The people were calm, stunned. They did not
seem to realize the extent of the calamity. They heard that the city
was being destroyed; they told each other in the most natural tone
that their residences were destroyed by the flames, but there was no
hysteria, no outcry, no criticism.
The trip to the hills and to the water front was one of terrible
hardship. Famishing women and children and exhausted men were compelled
to walk seven miles around the north shore in order to avoid the flames
and reach the ferries. Many dropped to the street under the weight of
their loads, and willing fathers and husbands, their strength almost
gone, strove to pick up and urge them forward again.
In the panic many mad things were done. Even soldiers were obliged in
many instances to prevent men and women, made insane from the misfortune
that had engulfed them, from rushing into doomed buildings in the hope
of saving valuables from the ruins. In nearly every instance such action
resulted in death to those who tried it. At Larkin and Sutter Streets,
two men and a woman broke from the police and rushed into a burning
apartment house, never to reappear.
The rush to the parks and the dunes was followed in the days that
followed by as wild a rush to the ferries, due to the mad desire to
escape anywhere, in any way, from the burning city.
THE WILD RUSH TO THE FERRIES.
At the ferry station on Wednesday night there was much confusion.
Mingled in an inextricable mass were people of every race and class
on earth.
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