The broken waterpipes were also repaired with all possible haste, the Spring Valley Water Company putting about one thousand men at work upon their shattered mains, and in a very brief time water began to flow freely in many parts of the residence section and the great difficulty of obtaining food and water was practically at an end. Never in the history of the country has there been a more rapid and complete demonstration of the resourcefulness of Americans than in the way this frightful disaster was met.
Food, water and shelter were not the only urgent needs. At first there was absolutely no sanitary provision, and the danger of an epidemic was great. This was a peril which the Board of Health addressed itself vigorously to meet, and steps for improving the sanitary conditions were hastily taken. Quick provision for sheltering the unfortunates was also made. Eight temporary structures, 150 feet in length by 28 feet wide and 13 feet high, were erected in Golden Gate Park, and in these sheds thousands found reasonably comfortable quarters. This was but a beginning. More of these buildings were rapidly erected, and by their aid the question of shelter was in part solved. The buildings were divided into compartments large enough to house a family, each compartment having an entrance from the outside. This work was done under the control of the engineering department of the United States army, which had taken steps to obtain a full supply of lumber and had put 135 carpenters to work. Those of the refugees who were without tents were the first to be provided for in these temporary buildings.
THE CAMPS IN THE PARKS.
To those who made an inspection of the situation a few days after the earthquake, the hills and beaches of San Francisco looked like an immense tented city. For miles through the park and along the beaches from Ingleside to the sea wall at North Beach the homeless were camped in tents—makeshifts rigged up from a few sticks of wood and a blanket or sheet. Some few of the more fortunate secured vehicles on which they loaded regulation tents and were, therefore, more comfortably housed than the great majority. Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle looked like one vast campaign ground. It is said that fully 100,000 persons, rich and poor alike, sought refuge in Golden Gate Park alone, and 200,000 more homeless ones located at the other places of refuge.
At the Presidio military reservation, where probably 50,000 persons were camped, affairs were conducted with military precision. Water was plentiful and rations were dealt out all day long. The refugees stood patiently in line and there was not a murmur. This characteristic was observable all over the city. The people were brave and patient, and the wonderful order preserved by them proved of great assistance. In Golden Gate Park a huge supply station had been established and provisions were dealt out.
Six hundred men from the Ocean Shore Railway arrived on Saturday night with wagons and implements to work on the sewer system. Inspectors were kept going from house to house, examining chimneys and issuing permits to build fires. In fact, activity manifested itself in all quarters in the attempt to bring order out of confusion, and in an astonishingly short time the tented city was converted from a scene of wretched disorder into one of order and system.
At Jefferson Park were camped thousands of people of every class in life. On the western edge of this park is the old Scott house, where Mrs. McKinley lay sick for two weeks in 1901. Three times a day the people all gathered in line before the provision wagons for their little handouts. “Yesterday,” says an observer, “I saw, in order before the wagons, a Lascar sailor in his turban, about as low a Chinatown bum as I ever set eyes on, a woman of refined appearance, a barefooted child, two Chinamen, and a pretty girl. They were squeezed up together by the line, which extended for a quarter of a mile. It is civilization in the bare bones.
“The great and rich are on a level with the poor in the struggle for bare existence, and over them all is the perfect, unbroken discipline of the soldiery. They came into the city and took charge on an hour’s notice, they saved the city from itself in the three days of hell, and but for them the city, even with enough provisions to feed them in the stores and warehouses, must have gone hungry for lack of distributive organization.”
COMEDY AND PATHOS IN THE BREAD LINE.
At one of the parks on Tuesday morning a handsomely dressed woman with two children at her skirts stood in a line of many hundreds where supplies were being given out. She took some uncooked bacon, and as she reached for it jewels sparkled on her fingers. One of the tots took a can of condensed milk, the other a bag of cakes.