s the result of the reaction following
the unprecedented shock.

At Mechanics' Pavilion scenes of heroism and later of panic were
enacted. The great frame building was turned into a hospital for the
care of the injured and here a corps of fifty physicians rendered aid.
Nurses volunteered their services and also girls from the Red Cross
ship that steamed in from the government yards at Mare island and
contributed doctors and supplies.

While the ambulances and automobiles were unloading their maimed and
wounded at the building the march of the conflagration up Market
street gave warning that the injured would have to be removed at once.

This work was undertaken and every available vehicle was pressed into
service to get the stricken into the hospitals and private houses of
the western addition. A few minutes after the last of the wounded had
been carried through the door, some on cots, others in strong arms and
on stretchers, shafts of fire shot from the roof and the structure
burst into a whirlwind of flame.

One of the most thrilling of all stories related of adventures in
stricken San Francisco during the days of horror and nights of terror
is that of a party of four, two women and two men, who arrived at Los
Angeles April 20, after having spent a night and the greater portion
of two days on the hills about Golden Gate Park.

This party was composed of Mrs. Francis Winter, Miss Bessie Marley,
Dr. Ernest W. Fleming, and Oliver Posey, all of Los Angeles.

"I was sleeping in a room on the third floor of the hotel," said Dr.
Fleming, "when the first shock occurred. An earthquake in San
Francisco was no new sensation to me. I was there in 1868, when a boy
ten years old, when the first great earthquake came. But that was a
gentle rocking of a cradle to the one of Wednesday.

"I awoke to the groaning of timbers, the grinding, creaking sound,
then came the roaring street. Plastering and wall decorations fell.
The sensation was as if the buildings were stretching and writhing
like a snake. The darkness was intense. Shrieks of women, higher,
shriller than that of the creaking timbers, cut the air. I tumbled
from the bed and crawled, scrambling toward the door. The twisting and
writhing appeared to increase. The air was oppressive. I seemed to be
saying to myself, will it never, never stop? I wrenched the lock; the
door of the room swung back against my shoulder. Just then the
building seemed to breathe, stagger and rig