The Tour of Ravaged San Francisco

Monday the group set out for San Francisco. At Palo Alto they saw the wreckage of Stanford University. When they arrived at San Francisco they hired a horse-drawn cab to spend an hour and a half touring the ruined city. With Ellen White was her son W. C., and two women, May Walling and Carolyn Crisler, wife of Clarence Crisler, her chief secretary (31 WCW, p. 293).6BIO 82.3

As they rode together, a good many things were recounted. Exactly what was said we do not know, but various and sundry reports give us a composite picture of what took place:6BIO 82.4

The quake came at five-thirty-one Wednesday morning, April 18. The first casualty was the Point Arena Lighthouse, ninety miles to the north. The huge lenses and lantern exploded in a shower of glass. Earth waves two and three feet high were seen plunging south at an incredible rate. Giant redwoods were mowed down. Beaches were raised and lowered, and trains derailed. At one ranch, the earth opened directly beneath an unsuspecting cow. With a bellow of terror the animal plunged into the gaping hole, its cry cut short as the crevice clamped shut, leaving only a twitching tail visible (G. Thomas and M. Witts, The San Francisco Earthquake, pp. 66, 67).6BIO 82.5

The city was largely asleep as the wave of earth upheavals struck San Francisco in a twenty-eight-second tremor just at dawn. [The description of the earthquake is fully supported by many documents in DF 76, “the San Francisco Earthquake.”] First there was a terrifying roar, and then stone and bricks began to fall like rain from taller buildings; chimneys toppled from almost every home. The streets heaved, and dropped in places as much as thirty feet. The second floor of some buildings became the first floor. Walls of brick fell into the streets, leaving rooms on every floor supported only by the inner wooden framework. Clocks fell from mantels, pictures from walls; wardrobes and dish cupboards fell on their faces; beds, tables, and chairs careened helplessly.6BIO 82.6

In seconds people were on the streets, many barefoot and in their night clothes. Telephone and electric lines, stretched and broken by toppling power poles, were tangled on the streets. Gas lines throughout the city were twisted and broken. A group of uniformed policemen starting out on duty was practically annihilated as collapsing masonry buildings pinned them to the ground. For a minute the earth heaved, slid, broke open, and convulsed. Screams of the injured, terrified, and dying pierced the air.6BIO 83.1