Harper's Weekly May 19, 1906 Scenes of Ruin at Leland Stanford, Jr. University in Palo Alto
A Freak of the Earthquake--the statue of Agassiz, which pitched headlong from the Pedestal on Top of the Zoology Building and imbedded itself in the Pavement. On the Right may be seen the Ruins of the new Library Building, and on the left the Harmon Gymnasium.
Harper's Weekly May 19, 1906
The Human Drama at San Francisco
The Long Day
The Eighteenth of April in San Francisco
by Cecil Chard
“It is extraordinary how cheerfully we are all accepting the inevitable. Millionaires, shop girls, day laborers, Chinamen — we stand and receive rations. For the time being, we are at city of beggars, but food is plentiful, and now we are able to procure drinking water.” —from the author’s letter
Morning
We had been to the opera the night before to hear Caruso and Fremstad in “Carmen”. The audience was a brilliant one, the Grand Opera House crowded to the roof. We saw familiar faces everywhere and smiled in greeting, with a careless assurance of seeing them all again, on the morrow perhaps. After the opera, we went to the Palm Garden of the Palace Hotel, and lingered over our ices, comparing Fremstad to Calve, with a deep earnestness which we waste upon immaterial things. Then we strolled homeward through the silent streets, commenting on the quiet, star lit beauty of the night, and finally we dropped to sleep with the haunting measures of Bizet’s music in our ears.
There was no beginning to the tragedy. Peaceful slumber was exchanged, by a process too swift for thought, for chaos. One instance of rigid suspense, the struggle of a dreamer in the grip of a horrible nightmare, and then a leap to consciousness, the fierce realization of danger. A thunderous roar is in the ears, so deafening that it is hard to distinguish the crash of furniture, the fall of pictures from the wall; there is a sickening duration of motion, walls, floor, ceiling rock and sway. Everything that a moment before had been inert and motionless is suddenly possessed with hideous life. Books are flying forward from the shelves, plaster fills the air, the chandeliers twist and drop, a piano moves across a wide space with a jingle of notes. In every familiar objects is the threat of death. Fear is the only sensation left in the universe that wheels and shakes like a storm tossed vessel. And escape to the street seems for a moment beyond the wildest hope! Over fallen furniture we go, bare feet cut by splintered glass, hammering at doors that resist, to the rooms from which the best beloved must be dragged, half fainting or paralyzed with fright – and down, down, out of the house.
To gain the street is only to encounter new perils. Here, too, instantaneous terror springs to life. A dreadful grimace controls the familiar faces of the little world we know. Safety is nowhere. It is raining bricks and chimneys, the towers of St. Dominic’s are swaying against the high blue of the sky. The next Instant the air is thick with the dust of flying fragments. We see is each other and run, blindly, madly, but the ground under our feet rises up, the great paving blocks sink – a little low building to which we would go for shelter slides back a foot. Three blocks away, up the steep hills, is a public park, and here at last we pause and take a refuge, a crowd of panic stricken, breathless, speechless people. We wait for a few minutes and unspeakable dread for what may come next. Renewed shock sends us higher up, and at last we relax and stand trembling in the chill morning air.
As in all instances even have terrible tragedy, the moment is not without its humor, grotesque and grim. People have sprung from their beds, they have seized anything in their wild flight; they stand in excited groups as unconscious as children of their remarkable appearance. One woman has had the sleeve of her night dress torn from her shoulder, her feet are bare, she describes her experiences to a group of men. She is quite evidently a woman of refinement, her gestures are quiet, her voice is sweet, she is quite self-possessed. We stand close together, a group of absolute strangers, and smile at each other in attempted courage, with stiff lips. The world stands still again, all that is left of that familiar world, but all sense of security is gone.
From the high hill on which we stand we can see the splendid city stretching to the foothills, and we try to reassure ourselves but sick despair grips us. The sky is dun-colored, and through a pile of smoke and dust the sun burns red.
The city looks like a besieged town, shattered by shot and shell. Is that the dome of City Hall we see, hanging like a birdcage over the fallen walls. What has happened to that row of houses one street below us? Their brick foundations are cracked in every direction, the empty window frames sling crookedly against beams that have snapped off short. Here are a roof has fallen in, there the side of a house hangs into the street; a flight of granite steps stands far out into the sidewalk, the door to which they once led has sunk 5 feet below. The spaces between the houses is a tangle of twisted wires of tipsy telegraph poles.
And what a strange light is everywhere – sunlight through a yellow haze, a heavy mist. – And below us – is it mist or steam that rises thick and curiously dark as from a huge cauldron. Now the sun is obscured, the distance is blotted out, and the black mist moves, rises – something leaps up, shines like a sword blade. From someone in our little crowd comes one word in an awed whisper: “Fire!”
Noon
The morning has gone, somehow the interminable hours have dragged away. The air is stifling, the heat intense, but, mercifully, there is no wind. At the merest breath of air we shudder and turn our eyes to the curtain of smoke that hangs across the sky and hides from us the extent of our misfortune. Nevertheless, realization of the magnitude of the disaster deepens from hour to hour. We know that the fire rages in twenty places, that men are fighting it desperately without the water for which we already thirst.
With every moment some new peril is revealed. The live wires of the trolley lines have dropped into the street, there is a penetrating odor of escaping gas. A man clatters by on horseback, shouting: “martial law has been declared – the regulars are out; light no fires in the houses – by order of General Funston.”
From the first hour there has been no water. There is a run on bakers and groceries for provisions — bread — candles, tinned meet, soda water. The men serve their customers on floors swimming with oil, tomato catsup, wine, and broken glass. They do not ask exorbitant prices. In many cases they give without demanding payment. Instances of extortion are rare except for conveyances with which to remove invalids and household effects from the region of greatest danger.
It is incredible with what swiftness rumors become facts, and still time creeps along on leaden feet, though occurrences multiply and the experiences of a lifetime are crowded into an hour. We have eaten nothing since the night before, but we know no sensation of hunger. The fate of those who are nearest and dearest is still shrouded in darkness. There is no way to discover it – we are cut off from the world!
When from time to time a smoke-blackened figure approaches it is only to report further calamity. This or that public building is gone, one street after another destroyed; now the fire has engulfed a whole section. Soldiers and firemen, millionaires and thieves are fighting desperately. Every now and then there is a terrific explosion. They are blowing up whole blocks with dynamite in the vain hope of saving the city.
The most extraordinary factor in this unprecedented experience is a general calmness, the self-control exhibited. Perhaps the earthquake has exhausted her powers of sensation. Faces show the strain, but there is no complaint. The lesson has been too soul-searching in it’s effect. All have learned the value of mere possessions. They strive to save them instinctively, but failing, they hear with entire composure, that fortune, home, factory, offices, have been swept away. The streets grow more and more crowded as the fire drives the refugees to the hills. A never ending stream of vehicles passes, motors flash by, carriages, express wagons, undertakers’ wagons, and ice carts laden with people and their hastily snatched belongings rumble on. It is pitiable to see solitary old women tottering along under loads that would not tax the strength of a child. Women in opera cloaks drag trunks along the earthquake torn pavements. Bands of Chinese, dazed and helpless, drift along aimlessly. It is incredible what foolish things people have seized and still cling too. It is related that in the fall of the Emporium, a huge structure on Market Street, a man was only held back by force from the blazing ruins. He struggled in the arms of his captors, protesting that he had lost his hat, that he must find his hat. One woman has a large birdcage from which the birds have flown. Whole families pass, in one instance a pet donkey is being led along, free from burden, while even the child in arms clutches a handkerchief of treasures.
The unfortunate have lost their wits. The ring of the ambulance bells and the toot of the automobiles that have been impressed into the service of the Red Cross hardly scatter the crowds, that move on, talking, gesticulating, in wildest excitement. There is little to be done, but that little is accomplished with immense risk and difficulty. Every nerve, every sense is strained for the latest word from those who return, like exhausted soldiers from the front. When will this refuge be declared unsafe, when will we be compelled to move on. The stories that are whispered in low tones, so that the general multitude may not be made more anxious, are harrowing. Stories of women wandering into the ruins, clasping dead children in their arms, of men gone mad, a fireman crushed, of sick and wounded crushed under falling walls, stories of soldiers who have exceeded their orders, of unfortunate civilians who, upon a refusal to leave their treasures, have been shot. They tell, too, of the swift retribution that overtakes those who, under the cover of the prevailing excitement, attempt to rob, to loot, or even to touch the possessions of others. In one place the bodies of a thieves lie where the bullets have dropped them.
And as the sun sank slowly in the west the huge clouds of smoke that all day had obscured the scene, changed to rose color, and, in the reversal of all things, the day that had been darkened by the smoke was exchanged gradually for the wild illumination of the night.
Night
The terraced hillside park had the look of a bivouac. Nondescript shelters, made of blankets, of tablecloths, spread on broom sticks, of women’s opera wraps, of valuable Indian rugs protected those who were fortunate enough to have them. Many had covers and pillows, those who had nothing lay on the ground, or on the broad stone steps along the park walkways. There was not a murmur to be heard, only a child wailed loudly for a forgotten doll. Speculation, even, had given way to a stoical indifference. People spoke little, in low tones. The stillness was acute. Overawed by the terrible magnificence of the spectacle being enacted in the east and along the whole plain to the southern horizon, it was, strangely enough, possible for one to think, to form plans, even to hope– while the work of wholesale annihilation went on.
Nature now and then indulges in pure melodrama. A sea of liquid fire lay beneath us, the sky above it seemed to burn at white heat, deepening into gold, into orange, spreading into a fierce glare. The smoke and gathered into one gigantic cloud that hung motionless, sharply outlined against a vast field of exquisite starry blue. The streets were caverns of darkness, but here in there, from the impenetrable gloom, three or four houses seem to start out, like an illuminated card every cornice, every window shining with reflected blaze.
And as the night advanced it grew cold, and men and women walked up and down between the lines of sleepers, stretching their stiff limbs. Even at midnight, the attempt to sleep was abandoned. Eyes, bloodshot, with weariness and the pain from the constant rain of cinders, tried to turn away from the fire, but it held them with dreadful fascination. How it slipped in and out, flowing like a river, engulfing here a church, there a block of houses! A steeple, flaring high like a torch, toppled and fell in a shower of sparks. The strong square of an office building, black one instant against that ever moving stream of fire, flush the next, shot through and through with flame.
The fire burned on and destroyed and blackened, but it kindled a flame that illuminated the Western world —the spark of a generous kindness that lives in the hearts of the multitude. This is been fanned into a fire at which the victims of this great disaster may find warmth and renewed courage. Hope remains and an undaunted spirit. The eyes that have watched ceaselessly through the night look out over a field of desolation, and, without flinching, face the dawn of another day.
Harper's Weekly May 19, 1906 Scenes of Ruin at Leland Stanford, Jr. University in Palo Alto
A Freak of the Earthquake--the statue of Agassiz, which pitched headlong from the Pedestal on Top of the Zoology Building and imbedded itself in the Pavement. On the Right may be seen the Ruins of the new Library Building, and on the left the Harmon Gymnasium.
Harper's Weekly May 19, 1906
The Human Drama at San Francisco
The Long Day
The Eighteenth of April in San Francisco
by Cecil Chard
“It is extraordinary how cheerfully we are all accepting the inevitable. Millionaires, shop girls, day laborers, Chinamen — we stand and receive rations. For the time being, we are at city of beggars, but food is plentiful, and now we are able to procure drinking water.” —from the author’s letter
Morning
We had been to the opera the night before to hear Caruso and Fremstad in “Carmen”. The audience was a brilliant one, the Grand Opera House crowded to the roof. We saw familiar faces everywhere and smiled in greeting, with a careless assurance of seeing them all again, on the morrow perhaps. After the opera, we went to the Palm Garden of the Palace Hotel, and lingered over our ices, comparing Fremstad to Calve, with a deep earnestness which we waste upon immaterial things. Then we strolled homeward through the silent streets, commenting on the quiet, star lit beauty of the night, and finally we dropped to sleep with the haunting measures of Bizet’s music in our ears.
There was no beginning to the tragedy. Peaceful slumber was exchanged, by a process too swift for thought, for chaos. One instance of rigid suspense, the struggle of a dreamer in the grip of a horrible nightmare, and then a leap to consciousness, the fierce realization of danger. A thunderous roar is in the ears, so deafening that it is hard to distinguish the crash of furniture, the fall of pictures from the wall; there is a sickening duration of motion, walls, floor, ceiling rock and sway. Everything that a moment before had been inert and motionless is suddenly possessed with hideous life. Books are flying forward from the shelves, plaster fills the air, the chandeliers twist and drop, a piano moves across a wide space with a jingle of notes. In every familiar objects is the threat of death. Fear is the only sensation left in the universe that wheels and shakes like a storm tossed vessel. And escape to the street seems for a moment beyond the wildest hope! Over fallen furniture we go, bare feet cut by splintered glass, hammering at doors that resist, to the rooms from which the best beloved must be dragged, half fainting or paralyzed with fright – and down, down, out of the house.
To gain the street is only to encounter new perils. Here, too, instantaneous terror springs to life. A dreadful grimace controls the familiar faces of the little world we know. Safety is nowhere. It is raining bricks and chimneys, the towers of St. Dominic’s are swaying against the high blue of the sky. The next Instant the air is thick with the dust of flying fragments. We see is each other and run, blindly, madly, but the ground under our feet rises up, the great paving blocks sink – a little low building to which we would go for shelter slides back a foot. Three blocks away, up the steep hills, is a public park, and here at last we pause and take a refuge, a crowd of panic stricken, breathless, speechless people. We wait for a few minutes and unspeakable dread for what may come next. Renewed shock sends us higher up, and at last we relax and stand trembling in the chill morning air.
As in all instances even have terrible tragedy, the moment is not without its humor, grotesque and grim. People have sprung from their beds, they have seized anything in their wild flight; they stand in excited groups as unconscious as children of their remarkable appearance. One woman has had the sleeve of her night dress torn from her shoulder, her feet are bare, she describes her experiences to a group of men. She is quite evidently a woman of refinement, her gestures are quiet, her voice is sweet, she is quite self-possessed. We stand close together, a group of absolute strangers, and smile at each other in attempted courage, with stiff lips. The world stands still again, all that is left of that familiar world, but all sense of security is gone.
From the high hill on which we stand we can see the splendid city stretching to the foothills, and we try to reassure ourselves but sick despair grips us. The sky is dun-colored, and through a pile of smoke and dust the sun burns red.
The city looks like a besieged town, shattered by shot and shell. Is that the dome of City Hall we see, hanging like a birdcage over the fallen walls. What has happened to that row of houses one street below us? Their brick foundations are cracked in every direction, the empty window frames sling crookedly against beams that have snapped off short. Here are a roof has fallen in, there the side of a house hangs into the street; a flight of granite steps stands far out into the sidewalk, the door to which they once led has sunk 5 feet below. The spaces between the houses is a tangle of twisted wires of tipsy telegraph poles.
And what a strange light is everywhere – sunlight through a yellow haze, a heavy mist. – And below us – is it mist or steam that rises thick and curiously dark as from a huge cauldron. Now the sun is obscured, the distance is blotted out, and the black mist moves, rises – something leaps up, shines like a sword blade. From someone in our little crowd comes one word in an awed whisper: “Fire!”
Noon
The morning has gone, somehow the interminable hours have dragged away. The air is stifling, the heat intense, but, mercifully, there is no wind. At the merest breath of air we shudder and turn our eyes to the curtain of smoke that hangs across the sky and hides from us the extent of our misfortune. Nevertheless, realization of the magnitude of the disaster deepens from hour to hour. We know that the fire rages in twenty places, that men are fighting it desperately without the water for which we already thirst.
With every moment some new peril is revealed. The live wires of the trolley lines have dropped into the street, there is a penetrating odor of escaping gas. A man clatters by on horseback, shouting: “martial law has been declared – the regulars are out; light no fires in the houses – by order of General Funston.”
From the first hour there has been no water. There is a run on bakers and groceries for provisions — bread — candles, tinned meet, soda water. The men serve their customers on floors swimming with oil, tomato catsup, wine, and broken glass. They do not ask exorbitant prices. In many cases they give without demanding payment. Instances of extortion are rare except for conveyances with which to remove invalids and household effects from the region of greatest danger.
It is incredible with what swiftness rumors become facts, and still time creeps along on leaden feet, though occurrences multiply and the experiences of a lifetime are crowded into an hour. We have eaten nothing since the night before, but we know no sensation of hunger. The fate of those who are nearest and dearest is still shrouded in darkness. There is no way to discover it – we are cut off from the world!
When from time to time a smoke-blackened figure approaches it is only to report further calamity. This or that public building is gone, one street after another destroyed; now the fire has engulfed a whole section. Soldiers and firemen, millionaires and thieves are fighting desperately. Every now and then there is a terrific explosion. They are blowing up whole blocks with dynamite in the vain hope of saving the city.
The most extraordinary factor in this unprecedented experience is a general calmness, the self-control exhibited. Perhaps the earthquake has exhausted her powers of sensation. Faces show the strain, but there is no complaint. The lesson has been too soul-searching in it’s effect. All have learned the value of mere possessions. They strive to save them instinctively, but failing, they hear with entire composure, that fortune, home, factory, offices, have been swept away. The streets grow more and more crowded as the fire drives the refugees to the hills. A never ending stream of vehicles passes, motors flash by, carriages, express wagons, undertakers’ wagons, and ice carts laden with people and their hastily snatched belongings rumble on. It is pitiable to see solitary old women tottering along under loads that would not tax the strength of a child. Women in opera cloaks drag trunks along the earthquake torn pavements. Bands of Chinese, dazed and helpless, drift along aimlessly. It is incredible what foolish things people have seized and still cling too. It is related that in the fall of the Emporium, a huge structure on Market Street, a man was only held back by force from the blazing ruins. He struggled in the arms of his captors, protesting that he had lost his hat, that he must find his hat. One woman has a large birdcage from which the birds have flown. Whole families pass, in one instance a pet donkey is being led along, free from burden, while even the child in arms clutches a handkerchief of treasures.
The unfortunate have lost their wits. The ring of the ambulance bells and the toot of the automobiles that have been impressed into the service of the Red Cross hardly scatter the crowds, that move on, talking, gesticulating, in wildest excitement. There is little to be done, but that little is accomplished with immense risk and difficulty. Every nerve, every sense is strained for the latest word from those who return, like exhausted soldiers from the front. When will this refuge be declared unsafe, when will we be compelled to move on. The stories that are whispered in low tones, so that the general multitude may not be made more anxious, are harrowing. Stories of women wandering into the ruins, clasping dead children in their arms, of men gone mad, a fireman crushed, of sick and wounded crushed under falling walls, stories of soldiers who have exceeded their orders, of unfortunate civilians who, upon a refusal to leave their treasures, have been shot. They tell, too, of the swift retribution that overtakes those who, under the cover of the prevailing excitement, attempt to rob, to loot, or even to touch the possessions of others. In one place the bodies of a thieves lie where the bullets have dropped them.
And as the sun sank slowly in the west the huge clouds of smoke that all day had obscured the scene, changed to rose color, and, in the reversal of all things, the day that had been darkened by the smoke was exchanged gradually for the wild illumination of the night.
Night
The terraced hillside park had the look of a bivouac. Nondescript shelters, made of blankets, of tablecloths, spread on broom sticks, of women’s opera wraps, of valuable Indian rugs protected those who were fortunate enough to have them. Many had covers and pillows, those who had nothing lay on the ground, or on the broad stone steps along the park walkways. There was not a murmur to be heard, only a child wailed loudly for a forgotten doll. Speculation, even, had given way to a stoical indifference. People spoke little, in low tones. The stillness was acute. Overawed by the terrible magnificence of the spectacle being enacted in the east and along the whole plain to the southern horizon, it was, strangely enough, possible for one to think, to form plans, even to hope– while the work of wholesale annihilation went on.
Nature now and then indulges in pure melodrama. A sea of liquid fire lay beneath us, the sky above it seemed to burn at white heat, deepening into gold, into orange, spreading into a fierce glare. The smoke and gathered into one gigantic cloud that hung motionless, sharply outlined against a vast field of exquisite starry blue. The streets were caverns of darkness, but here in there, from the impenetrable gloom, three or four houses seem to start out, like an illuminated card every cornice, every window shining with reflected blaze.
And as the night advanced it grew cold, and men and women walked up and down between the lines of sleepers, stretching their stiff limbs. Even at midnight, the attempt to sleep was abandoned. Eyes, bloodshot, with weariness and the pain from the constant rain of cinders, tried to turn away from the fire, but it held them with dreadful fascination. How it slipped in and out, flowing like a river, engulfing here a church, there a block of houses! A steeple, flaring high like a torch, toppled and fell in a shower of sparks. The strong square of an office building, black one instant against that ever moving stream of fire, flush the next, shot through and through with flame.
The fire burned on and destroyed and blackened, but it kindled a flame that illuminated the Western world —the spark of a generous kindness that lives in the hearts of the multitude. This is been fanned into a fire at which the victims of this great disaster may find warmth and renewed courage. Hope remains and an undaunted spirit. The eyes that have watched ceaselessly through the night look out over a field of desolation, and, without flinching, face the dawn of another day.