, wrecking several buildings and wrecking our offices. They are carting dead from the fallen buildings. Fire all over town. There is no water and we lost our power. I'm going to get out of the office as we have had a little shake every few minutes and it's me for the simple life. R. San Francisco. Five fifty a.m. It carried dismay to those who received it.

Could it be true? Or was it a dream of some crazed operator? Soon another message came, brief, significant. We are on the job and are going to try and stick. That was all, but behind it was a grim story whose details they could but guess. Through the day brief messages came, telling of the progress of the fire. As the news of the disaster spread messages for loved ones in San Francisco crowded the wires. By noon the local office had a

thousand of them. But as the soldiers and police would not allow the messengers to go on the streets to deliver them, no more were taken. The fire approached the office. At eleven o'five the waiting crowd saw this message. San Francisco says fire within few doors now. They are going to move out right now. Cue. But in the afternoon they were still there, persistent, courageous. From the main office of the postal, on Market Street near

Montgomery, the chief operator sent this bulletin. The city practically ruined by fire. It's within half block of us in the same block. The call building is burned out entirely. The examiner building just fell in a heap. Fire all around in every direction and way out in the residence district. Destruction by earthquake something frightful. The city hall dome stripped and only the framework standing. The St. Ignatius church and college

are burned to the ground. The emporium is gone. Entire building. Also the old flood building. Lots of new buildings just recently finished are completely destroyed. They are blowing standing buildings that are in the path of flames up with dynamite. No water. It's awful. There's no communication anywhere and entire phone system is busted. I want to get out of here or be blown up. Chief Operator Postal Telegraph Office, San Francisco Cal

to twenty p.m. Meanwhile some messages were going out from Vallejo and nearby towns and wireless items were started forth to whatever office would take them. Efforts were made to reach Washington by Manila cable. Toward the end of the afternoon residents fleeing in automobiles reached working telegraphs and sent out their frightened versions of the disaster. Thus in various ways the news went forth. Everywhere prompt action was taken.

For the time business was at a standstill. Relief committees were appointed. Funds collected. Supplies donated and purchased. Public subscriptions were raised. Newspapers became the depositories of funds. Benefit performances were given. Oranges, papers and such articles were peddled at special prices by popular celebrities. In Los Angeles a woman raised a goodly sum by calling for contributions at the top of her voice on a crowded street corner. In Washington

a little boy spent his spare time for weeks selling postal cards. He raised fifty-three dollars and forty-seven cents. As large an offering in a way as the one hundred thousand dollars sent by one of the giants of finance. Physicians left their private practices and with many volunteer nurses came to the stricken city in hospital trains. Every city and town and hamlet in the land gave unstintingly. As the destruction of San Francisco surpassed

comparison, so the relief, springing spontaneously, almost without appeal, from every corner of the land, far exceeded everything of similar sort in history. Out of the common round of affairs sprung an unanimous sympathy that impelled action quick, almost impulsive in its spontaneity. Before night Secretary Taft had started army tents and supplies on their way to San Francisco and had expended a million dollars. Congress put aside its legislative

work and hastened to make the necessary appropriation. Before it stopped the expenditure of two million five hundred thousand dollars had been authorized. Commonwealths, municipalities, individuals, everyone, forgot the things customary and a dominant wish to give. Organizations of every sort, churches, corporations, clubs, banks, pledged themselves for varying sums, many millions in the aggregate. How ready and great was the response to the appeal that

scarcely found a voice is well shown by the figures. Millions were subscribed within a few days. The total subscriptions aggregated nine million fifteen thousand eight hundred and twelve dollars and twenty three cents. The railroads carried all supplies free and gave the right of way over all regular traffic to the relief trains. Passenger service was off schedule for weeks. Limiteds took the sidings and forgot their record runs while

thousands of freight cars rushed past on their main tracks. Two hundred thousand people were homeless, unfed, without the means of sustaining life. A hundred miles of homes and business places had been destroyed. A city lay wasted and desolate, its hills swept bare, its people stricken beyond conception. The world had known nothing of the sorrow so vast in all its history. The heartstrings of the eunation vibrated to it and those rumbling wheels of

many cars, low in their springs with the burden of mercy, sounded soft as notes celestial upon the land of frighted with the discordant tones of a great disaster. In the stricken city itself prompt measures were being taken to relieve the great suffering which it had been foreseen would result from lack of food and shelter and clothing. Many went hungry on the first day of the fire and even on the second day and many, too, found the scarcity

of water a serious discomfort. Thousands slept on the ground without even the rudest shelter. Before the city had stopped burning, tents loaned by the army were being set up and food distributed regularly to the people in the camps. Even as early as the second day of the conflagration, soldiers in various places were serving milk to women and children and crackers and corned beef to all who came and were dispensing water, sparingly, in the camps.

For a time the whole city was dependent on the relief distributed by the soldiers. First from the government stores, then from the relief supplies as they began to arrive. Hardly a household in the city had a day's provisions. The city's supplies in the wholesale districts had been destroyed. Money was very scarce and for a time of no use at all, as everything had been requisitioned by the authorities. So it was that not only those who had lost

their homes for whom provision must be made, but every one the like. Within a few days after the breaking out of the first fires supply depots were established and bread lines formed in which the wealthy of the city, with baskets on their arms, waited their turn with the rest. During the first few days 1,500 tons of supplies were distributed daily. In the lines, besides the hungry, were many who had to be clothed and many who had come to

ask their way to the hospitals where they would receive medical aid. Almost from the first physical needs were provided for. Scattered far and wide in vacant lots and parks and open spaces, generally the refugees were gathered into regular camps. Among themselves the campers at once established their own disciplinary governments. Leaders were chosen and certain regulations for the conduct and sanitation of the camps let down, which were obeyed implicitly

or broken at the offender's peril of expulsion from the camp. Later these governments were merged into the General Relief Organization. Within a few days people began to find each other through the newspaper's lists of addresses and inquiries and through registration at the various information bureaus. A fence near Golden Gate Park had hundreds of addresses tacked upon it. The post office department carried letters written on scraps of paper,

pieces of board, soil cuffs, anything and everything, without charge. What stories of suffering may be read between the lines and such items as these? E. E. Hinman, at, would like to find Mrs. Hinman, wife, in San Francisco. Byron J. Maxim, if you are living, come home. Your mother is crazy. Bring May, Bessie and boys. Mother will shelter them. Mrs. W. J. Lane, can find W. J. Lane, at, information

and whereabouts of Mrs. C. P. Herman. Address, C. P. Herman. Anyone having knowledge of the whereabouts of Mrs. M. A. Healy will please communicate with her son, Fred A. Healy. Anyone knowing whereabouts of Julia Redden, age nine years, send word to Mrs. Pike Stockton. Mother, Trini Roy May, inform Albert. Mrs. and Mr. George Worth, come to Tonyworth. Any information of Mrs. Bloom and family will be appreciated by Helen Bloom. E. A. Kappenman, are all safe

and cannot get back. Papa. Before the fire was conquered such queries were being printed and for days afterward such requests for information and the lists of people who were safe and had handed in their addresses were the most important part of each day's issue. Many of the addresses in the lists of the saved were of places in Oakland and other nearby towns, for during

the fire a tremendous, hurried, frightened rush out of the city had taken place. At first the report of the ferry slips and burned and kept many away, but nevertheless large crowds crossed the bay Wednesday and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday the great ferry boats crossing the bay as rapidly as they could work in and out of the slips were crowded to their utmost. The rush out of the city during these days had in it something almost

of the feverish haste of delirium. It was not merely the burned out who fled, but those also who were untouched by the fire. People fled from an expected visitation from on high, from a much imagined tidal wave, from more terrible earthquakes which they feared were coming to destroy them utterly. Saturday and Sunday they fled from the dread fear that typhoid or smallpox was about to devastate the city. Many, of course, went out of the

city because they knew of places where they would be better accommodated, but on the whole the exodus was frenzied, purposeless, unreasoning, mad. The current story that the throngs pressing on the boats from the slip had crowded off into the bay, those who had gone on in the lead, seemed almost possible, although of course unfounded. The fear of a smallpox epidemic, at any rate, seemed based on actual dementia. It resulted largely from warnings spread through

the region near the park to the effect that the park camps were infected with the disease, coupled with the admonition to flee at once as the quarantine was imminent. Although there were a few isolated cases, the condition of the camps at the time and the subsequent outcome indicate that this was very probably only a hallucination of an over-sensitive mind. After the first rush of temporary relief it became necessary to make provision for the

permanent care of the homeless. Through the generosity of the railroads, which carried out of the city, free of charge, 220,000 people while the fire was still raging, the congestion of refugees had been greatly reduced. Mostly the exiles went to the cities about the bay, Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, and the towns in Marin County, but many went to the interior cities of the state and others even farther. Transportation was free to all upon all the

lines running out of the city. The transcontinental lines carried people halfway across the country merely upon a request signed by any member of the relief committees. The people living in the unburned sections of the city were at the same time taking into their houses relatives and friends as rapidly as they could find them, and in many cases making room for strangers as well. As soon as the daily papers could give the subject space, another form

of relief was undertaken by California cities. Places all over the state began to advertise that they would be able and glad to provide homes and work for so many families, ranging all the way from 300 to 3,000. Some cities sent agents to the camps. When they went home many refugees went with them. Over those who still remained, provident and judicious supervision had to be exercised.

Ten thousand tents were set up. Barracks, built of boards from the unburned lumber yards in the far southern part of the city, were erected. As far as possible, families were housed or tented together. When other cities have been visited by great calamities, the work of relief has been directed by forces outside of the stricken city itself. It was not at first understood by the outside world that San Francisco, even in the midst of its

adversity, had risen to the care of its afflicted. Hence it was that President Roosevelt issued a request to the country at large to make all donations through the Red Cross Association, of which Secretary of War Taft was national president. Dr. Edwin T. Devine, head of the Charities Organization Society of New York, was sent out by the Red Cross to take charge of the relief. Secretary Taft, as national president, was in touch with Judge Mauro of

San Francisco, head of the Red Cross Association of California. Secretary Metcalf, en route to the stricken city, was to cooperate with Dr. Devine and Judge Mauro. The president's plan was to put the Red Cross in entire control, seeing in it the only organization capable of a systematic distribution of the relief. Some friction was caused by the plan, as the city itself had from the first undertaken the care of its sufferers. But none doubted

that the president had intended only the good of the city, and, indeed, when the facts represented to him, he withdrew the request.