For hours I had been working my way toward the Oakland ferries. As a last hope, some one told me I might get there by going over these hills and following the line of the water front.
I got there after the warning had been given. It was San Francisco’s wealthiest and most exclusive society who had to pack and sling their bundles over their shoulders.
And they did it with just as good grace and courage as the others. All were making a frantic attempt to hire expressmen with any kind of vehicle that would move, and most of them were failing.
During the first of the fire, some young society women with very poor taste, went autoing around the stricken districts as though it were a circus. They were stopped by a sentry and were made to get out of their car and hand it over to a posse of special officers being hurried to some district in new peril.
As I gained the top of Nob Hill and turned to look back, it was clear why the warning had been given. In one direction, hospitals were burning south of Market street.
In the center distance the big car barns were on fire and roaring with flames. Ordinarily this would have been a sensation of a week. Now it wasn’t even considered worth while to send fire engines and nobody stopped to look as they walked by.
The main streets, where the business part of the city had been, were black with an immense throng of people who were walking up and down among the ruins.
Looking toward the ferries, I could count nine big skyscrapers, all crowned with fire, outlined in a lurid row against the sky line. The flames were creeping slowly, but with deadly persistence, toward Nob Hill, with several lesser fires blazing in between.
It was high time Nob Hill was moving.
One old man had chartered an express wagon, and was on top of the wagon frantically interfering with the work of removing the goods from a big, aristocratic-looking house.