It shot up everywhere. The fierce
wave of destruction had carried a flaming torch with it--agony, death
and a flaming torch. It was just as if some fire demon was rushing from
place to place with such a torch."
WRECK AND RUIN.
The magnitude of the calamity became fully apparent after the sun had
risen and began to shine warmly and brightly from the east over the
ruined city. Old Sol, who had risen and looked down upon this city for
thousands of times, had never before seen such a spectacle as that of
this fateful morning. Where once rose noble buildings were now to be
seen cracked and tottering walls, fallen chimneys, here and there fallen
heaps of brick and mortar, and out of and above all the red light of
the mounting flames. From the middle of the city's greatest thoroughfare
ruin, only ruin, was to be seen on all sides. To the south, in hundreds
of blocks, hardly a building had escaped unscathed. The cracked walls of
the new Post Office showed the rending power of the earthquake. A part
of the splendid and costly City Hall collapsed, the roof falling to the
courtyard and the smaller towers tumbling down. Some of the wharves,
laden with goods of every sort, slid into the bay. With them went
thousands of tons of coal. On the harbor front the earth sank from six
to eight inches, and great cracks opened in the streets.
San Francisco's famous Chinatown, the greatest settlement of the
Celestials on this continent, went down like a house of cards.
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