worked
to the breaking point and women unnerved by hysteria dropped down on
the cooling ashes and slept where they lay, for had they not seen the
tall steel skyscrapers burn like a torch? Had they not beheld the
cataracts of flame fleeting unhindered up the broad avenues, and over
the solid blocks of the city?

Fire had become a commonplace. Fear of fire had been blunted by their
terrible suffering, and although the soldiers roused the sleepers and
warned them against possible approaching flames, they would only yawn,
wrap their blanket about them and stolidly move on to find some other
place where they might drop and again slumber like men dead.

As the work of clearing away the debris progressed it was found that
an overwhelming portion of the fatalities occurred in the cheap
rooming house section of the city, where the frail hotels were crowded
at the time of the catastrophe.

In one of these hotels alone, the five-story Brunswick rooming-house
at Sixth and Howard streets, it is believed that 300 people perished.
The building had 300 rooms filled with guests. It collapsed to the
ground entirely and fire started amidst the ruins scarcely five
minutes later.

South of Market street, where the loss of life was greatest, was
located many cheap and crowded lodging houses. Among others the caving
in of the Royal, corner Fourth and Minna streets, added to the horror
of the situation by the shrieks of its many scores of victims imbedded
in the ruins.

The collapsing of the Porter House on Sixth street, between Mission
and Market, came about in a similar manner. Fully sixty persons were
entombed midst the crash. Many of these were saved before the fire
eventually crept to the scene.

Part of the large Cosmopolitan House, corner Fifth and Mission
streets, collapsed at the very first tremble. Many of the sleepers
were buried in the ruins; other escaped in their night clothes.

At 775 Mission street the Wilson House, with its four stories and
eighty rooms, fell to the ground a mass of ruins. As far as known very
few of the inmates were rescued.

The Denver House on lower Third street, with its many rooms, shared
the same fate and none may ever know how many were killed, the
majority of the inmates being strangers.

A small two-story frame building occupied by a man and wife at 405
Jessie street collapsed without an instant's warning. Both were
killed.

To the north of Market street the rooming-house people fared so