The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire

Earthquake and famine, fire and sudden death—these are the destroyers that men fear when they come singly; but upon the unhappy people of California they came together, a hideous quartette, to slay human beings, to blot from existence the wealth that represented prolonged and strenuous effort, to bring hunger and speechless misery to three hundred thousand homeless and terror-stricken people.
The full measure of the catastrophe can probably never be taken. The summary cannot be made amid the panic, the confusion, the removal of ancient landmarks, the complete subversion of the ordinary machinery of society. When chaos comes, as it did in San Francisco, and all the channels of familiar life are closed, and human anguish grows to be intolerable, compilation of statistics is impossible, even if it were not repugnant to the feelings. And when order is once more restored, after the lapse of many weeks, months and perhaps years, the details of the calamity have merged into one undecipherable mass of misery which defies the analyst and the historian. It is the purpose of this book faithfully to record the story of these awful days when years were lived in a moment and to preserve an accurate chronicle of them, not only for the people whose hearts yearn in sympathy to-day, but for their posterity.
Other frightful catastrophes the world has known. The earthquake which dropped Lisbon into the sea in 1755, and in a moment swallowed up twenty-five thousand people, was perhaps more awful than the convulsion which has brought woe to San Francisco. When Krakatoa Mountain, in the Straits of Sunda, in 1883, split asunder and poured across the land a mighty wave, in which thirty-six thousand human beings perished, the results also were more terrible.
The whirlwind of fire which consumed St. Pierre, in the Island of Martinique, and the devastation wrought by Vesuvius a few days previous to that at San Francisco, need not be used for comparison with the latter tragedy, but they may be referred to, that we may recall the fact that this land of ours is not the only one which has suffered.