Earthquake Memories (First Appeared in the Almanac)

Those of us who grew up in San Francisco remember well the stories of our elders about the terrible earthquake of 1906, although they always referred to it as “the fire”.

My mother’s parents had just built a new home which fortunately withstood the jolting of the quake.  On the morning of April 18^th, 1906, the family was roused from their beds and they ran into the hallway to hold each other in fright.  They could see from their windows that chimneys were toppling and staircases were being knocked askew.  Reports of great devastation in other parts of the city reached them as the fires spread. 

Years later Mother took us children to Golden Gate Park to see the empty marble doorway at Lloyd Lake.  It was all that remained of a beautiful Nob Hill home after the catastrophe of 1906.  She told us her memories of that time and how, because their house had been spared, strangers from other parts of the city came to them for shelter.  They found beds for at least eight or ten people who became life-long friends.  The fires continued in other parts of the once beautiful city, and everyone was afraid of gas explosions and more fire.  The militia ordered all cooking to be done out-of-doors in make-shift shelters in the middle of the street.  The family had plenty of fresh water  to share with neighbors, because Grandfather’s nearby factory was blessed with fine wells.

 We children were horrified by these tales of destruction and conflagration, but Mother smiled.  She said that as an eleven-year old girl, it had been a wonderful time.

My husband’s father remembers being awakened by the quake as a chest of drawers rolled across the room toward him.  He told his children that he just pushed it back and leapt from his bed.  His mother’s family lived on Larkin Street, which stood in the path of the fire.  They were among the unfortunate who had their homes dynamited to form a fire-break.  The militia awakened them in the middle of the night and gave them only a short time to vacate.  Uncle Lester helped his family throw a few necessities into a small wagon, and still in nightclothes, they fled to Fort Mason in the Marina area where they slept out of doors on mattresses.

A friend’s great aunts attended the Caruso concert on the night of April 17^th.  The music was so heavenly that the girl’s decided to sleep together in Aunt Eda’s bedroom to continue their discussion of the evening.  Early the next morning, the earthquake destroyed the fireplace in Aunt Dora’s room, piling bricks and mortar onto the bed where, had it not been for Caruso, she would have died as she slept.

The same friend’s father and his family fled from their destroyed home to camp in nearby Alamo Park.  The day after the quake their spirits rose as Enrique Caruso came to sing to the evacuees.

The father of a present day Woodside storekeeper worked in his family’s market on California Street in 1906.  His own father ordered him to take a wagon to Butcher Town for supplies and not to stop for anyone.  As a grown man he cried at the memory of people throwing money at him and begging to be taken out of the city.

Years later my son chose the Earthquake as his eighth grade project and taped the oral histories of two grandmothers and four great aunts and uncles.  He received an “A” and abundant praise.  Several months later we asked him to play the tape for guests and he looked at us blankly.  A moment later he said, “Oh, I remember.  I recorded over that.