The full measure of the catastrophe can probably never be taken. The
summary cannot be made amid the panic, the confusion, the removal of
ancient landmarks, the complete subversion of the ordinary machinery
of society. When chaos comes, as it did in San Francisco, and all the
channels of familiar life are closed, and human anguish grows to be
intolerable, compilation of statistics is impossible, even if it were
not repugnant to the feelings. And when order is once more restored,
after the lapse of many weeks, months and perhaps years, the details of
the calamity have merged into one undecipherable mass of misery which
defies the analyst and the historian. It is the purpose of this book
faithfully to record the story of these awful days when years were lived
in a moment and to preserve an accurate chronicle of them, not only
for the people whose hearts yearn in sympathy to-day, but for their
posterity.

Other frightful catastrophes the world has known. The earthquake which
dropped Lisbon into the sea in 1755, and in a moment swallowed up
twenty-five thousand people, was perhaps more awful than the convulsion
which has brought woe to San Francisco. When Krakatoa Mountain, in the
Straits of Sunda, in 1883, split asunder and poured across the land a
mighty wave, in which thirty-six thousand human beings perished, the
results also were more terrible.

The whirlwind of fire which consumed St. Pierre, in the Island of
Martinique, and the devastation wrought by Vesuvius a few days previous
to that at San Francisco, need not be used for comparison with the
latter tragedy, but they may be referred to, that we may recall the fact
that this land of ours is not the only one which has suffered.