Earle Talbot letter re: 1906 Earthquake, 1906-04-25

Factories and warehouses south of Market, when made of brick were just empty half or quarter shells, tottering. I kept hurrying, and the hot day, sultry with smoke, and the big overcoat I carried, helped the perspiration of anticipation, I dripped from every pore. Guerrero St. at Castro runs into Laguna - which was the western limit of the fire as far as Ellis McAllister - then the blaze was fought back to Octavia, along this to Ellis, and thence along Van Ness - I dropped over to Gough at Golden Gate Ave - where that park is - then full of people, in some shelter of blankets, or without any. Soldiers everywhere, and the Red Cross badge.

Looking up Gough from Geary I could see that Dan'l Meyer's house was safe, and then began to hope for 1819 - at Bush - lo! the damage had been extended past Franklin St. and I confess to running up those hills until the gables of our house came in view - they had dynamited around Trinity Church, so there was no telling how we stood until the last minute - I tore up the front steps and found the front door fastened with the chain only - back door locked and side gate open - Here I encountered the piles of debris from the balcony and conservatory, and for a minute thought the back of the house was out.

The playroom door was open, and once inside I glanced at the tool room door- safe - the wood room door likewise. Cue and balls on the billiard table - then I ran upstairs, Confusion ad and disorder everywhere - little broken stuff however. Statuary intact. Hall clock stopped at 11:45 date 18th - On upstairs - clothes and linen scattered in hall from hasty packing - beds stripped to wire mattresses - Chaos of toothpowder and bottles about the washstands - broken bric-a brac here in plenty. On up to the Attic, rooms intact skylights badly broken.

I went to the window of my room to look for the location of the fires. There one gets a second picture that will stick - you know the view - and can imagine the rest. From the Unitarian Church, which is not badly damaged, the clear sweep to the limit of vision around the N. E. - utter desolation.

From the Cupola windows I saw the big black smoke that rolled along above Franklin St. and I began to want to see what it meant. So out

and down to Franklin - noticing for the first time that Cousin Florence had suffered the loss of the house - and that it had been dynamite, not fire that had levelled Hotalings and the white cottage across California St. Along Franklin to Jackson and Aunt Sophia's still there, also Cousin Florence's old house - Down to Van Ness, and here was the first view I had of the fire - It had burned East of Van Ness to Green, and then farther along the avenue - there was the last stand - Over Russian Hill came the rolling clouds of black smoke that marked the destruction of Chinatown and the Latin Quarter - the flames over there finally began to show over the hill. Everyone felt that if that fire ever hit Van Ness in its full sweep - the Western Addition would go - so we waited in suspense, standing on the steps of the ruined house across from Cousin Mary's. Boom! and a rising cloud of broken things and dust hid a bit of the avenue - and clearing revealed a vacant lot where a house had stood. Again and again came the thunder, and as the dust settled it was again carried aloft on a tower of black smoke that arose - hurrying figures in the blue and white of the Marines could be seen up along

Green St. The fire gained along the avenue. It rolled higher and higher. In the houses across from it, curtains were torn down, papers thrown out, and men with wet blankets stood on the roofs and at the windows in the heat that must have been awful. Two streams of water, pumped in relays from the Bay at Fort Mason kept the houses and the men from burning. It was close exciting work for an hour - with no spare time for any of us. Then a west wind sprang up, and as on a signal, smoke and flames appeared in the empty houses from Van Ness to Russian Hill. Then we understood what the Marines had been doing. It was heroic - stupendous - and we took it as a matter of course then. They fired 15 blocks of houses at once to kill the other advancing fire. Can you imagine a solid flame covering that area - and a frame house wilting before flame appeared in it- just heat?

About 4:30 the danger was past, and I started from 270- sending the two dispatches from Divisidero St.

Aunt Ada waved me from the front door around to the rear - they couldn't open the front door, - and the house looked wobbly - Grandma emerged from the little shed in the rear where all three had been living, and Alice came in soon from a foraging trip.- I guess they were glad to have a man around - we made tea and cornbread on a broken brick fireplace in the yard - and ate in the house in the kitchen, and interrupted once by a little shake that showed us how nervous we were.-- The house they can tell you of- chimney crumbled away at bottom pulling down dining room hearth - tipping foundation and weak state generally. I camped in a lean-to which I built against the shed - that night, and in the morning after foraging I went down to Beckett's - Mother Beckett had been very low, and it had taken heroic efforts on the part of Arthur to get her started to Portland in charge of Mrs. Marcus - so he could not look after Grandma until about the time I arrived on the scene. I wanted to test the truth of the statement made to the girls that all should stay together until it would be possible