To the military reservations which lay outside the burned district refugees immediately fled in numbers, and on April 19, the day the committee on relief of the hungry began its work, Major Krauthoff issued from a depot established by him in the Presidio such food as could be spared from the Presidio itself and from Forts Mason and Miley. The great army warehouses, which had stored $2,000,000 worth of supplies, were burned, but along with the committee on relief of the hungry the army began to confiscate supplies for use on the reservations. It also purchased from the posts in the Departments of California and the Columbia 900,000 rations, the first shipment of which arrived on April 21. On that same day a steamer from Stockton put in at Fort Mason with donations of provisions and blankets. These were immediately distributed among 20,000 refugees.
The committee on relief of the hungry had not been given full authority nor had its powers been defined. It had no machinery adequate for the handling of a great bulk of supplies, and it was hindered by the crossing of efforts on the part of unauthorized agencies.
The Finance Committee, as has been said in [Chapter I], was the committee of power, and might have assumed responsibility for perfecting an adequate relief organization, but as it realized that its efforts could not be as quickly effective as those of the army, it, as well as the mayor, called on the army to assume control of the relief work. General Greely consented and on April 29 took charge of the food issues and gradually put the work under the direction of 64 officers and 500 enlisted men.
Major C. A. Devol, depot quartermaster, who took over the tremendous task of unloading cars and boats and transporting supplies to and from warehouses,[47] quickly introduced order and economy into the work. Major C. R. Krauthoff, in charge of the commissary department, was also able soon to reduce to an efficient routine his work of receiving donated supplies, of purchasing, selling, and storing supplies, and of issuing properly balanced rations.
[47] See [Appendix I], [p. 383] ff. See also [Part I], [pp. 8] and [30].
In the report made in July, 1906, to the War Department, Colonel Febiger, who from April 29 had charge of the organization of relief stations, and later became chief of the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations, which had been established by the army to facilitate the relief work, said that on taking charge he had found, after a most thorough investigation, no instance of extreme suffering from lack of food or shelter, but many instances of repeating, so that the number of rations issued was in excess of the needs of the population. With no accepted general organization bringing about the co-ordinating of relief, there was of necessity an exaggerated estimate of the needy.
General Greely, who during his Arctic explorations had learned what extreme suffering from hunger and cold meant, had the city canvassed on May 13 in order to find any case of destitution which might have been overlooked. All of his inspectors, with 30 officers in addition to the officers directly connected with the relief work, were ordered to make a special effort to learn of persons in absolute need of food and decent clothing or of bed and shelter. The result was that but two such cases were reported.
During the early days orders were issued forbidding all householders to light fires in their houses. Cooking, in consequence, was done in the street over open fires or on rusty stoves which belched smoke out of short sections of pipe. In those days only candles were permitted for light and they had to be extinguished at 8 p.m.
Relief Stations and Registration
As stated in [Chapter I],[48] the northern part of the city was, for purposes of policing, put under military control the third day after the disaster. Later, for purposes of relief, the city was divided into seven sections, whose boundaries were made coterminous with those of the army districts. On May 8, each section was supplied by the army with an officer who made regular reports to the headquarters of the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations, and with a physician who was responsible for sanitation and for diet prescriptions. Nine depots and sub-depots were open for storage of food supplies.