In the camps of refuge the deaths came frequently. Physicians were everywhere in evidence, but, without medicine or instruments, were fearfully handicapped. Men staggered in from their herculean efforts at the fire lines, only to fall gasping on the grass. There was nothing to be done. Injured lay groaning. Tender hands were willing, but of water there was none. “Water, water, for God’s sake get me some water,” was the cry that struck into thousands of souls of San Francisco.
The list of dead was not confined to San Francisco, but extended to many of the neighboring towns, especially to Santa Rosa, where sixty were reported dead and a large number missing, and to the insane asylum in its vicinity, from the ruins of which a hundred or more of dead bodies were taken.
THE FREE USE OF RIFLES.
A citizen tells us that “in the early part of the evening, and while the twilight lasts, there is a good deal of trafficking up and down the sidewalks. Having finished their dinners of government provisions, cooked on the street or in the parks, the people promenade for half an hour or so. By half-past eight the town is closed tight. A rat scurrying in the street will bring a soldier’s rifle to his shoulder. Any one not wearing a uniform or a Red Cross badge is a suspicious character and may be shot unless he halts at command. Even the men in uniform do well to stop still, for it is hard to tell a uniform in the half light thrown up by the burning town and the great shadows.
“Last night two of us ventured out on Van Ness Avenue a little late. There came up the noise of some kind of a shooting scrape far down the street. We hurried in that direction to see what was doing. An eighteen-year-old boy in a uniform barred the way, levelled his rifle and said in a peremptory way:
“‘Go home.’
“We took a course down the block, where an older soldier, more communicative but equally peremptory, informed us that we were trifling with our lives, news or no news.
“‘We’ve shot about 300 people for one thing or another,’ he said. ‘Now, dodge trouble. Git!’ That ended the expedition.”
THE LOSS IN WEALTH.
If we pass now from the record of the loss of lives to that of the destruction of wealth, the estimates exceed by far any fire losses recorded in history.