Part 543: Bestor G. Brown and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, continued
The San Francisco earthquake struck in the early morning hours on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. Bestor G. Brown provided an eyewitness account for the “Topeka Daily Capital” (April 25, 1906, page 7). Here is the second half of the article.
“Thursday is the day when the real horror of the situation came. The boats which came across the bay from San Francisco were packed with people who looked like they had fought to get on the boats. I left Oakland on the Southern Pacific on Thursday and all the tracks could be seen the effects of the earthquake. Every water tank along the line had been thrown down. I suppose that the vibration from the earthquakes set the water to slopping from side to side in the tanks and as the affairs are ordinarily top heavy they went over.
“This is not the first earthquake I have felt in San Francisco. I went through a small one there last August. I understand that they are comparatively common there. I am no scientist and do not claim to be able to tell why San Francisco is so frequently visited by earthquakes, but I am inclined to think that the peninsula on which the city s located has been thrown up by some volcanic forces. The Indians, so I was told some years ago, have a tradition that some monster of the ocean built it for a place to rest. The Indians never landed there from their canoes and never camped there. So I am inclined to think that they knew hundreds of years ago that this region was subject to earthquake shocks.
“What impressed me was the supreme confidence the people had in San Francisco. There was no excitement on the streets after the earthquake. Most of the people were in the streets but they were all cool. There was no panic in San Francisco on Wednesday, at least. The cars were not running. It never occurred to me to wonder why. I suppose it was on account of the power being cut off.
“I saw Market street shortly after the first shock. There seemed to be three distinct waves or swells in that part of Market street which I saw. The car tracks, asphalt pavements and sidewalks seemed to have been left in dips and swells. There was some debris in the street, broken glass, cornices, etc., but the damage would have been small if it had not been for the fire.
“The Monadnock building, west of the Palace Hotel, seemed to have had its pillars shoved out from the walls of he buildings but did not seem to be greatly damaged. The Palace hotel on the outside showed no effect form the shock except that a few bits of cornice had been shaken to the street below.
“The city hall was the worst wrecked building of any I saw. They say that political jobbery figured largely in its construction and the complete ruin of the building seemed to bear that out. The framework of the dome was still standing when I saw it and did not seem greatly damaged. But the rest of the building at the base of the dome was twisted and smashed and totally wrecked by the earthquake.
“The Palace hotel did not look like it had received a scratch while a saloon across the street had its entire front thrown out into the street. The sidewalks along the streets were covered with loose bricks, broken glass and cornices. I saw the Call Chronicle and Examiner buildings and they did not appear to be even damaged. It was the fire which destroyed them.
“From Market street I could see the flames starting on Montgomery and Mission streets and closing in towards the center of town. One fire seemed to me to start in, or near, the Grand opera house. The origin of those fires is something they have not satisfactorily explained. Many seem to think that they were started by crossed wires but from what I know of crossed wires I do not agree with that theory. I do not think that the fires could have started so quickly from crossed wires, if they could have started at all. I think that probably the power houses were wrecked as soon as any and that the current would have been shut off before the crossed wires could have started any fire. I am rather inclined to think that the fires were caused by the individual power and electrical light plants which some of the buildings are contained. Most of these places were operated by steam and the earthquake occurred at a time in the morning when the fires would have just been started under the boilers. The earthquake seemed to throw down anything built of brick and as most of these boilers were bricked in I think that their brick walls were thrown down and the destructive fires started from the debris thrown into the fires which had been lighted under the boilers.
“The brick buildings were the ones that suffered most from the earthquake. The earthquake seemed to throw the four walls of the brick buildings outward. I saw one man in Los Angeles Thursday night who had gone through the earthquake at Santa Rosa. He said that he was afraid to go to bed that night and I asked him why. He said that the night before he had gone to sleep in the third story of a hotel in Santa Rosa and had waked up in the street. I didn’t believe him and so he explained. He said that he had gone to bed in the third story of a three story hotel. He woke up all covered with plaster and rubbish and ran to the window of his room. He had said that he thought the building was on fire and that the roof had partly fallen in, so he called for someone to bring him a ladder so that he could get out. Someone in the street asked him what he wanted with a ladder and told him was in the street and to walk out of his window. He did and climbed over a pile of rubbish that had formerly been the first and second floors of the hotel into the street. He climbed back into the room again and found and put on most of his clothes. He told me that he did not know what happened to the people who were asleep on the lower floors of the hotel but that he supposed they must have been killed.
“The great damage in San Francisco was caused by fire. I suppose that it could have been successfully checked almost before it got started but the water supply gave out completely. I don’t know why it was but I know that it did and that I couldn’t get a drop of water to drink until I got to Oakland in the afternoon. I should judge that the failure of the water supply was due to the earthquake breaking the mains. I know that this was the cause of the water supply failing in Oakland. The big mains which carried the water from the pumping plant into Oakland were broken and disjointed by the shock so that Oakland was without water for a large part of the day and would have been completely at the mercy of fire as San Francisco of a fire had started. But 1,500 people of all classes turned out and mended the Oakland mains so that they had water again in the afternoon.
“The thing that impressed me the most as I waked through the streets of San Francisco after the earthquake was the absolute confidence the people seemed to have in their city. They were perfectly cool, probably on account of having gone through so many slighter shocks. The shock occurred at 5:30 o’clock. It wasn’t difficult to know the exact time as every clock in the city stopped on the minute that it happened. The people came down town at the usual tie and many of them entered their offices as though to do their usual work. Some of the merchants opened their stores.” The end.
To be continued…
