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About Valentine Democrat. (Valentine, Neb.) 1900-1930 | View Entire Issue (May 3, 1906)
TURNS TO FUTURE Hope Rises in San Fran cisco When Fire Is Out. Survivors Take Cour age , Though Loss Is $400,000,000. Heartstrings of Continent Touched by the City's Desolation. Tide of Gold Flows Westward to Relieve Suffering of Stricken. San Francisco's four days' battle with the flames came to an end Satur day. The homeless people found shel ter such as it was in parks and across the bay , and all remaining in the city were fed. San Francisco's heroic viewing the scone from the center of the business district Golden Gate Park and the Presidio are great camps In which over 200,000 men , women and children are patiently waiting until they can say they have homes of their own. They are living under martial rule with an uncomplaining resigna tion , enduring hardships which they never dreamed of , yet without a mur mur. mur.All All day the sight is presented of thousands standing in line before the food supply depots , waiting for their daily allotment of rations. The man whs counted his wealth by thousands Is not above standing elbow to elbow with the man who was in the humblest circumstances four days before the dis aster. The woman who rode in an au- WRECK OF SAN FRANCISCO'S FAMOUS CITY HALL. fire fighters at last triumphed , and the flames which devastated three-fourths of the city were finally under complete control. The long and heroic struggle to sub due the flames reached its successful conclusion Saturday morning near the ferry-house , where thousands were trapped on the wharves , to which they had been driven by the relentless ad- tomobile and commanded an army of servants receives her bread after the poor washerwoman has been supplied , and shows no sign of pride. Hope Rises Anew. When the reign of terror was over in the stricken city , reason returned to its throne. Public confidence in the fu ture of San Francisco the belief that the worst had happened and that the day had passed for grieving was made REVISED DETAILS OF LOSS IN SAN FEANCISCO. Number of dead , estimated 2,500 Number of injured , esti mated 13,000 Number of homeless , esti mated 300,000 Property loss , estimated.$400,000,000 Area burned , square miles. 10 City blocks brrned 1,000 In Other Cities. City , Town or Village Damage. Dead. Oakland $ 500,000 5 Alameda 400,000 . . . Sun Jose 3,000,000 10 Agnew ( State hospital for insane ) 400,000 270 Palo Alto ( Stanford Uni versity ) 4,000,000 3 Napa 250,000 . . . Salinas 2,000,000 . . . Hollister 200,000 1 Vallejo 40,000 . . . < Sacramento 25,000 . . . Redwood City 30,000 . . . Port Richmond Suisun 50,000 . . . Santa Rosa 800,000 300 Watsonville 70,000 . . . Monterey 25,000 8 Loma Preita 10 Stockton 40,000 . . . Brawley 100,00 * . . . Santa Cruz 150,000 . . . Fort Bragg 150,000 5 Downtown wholesale and retail dis tricts are complete ruins , few buildings in these districts standing. The greater part of the residence section also Is ruined and the fire swept through sec tions where homes of wealthier class resided. Temporary business bouses have been opened at Oakland , across the bay , and every preparation possible Is being made for reopening business houses in San Francisco itself. As fast as ruins can beleared away temporary structures will replace destroyed busi ness houses. Just a week after the shock of eacth- QHake workmen began dynamiting stantKng watts to make way fcr the new Sn Francisco. It wiil requ&re a fortnight or more te tear down iril ttie menacing uionoKHis of CEacked brisk mid stone. The blackened debris is being removed fast , and no sooner Is the earth cleared of broken brick and burned wood than carpenters and ma sons appear , ready to begin the con struction of another house. Hundreds of architects and draughtsmen from Denver , Chicago , St. Louis and New York have hurried to the stricken city. Many Bodies Blotted Out. After a thorough investigation in San Francisco a conservative newspa per estimate of the number of dead is 2,500. It is singular that Information concerning the most vital feature of j this calamity has been all but lacking. The facts for which the outside world , and especially the people of the United States , have been looking up to this . ' time have been unavailable. This is a condition due to two causes. First , the suddenness of the calamity , and , second , its widespread effect TVTAP OP SAN FRANCISCO , SHOWING BURNED DISTRICTS AND CAMPS OF REFUGEES. TfAVMJST. " 'S&sm = s > - § * ? " * vance of the fire. Here the final stand \vas made by firemen , sailors and citi zens , aided by fire tugs and a few en- glues. Victory rewarded their efforts , and the entrapped people were saved. 50OOO Homelesi Cliant Hymn. In the midst of San Francisco's ruin and desolation Sunday 50.000 homeless people in Golden Gate Park united their voices in this hymn : Other refuge I have none ; hangs my help less soul on Thee. Leave , oh leave me not alone ; still sup port and comfort me. All my trust on Thee is stayed , all my help from Thee I bring , Cover my defenseless head with the shad ow of thy wing. Sunday , for the first time in nearly 200 years , the church- bells did not call the people to worship. Most of the churches had been converted into rub bish heaps by earthquake and fire. The few still standing weie filled with homeless , sick , and injured. But there were religious services services in the parks and open spaces wnere the home less were camping in tents and under trees services of thankfulness that so many were saved where so many were in peril and of gratitude for the gener osity of a nation which responded so nobly and so promptly to avert a fam ine. ine.No No better description can be given to th * once beautiful city than that of a rmst ash heap. Desolation and ruin gre t the eye from every direction , manifest Saturday by a return flow of refugees who fled from the city while it was rocking on its foundations and withering beneath the flames. In the reckoning up of the extent of the disaster conservative minds hesi tated. The nearest approach to the ag gregate destruction of life and property HALL Of JUSTICE. is estimated as follows : Number of lives lost , 2,500 ; property destroyed , $400.000,000. The boundaries of the fire-swept district Include at leart three- fourths of the city's area. I A correspondent asserts that beyond question 20G men , women and children were killed in the Potrero district In the Brunswick House 300 perished. The Valencia Hotel , which dropped into a gap opened by the earthquake , is sup posed to have carried with it 106 souls. At 7th street and Natoma , where large new buildings utterly col lapsed , 200 people this Is merely the estimate of first-class authorities un doubtedly were incinerated. It is not a wild guess to say that the scattered dead , including the unknown , the re mains of scores and hundreds who have been completely blotted out , will be 1,500. A tragically picturesque and peculiar item in connection with this is the fact that many persons have become lost they are dead , beyond possible trace. These statements are made by a cor respondent in the face of the testi mony of the coroner , William Malsh , who declared that- the total number of dead resulting from the earthquake shock will be less than 1,000. It is feared that the coroner's office and all the city officials who are cogs In the municipal machine have been stunned by the enormity of the disaster. The official records of the dead are incom plete , and the material upon which to base identification in the future la wet * fully lacking. Advertise in this paper. 'i $ CLEARJNG AWAY RUINS. Worlc of Removing ; the Debris la Proffresalnyr Actively. The lapse of a week from the earth- quuke found tens of thousands home less and hopeless lu San Francisco. The general condition could be best de scribed by the term Sherman applied to war. It Is and repeat. And it will be that for some time to come. What is left of the population Is still camped In streets , public squares , Golden Gate Park , at the Presidio and around Fort Mason. After all the carnage and the heart rending tragedies of the Civil War , however , when the smoke of battle had cleared away , reconstruction came. With the ruins still smoldering , with the dead lying under smoking ruins for many miles , where half-starved dogs have been found eating them , San Fran cisco has passed through the active stage of the calamity and has entered on a period of reconstruction. Gangs of men are working here and there , a dis patch 'of Wednesday says , clearing away the debris preparatory to the erection of new buildings on the sites of the old new and better buildings , for the spirit in the air is to make San Francisco greater and more beautiful than ever before. Business men of all classes are unitIng - Ing in this spirit , and the same senti ment is expressed by all. Along Market street and elsewhere the deep booming of dynamite is heard at intervals , as dangerous walls are torn from their foundations and toppled to the earth , making room for the new walls that were always populated , especially at nighn. As they were not timbered , thes& tunnels must have caved in , for the shock was strong enough at the point to overthrow some of the old rookeries. The things which must have happened down there in the bowels of the earth I FIELD OF THE EABTHQT7AKB. In the territory cross-shaded the earth quake was destructive. In the territory shaded by single perpendicular lines tha earthquake was felt , but did no material damage. The zone of greatest force is about 250 miles long by sixty miles wide , while the field of relatively harmless ac tivity extended 400 miles up and down thp coast and 250 miles eastward into Nevada. ALL HUMANITY HEEDS APPEAL. Flood of lalerlul Alii to Stricken City Jin * Xo Parallel In History. With spontaneity and liberality with out a parallel in history the whole civil ized world answered the unvoiced appeal of ruined San Francisco. Not only from GREAT FERRY HOUSE , SPARED BY THE FLAMES. are to go up in their places. Merchants are hanging out signs or advertising in the papers that they are preparing to resume business. Posted on heaps of still hot bricks are signs notifying em ployes where to report for work for there is work to do , and work for pay , not labor performed at the point of bayonets held by soldiers. LIFE RECORDS BURN. ? 30OOOOOO in Risks Face Serions Complications. The destruction of the San Francisco building of the Mutual Life Insurance Company , which was located at Sansome and California streets , may involve 12,000 policy holders carrying an aggregate of 550,000,000 of insurance in serious com plications. All of the records concern ing these 12,000 policy holders were de stroyed with the building. Complete du plicate records containing all of the late information concerning the Pacific coast policy holders were not kept at the home office in New York. Officers of the large fire insurance com panies having their headquarters in New York City announce that losses by earth quake were not included in the fire in surance policies written for California , and that such losses could not be allowed , even if the companies were so inclined , for the reafipn that the laws of New York 1 State prohibited it. The rulings on the losses by fire , however , will , it is said , be broad , the insurance companies agree ing that to draw the lines with any se verity whatsoever would be extremely un wise , in the face of such an appalling dis aster , where the suffering will no doubt be widespread. Aivfnl Fate of Chinese. There is another unconsidered factor which adds to the list of probable dead. Chinatown was built three stories above the street and three below it , and all was destroyed. The Chinese had run their tunnels , chambers and secret pas sages fifty feet below ground. These every city , town and hamlet in this coun try , but from over every sea came news that all humanity in its profound sym pathy was showering material aid upon the stricken city and its beggared people. No more amazing instance ofmworld wide generosity ever has been recorded. In the list of generous contributors , New York City ranked next to the govern ment itself and bade fair to far exceed the federal contribution. Saturday night the New York fund amounted to approxi- LELAXI ) STAFFORD ruately $2,000,000 with contributions com ing in fast. The State of Massachusetts undertook to raise $3,000,000. Chicago's fund , spontaneously subscribed , promised to go beyond $1,000,000. Philadelphia sent $300,000. These are but a few of | the larger sums. A score or more ol cities contributed $100,000 and more. Wholly foreign contributions , while deeply appreciated , were not accepted , ac cording ro the precedent established by the President in declining a gift of $25- 000 from a German steamship line. Amer ica , though touched by the evidence ol foreign generosity , felt able to care for its own. Nor was the work of raising relief funds confined to the large cities. From , i ! M Hi BBHMHHHBB naMniiMMMMHBaMttiHMMMMM I MIfc HM M M M MM BMIk BIMMBl M VALENCIA HOTEL , WHERE FORTY PERSONS DIED. every section , every State , came the newi of contributions made by small towns. Not large in themselves , but their aggregate has been enormous. Uncounted thousands sent their contributions and the grand total of the relief fund will probably never be known. Here is told in paragraphic form ths story of the destruction of San Fran cisco. It is hard to realize the frightful calamity that has befallen the Golden Gate City until the full Import of tha subjoined summary has been impressed upon the mind and brain by reading and re-reading the awful record. Thousands of residents fled from tha city. city.An An embargo was placed on all food supplies. The $2,000,000 new postoffic * building is a wreck. Three hundred thousand persons were made homeless. No newspapers were published Thur * day or Friday. Cavalry and infantry patrolled th downtown streets. Many dropped dead in the streets fron > heat and suffocation. The flame-swept area is nearly fifteen square miles in extent. The Moreland Academy at Watsonville -was wrecked and burned. Firemen were suffocated in the street by gas from broken mains. The tunnel on the Santa Fe road , sev eral miles out of town , caved in. Scores of mansions are in ruins , blast ed by dynamite and leveled by fire. Fearing a tidal wave , steamship com panies held in port vessels due to sail. Most of the docks and warehouses on the water front were saved by fire tugs. The Leland Stanford , Jr. , University at Palo Alto was almost completely de stroyed. The Spreckels sugar factory , three miles from Salinas , was destroyed with loss of The government's estimate of the loss sustttined'in United States army and navy stores is $3,500,000. San Francisco's financiers and mer chants , gathsyed at Oakland to plan re building of the city. Details * of troops guarded the water front to prevent tire frantic people from destroying themselves. Thousands of dollars in money and gems were secretly buried in the earth by the frenzied populace. The gas works was blown up with dy namite to prevent leaks in the downtown district which caused fires. The smoke that arose from the business district took the shape of a funnel and could be seen far out at sea. Scores of injured in the Mechanics Pa vilion , which was us d as an extempore hospital , were burned to death. In the collapse of the Kingsley hotel , a cheap hostelry on Seventh street , seven ty persons were crushed to death. Lives by the score and property by tha tens of millions of dollars have been lost through a dozen California cities. The sheds over the Union Pacific's wharf on San Francisco bay collapsed , sending hundreds of tons of coal into the sea. Living victims of the disaster were dug out of the ruins of buildings collapsed by the earthquake , but which escaped the fire. Crowds of frantic citizens strove to beat their way into the banks. The troops beat them off. No bank in the city was open. Nothing worthy of the name of a build ing in the business district and not more than half of the residence district es caped. The old adobe mission Dolores , built more than 100 years ago , and the nucleus of the old town of Yerba Buena , was de stroyed. The greatest death rate was in tha poorer districts. The ruins of one cheap hotel on Eddy street was found filled with bodies. The fire that overwhelmed the city spar ed only some of the homes of the rich. The poor lost everything save what they carried away. The reports indicate that the property loss outside of San Francisco will ba enormous , running into the scores of mill ions of dollars. Skeleton walls that totter with each breath of air threaten to crush the sol diers guarding the ruins of banks and other property. The pastor of St. Francis' church , on the slope of Telegraph Hill , gathered his flock about him on the sidewalk and held a prayer meeting. Chinatown is a ruin. Hundreds of ce lestials were crushed to death when their rookeries fell. The flames finished tha work of destruction. While the center of the earthquake de struction seems to have been in San Francisco , reports from other cities show appalling loss of life. For. days there was no street car ser vice in San Francisco , and every vehicle was pressed into service to haul a'way the dead and the dying. Dynamite , gun cotton and cannon were used to blow up buildings , whole blocks being destroyed at a time in efforts to stop the spread of the fire. The Cliff House , one of the finest pleas ure resorts in the country , was shaken from its place on a rocky cape and plung ed out of sight into the sea. The property loss at Salinas will reach § 2,500,000 : San Jose , $1,000.000 ; Napa , $300,000 ; Palo Alto , $2.225,000 ; Valejo , $10,000 : Agnews , $300,000. The famous C. P. Huntington art col lection , bequeathed to Metropolitan Mu seum of Arc of New York , has been de- stroved in the Huntington mansion on Neb Hill. The State Insurance Commissioner an nounced that eighty fire insurance com panies have decided to pay dollar for dollar lar of their policies , not distinguishing fire from earthquake losses. The Metropolitan Grand Opera com pany , playing at the Grand theater , which was burned , lost all its scenery. Th memberi of the cast , including Caruao > Earner and Freaastad , loat tha'r costumes *