"While this excitement was at its height a man dressed only in his underclothing made his appearance among the people in a light gasoline runabout. At top speed he ran into a crowd of women, knocking them down and injuring at least a dozen. Then he turned back and charged them again. He had gone mad as a result of the scenes of death and destruction.
"Some one called for a gun, hoping that they might stop the fellow by shooting him. None was to be had, and after a desperate fight with sailors who succeeded in getting into the machine he was overpowered and turned loose.
"Everybody in the crowd, I believe, was temporarily crazy. Men and women ran helter-skelter in nothing but their night gowns, and many of them did not have on that much."
Mrs. J. B. Conaty, of Los Angeles, was in Oakland at the time of the shock and felt the vibrations. "The suddenness with which it came upon the people," she said, "was the most appalling thing. When I looked across the bay at "Frisco from the Oakland sh.o.r.e the city seemed peacefully at sleep, like a tired baby beside its mother. With my next glance at the city I was turned almost sick.
"The ground was shaking beneath me and I thought that the end of the world was at hand. Buildings were falling to the right and left. The earth was groaning and rocking, and flames were shooting high into the sky. Soon the sound of the dynamiting reached us and buildings began to fly in the air like fireworks.
"The sea lashed itself into a fury and beat upon the sh.o.r.es as if it too sought to escape nature"s wrath. Over across the bay all was disorder. In the glare of the blood red flames reflected against sky and sea, white robed, half naked men and women could be seen wildly running about.
"Some of them ran to the water"s edge and threw themselves in and others less frantic had to battle with them to haul them out.
"It seemed as if every man, woman and child in "Frisco was running toward the ferry docks. When the boat arrived on our side of the sh.o.r.e it was packed with men and women, none of whom seemed to be in their right senses. Many of them jumped from the boat as soon as it was made fast and ran at top speed through the streets of Oakland until forced to fall through sheer exhaustion.
"One woman in the crowd had nothing on but a night gown. In her arms she carried a 3-year-old girl who was hanging tightly to a rag doll and seemed to be the only one in the vast crowd that was unafraid.
Where all these people went to I have no idea.
"I stood on the Oakland side watching "Frisco devoured. In a s.p.a.ce of time so short that it all seems to me like a dream now the whole city, slumbering peacefully but a moment before, presented a perdition beside which Dante"s inferno seems to pale into insignificance."
The looters early began operations in the stricken city. The vandal thinking that law and order had gone in the general crash filled his pockets as he fled.
It was the relic hunter who opened the door to the looter. The spirit which sends the tourist tapping about the ruins of the Parthenon, awoke in San Francisco. Idle and curious men swarmed into the city, poking about in the ruins in the hope of finding something worth carrying away as a souvenir of the greatest calamity of modern times.
Scores of men and women were seen digging in the ruins of one store.
They were disinterring bits of crockery, china and gla.s.sware.
Strangely enough, a great deal of this sort of ware had been protected by a wall which stood through quake and fire. One woman came toiling out over a pile of brick, covered with ashes and dust, her hair dishevelled and hands grimy, but she was perfectly happy.
"See," said she, "I found half a dozen cups and saucers as good as new. They are fine china and they will be worth more than ever now."
I asked her if she needed them.
"Oh, dear no!" said she, laughing. "I live over in Oakland. I just wanted them to keep as souvenirs!"
Some hard-hearted jokers were abroad also. Humor dies hard, and perhaps it is just as well that it does, for the six men who started the bogus bread lines would have needed much of it if the soldiers had caught them.
The people of San Francisco had become accustomed to eating out of the hand. They put in long hours every day standing in line waiting for something to be given out. Many of them did not know what was being distributed, but they knew it would be good, so they fell into line and waited.
There were thousands of people in San Francisco who fell into a line every time they saw one. They had the bread line habit.
This impressed itself on these six men, for they went about the town and every time they found a promising spot they lined up and looked expectant. Men came and fell in behind. Women with baskets joined the brigade and in ten minutes these sidewalk comedians had a string a block long behind them and more coming every minute. Then the six jokers slipped away and left the confiding ones to wait. It was a mean trick.
The stranger and the wayfarer was made to feel at home anywhere in Oakland and the luxury of sleeping within four walls was not denied to any one. Only a few hardy men who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the weaklings went without covering. The people stripped the portieres and hangings from their walls, tore up their carpets and brought in every spare piece of cloth which would do for a night"s covering. The women and children who preferred to stay indoors and on hard floors were taken care of in the public halls, the school buildings, and the bas.e.m.e.nts of the churches. Beds were improvised of sheets and hay and the weaker refugees, who were beginning to go down under the strain, slept comfortably. Oakland did n.o.bly. People shared their beds with absolute strangers, and while the newcomers in the park camps were dead to the world, those who came the day before cheered up considerably. One camp of young men got out a banjo and sang for the entertainment of the crowd.
CHAPTER XVIII.
DISASTER AS VIEWED BY SCIENTISTS.
=Scientists are Divided Upon the Theories Concerning the Shock That Wrought Havoc in the Golden Gate City--May Have Originated Miles Under the Ocean--Growth of the Sierra Madre Mountains May Have Been the Cause.=
The subterranean movement that caused the earthquake at San Francisco was felt in greater or less degree at many distant places on the earth"s surface. The scientists in the government bureaus at Washington believe that the subterranean land slide may have taken place in the earthquake belt in the South American region or under the bed of the Pacific Ocean. San Francisco got the result of the wave as it struck the continent, and almost simultaneously the instruments in Washington reported a decided tremor of the earth, and the oscillations of the needle continued until about noon.
At the weather bureau the needle was taken from the pivot and had to be replaced before the record could be continued. Other government stations throughout the country also noted the earthquake shock, and they agree in a general way that the disturbance began according to the record of the seismograph at nineteen minutes and twenty seconds after 8 o"clock. This would be the same number of minutes and seconds after 5 o"clock at San Francisco, which accords entirely with the time of the disaster on the Pacific Coast.
There seems to be no reason to believe the earthquake shock in San Francisco had any direct connection with the eruption of Vesuvius.
That eruption had been recorded from day to day on the delicate instruments established by the weather bureau at the lofty station on Mount Weather, high up in the Virginia hills. This eruption of Vesuvius did not disturb the seismograph even at the period of great activity, but apparently Vesuvius and Mount Weather were like the lofty poles of two wireless telegraph stations, and between them there pa.s.sed electrical magnetic waves encircling the earth. The records made at Mount Weather were of the most distinct character, but they showed disturbances in the air of a magnetic type and did not indicate any earthquake.
In explaining the San Francisco trembling, C. W. Hays, the director of geology in the geological survey, explained that earthquakes are, according to modern scientific theory, caused by subterranean land slides, the result of a readjustment as between the solid and the molten parts of the earth"s interior.
"The earth," he said, "is in a condition of unstable equilibrium so far as its insides are concerned. The outer crust is solid, but after you get down sixty or seventy miles the rocks are nearly in a fluid condition owing to great pressure upon them. They flow to adjust themselves to changed conditions, but as the crust cools it condenses, hardens, and cracks, and occasionally the tremendous energy inside is manifested on the surface.
"When the semi-fluid rocks in the interior change their position there is a readjustment of the surface like the breaking up of ice in a river, and the grinding causes the earthquake shocks which are familiar in various parts of the world. The earthquake at San Francisco was probably local, although the center of the disturbance may have been thousands of miles away from that city."
Prof. Willis L. Moore, the chief of the weather bureau, in talking of the records of the earthquake in his department, said:
"We have a perfect record of this earthquake, although we are thousands of miles away from the actual tremor itself. There were premonitory tremblings, which began at 8:19 and continued until 8:23 or thereabout. Then there was severe shock which threw the pen off the cylinder.
"According to our observations here there was a to and fro motion of the earth in the vicinity of Washington amounting to about four-tenths of an inch at the time of its greatest oscillation. These movements kept up in a constantly decreasing ratio until nearly half an hour after noon.
"San Francisco may have been a long way away from the real earthquake and merely have been within the radius of severe action so as to produce disastrous results. It is quite likely, in fact, that the greatest disturbance may have taken place beneath the bed of the Pacific Ocean.
"If it resulted in an oscillation of the earth of only a few inches there would be no likelihood of a great tidal wave. If, however, there was produced a radical depression in the bed of the ocean, the sinking of an island, or some other extraordinary disturbance, a tidal wave along the Pacific Coast would almost certainly be one of the events of this great disaster.
"There are apparently three distinct weak spots in the United States, which are peculiarly subject to earthquake shocks, and we are likely sooner or later to hear from all of them in connection with the shock at San Francisco. There is one weak area along the southern Atlantic coast in the vicinity of Charleston, another is in Missouri, and the third includes the Pacific Coast from a point north of San Francisco down to and beyond San Diego."
In describing the instruments at the weather bureau which make the record of earthquakes, even when the movement is so small that the ordinary person does not recognize it, Prof. Moore said:
"The apparatus we have is a pen drawing a continuous line on a cylinder which revolves once every hour and is worked continuously by clockwork in an exact record of time. It moves in a straight line when there is no disturbance, and it jumps from right to left and back again when there are serious oscillations of the earth. The extent of these movements of the pen measures the grade of the oscillation. You may think it is a fantastic statement, but this seismographic pen is adjusted so delicately that it will register your step in its vicinity.
"The instrument is mounted on a solid stone foundation and what it registers is the effect of your weight pressing upon the earth. It is easy to see, therefore, that the record we have obtained of this earthquake shows a few preliminary tremblings, which seem to be premonitions, for about four minutes, then a great crash which threw the pen off the cylinder and finally a period of nearly four hours, during which there were slight tremblings of the earth, this latter period marking the readjustment after the actual shock."
Most of the scientists were inclined to believe that the boiling process in the interior of the earth, although it goes on continuously, is subject to periods of greater or less activity. This activity may be, however, purely local, according to the scientific theory, for otherwise there would be eruptions in all the active volcanoes of the earth at the same time, and there would be earthquakes in every one of the areas where there is liability to seismic disturbances.
One government scientist in discussing the San Francisco earthquake said: "If we could have been right here in the vicinity of Washington a few hundreds of thousands of millions of years ago, we should have seen earthquakes that were earthquakes. The Alleghanies were broken up by great convulsions of the earth, and it is probable that this North American continent of ours was rocked a foot or two at a time, causing a tremendous crash of matter and the reorganization of the world itself.
"The crust, while not necessarily thinner, is not so solid. In cooling it has cracked and left fissures or caverns or jumbled strata of softer material between harder rocks, so that it is peculiarly subject to earthquakes."
Maj. Clarence E. Dutton, U. S. A., retired, the most famous American expert on seismic disturbances, said it was probably the greatest earthquake that has occurred in this country since 1868. He declared that it undoubtedly would be followed by disturbances of less intensity in the same quarter. He stated most emphatically that the eruption of Vesuvius had no bearing whatsoever on the disturbance on the Pacific Coast.
J. Paul Goode, a professor in geology in the University of Chicago, attributes the cause of the Frisco earthquake to the Sierra Madre mountains, but not in a volcanic way, for he also claims that lava had nothing to do with the California shock. The shocks, he showed, can be attributed to mountains without volcanoes in their midst. The Sierra Madres are growing, he said, and for this reason they have shaken the city of San Francisco. He says that the gradual growing of mountains causes the underlying blocks of the earth"s crust to slip up and down and shape the top of the earth in their vicinity when they fall any great distance.
His ideas upon the subject are: "I figure that the earthquake which caused so much damage in San Francisco came from what we call the focus of disturbance. This focus at San Francisco is seven miles below the surface of the earth. As the Sierra Madre mountains grow, a phenomenon which is constantly going on, the blocks of earth below change positions; as a large block falls a series of shocks travels, up and down much the same way as the rings in the water travel out from the point at which a pebble strikes. When the vibration reaches the surface crust a severe shaking of the country adjacent is the result.
"From the actions of the earth in April of 1892, when such a severe shock was felt in San Francisco, I have no doubt but that a second earthquake will follow closely upon the one of yesterday, as the second followed the first in 1892. In that year the first came upon the 19th of April and the second upon the 21st."