Grab Bag #49

Making this Grab Bag open to everyone, just because... you can become a Friend of Woody and get all Grab Bags all the time.

This Friday, April 18, will be the 119th anniversary of the 7.9 magnitude tremor that remade San Francisco. The quake brought down and damaged buildings. It also set off numerous fires. Important infrastructure was crippled, leaving the city mostly helpless to fight a growing inferno.

After three terrible days of fire and smoke, the core of the city was gone.

This Friday there will be the annual gathering at Lotta’s Fountain at 5 a.m. (not usually my scene, but I think I’ll go this year… we can get breakfast after if you want).

That evening, David Gallagher (F.O.W.) and I will be doing an illustrated online talk you might want to watch. (Friends of Woody, use the code below to tune in for free.)

Also, that night: Jamie O. (F.O.W.) will be doing her fun earthquake-themed talk on the origins of the Kilowatt bar. So it is earthquake-palooza.

Getting Home

Charles Wheeler, Jr., son of a Presidio Heights attorney, was at boarding school in Belmont during the 1906 earthquake. Telegraph lines were down, so against his headmaster’s orders, he decided to go the city to check on his family.

Somehow, the peninsula train was running. Wheeler fought his way onto a car packed with Stanford students. They told him their campus was destroyed.

“‘The buildings are of stone, you know,’ said one, ‘and stone buildings can’t stand up against an earthquake.’

Wheeler’s San Francisco home on Washington Street was built of brick.

“Hearing remarks like this made me so dizzy with dread that I began picturing to myself the ruins of my home. I could almost hear the groans of those most dear to me buried under tons of stone and beams. It was maddening, and I had to struggle some to keep from crying out like a child.”

After getting through San Mateo, Burlingame, and Millbrae, the train came to an abrupt stop.

“Ahead we saw several hundred yards of track buckled and humped like much crumpled ribbon.” Everyone had to disembark.

Wheeler and two friends began walking north.

The Big One

It’s almost impossible to write or talk about San Francisco history without some mention of the 1906 earthquake and fire. It changed everything. We used to joke that for most Outside Lands San Francisco podcasts we would have to say, “but then, in 1906, something happened.”

On past anniversaries I have written about what one might have done on the last night before the disaster, and about how the event allowed my ancestors to meet. 

I’ve also written and talked about housing solutions for the refugees of the 1906 earthquake, both innovative and unusual. I have profiled interesting refugees. We took a dive into the methods of one photographer documenting the devastation.

I was wondering the other day about how the next earthquake here will be recorded. Of course in 1906 anyone who had a camera and film put them to use.

Check out the kid in the photo above with the box camera:

There are thousands of photos from the 1906 disaster, thanks to that kid and his friends.

Now everyone has a camera in their pocket. There may be a million photos taken during and after the next earthquake.

Rumors

After abandoning the train in San Bruno, Wheeler and his friends walked some eight miles before “the van of thousands leaving the city met us.

“We stopped and anxiously inquired the plight of the city. Some said that the city was burned to the ground, some that the whole town was submerged by a tidal wave, but all agreed in this particular: that it was time to leave the city, for soon there would be nothing left of it.”

“The numbers of the retreat were increasing now. We could see mothers wheeling their babes in buggies, limping, dusty, and tired. Men lashed and swore at horses straining at loads of household furnishings. All were in desperate haste. This increased our speed in the opposite direction. We began to see the dense black cloud of smoke hanging above the sky-line ahead of us. We almost ran.” 

Approach of the Fire

I always find the shots taken after the quake, but before the arrival of fire the most poignant.

The merchants selling Duchess Trousers at The Red Front store may have been relieved just after the quake. Looks good. Doesn’t even seem their windows were damaged.

But being on the other side of the Emporium didn’t save them from the flames by the afternoon of April 18:

The fall of the Valencia Hotel on Valencia near 18th Streets was one of the most tragic scenes in the early morning after the earthquake.

There would not be a lot of time to grieve or take account of the tragedy. The block would be completely incinerated the night of the second day.

Valencia Street was consumed by the “Ham and Eggs” fire, which was started about 9:00 a.m. in Hayes Valley when someone tried to make breakfast with a damaged chimney. By mid-day on April 18, the fire department had two separate infernos on their hands:

Wheeler Reaches the City

“As we passed over each mile we heard more distressing takes from those leaving. Men called us fools to going toward the doomed town. Thousands were traveling away; we were the only ones going toward San Francisco.

“At last we came to the old Sutro Forest [probably Mount Davidson]. We toiled up to the summit of the ridge and looked down for the first time upon the city we were raised in. […] The lower part of the city was a hell-like furnace. Even from that distance we could her the roar of the flames and the crash of falling beams. We were paralyzed for a moment with the wonder of it. Then we began to run, run hard, down the slope to the city.”

Time to Pack

Below is a morning photo of Fulton Street looking east towards the old City Hall, whose complex stood where the main library is today.

While brick shook loose on the apartment building, those nice flats at right appear relatively undamaged. The photographer and the people milling on the cobblestone street likely thought they had gotten through the worst of it.

They did not. About 8:00 p.m. on April 18, the Ham and Eggs fire had reached the city hall ruins.

By the time the ruins had cooled, only the walls of a couple of apartment buildings remained on that block of Fulton Street.

It is Not Over

Looking back, I think we tend to think of disasters as one moment, because we know how it all ends. But in real-time there are often hours or days of roller-coaster anxiety.

Shortly after the earthquake, people were having breakfast at the St Francis Hotel on Powell Street and at the Pacific Union Club on Post Street. Many of the first refugees escaping fires South of Market gathered in Union Square.

Twenty-four hours later, the square was surrounded by a landscape of char.

One of many stories:  

A couple staying at the Savoy Hotel waited until the fire was almost upon them before bringing out a trunk packed with “their most valuable belongings” to drag up Post Street.

A helpful porter (still on the job!) told them they could ride along on his wagon to Golden Gate Park. Whew, saved!

Their trunk was loaded on the wagon.

Then a soldier came up to them.

“‘I want these horses,’ [he said], and without ceremony unharnessed them, and took them away.”

Before the trunk could be unloaded, the fire was upon them and everyone had to hoof it, sacrificing the wagon and valuables to the flames.

Don’t procrastinate. I use the anniversaries of the 1906 and 1989 quakes, which conveniently hit six months apart, as my reminder to check emergency supplies and smoke detectors. 

The next big earthquake is coming. It could be a couple of minutes from right now. Get ready. Make a plan.

Homecoming

Wheeler kept going.

“I had had no breakfast, and was almost sick with fear and hunger. We passed a brick church, and it was in ruins, shaken to pieces by the shock. I almost reeled over when I saw it. The rest of the way I ran. 

“As I came within four block of the house I looked anxiously over the roofs of other houses for its high chimneys that had hitherto been visible from that point. I couldn’t see them! Then I was sure that all was over, and that my father, mother, and sisters were lost forever.

“The last four blocks I fairly flew, in spite of my fatigue. I kept my eyes on the ground, not daring to raise them as I ran. Then as I reached the curb before the door I never expected to enter again I looked up.

The house, though shorn of its chimneys, stood staunch and strong—they were safe. For a second I stood still. Then, like a poor fool, I began to laugh and shout.”

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

I owe some of you emails. I apologize. It has been busy and now I have more than a 1,000 messages in my in-box. ☹️

This weekend, for sure! Thanks so much to Nathan F. for donating to the Woody slush fund. (Just kidding! As I buy people drinks with the money, it could be a slushy fund.)

Sources

James B. Stetson, San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 (San Francisco: The Murdock Press, 1906)