as I stood there, a five-story building half a block away fell with a
crash, and the flames swept clear across Market Street and caught a
new fireproof building recently erected. The streets in places had sunk
three or four feet, in others great humps had appeared four or five feet
high. The street car tracks were bent and twisted out of shape. Electric
wires lay in every direction. Streets on all sides were filled with
brick and mortar, buildings either completely collapsed or brick fronts
had just dropped completely off. Wagons with horses hitched to them,
drivers and all, lying on the streets, all dead, struck and killed by
the falling bricks, these mostly the wagons of the produce dealers,
who do the greater part of their work at that hour of the morning.
Warehouses and large wholesale houses of all descriptions either down,
or walls bulging, or else twisted, buildings moved bodily two or three
feet out of a line and still standing with walls all cracked.

"The Call building, a twelve-story skyscraper, stood, and looked all
right at first glance, but had moved at the base two feet at one end out
into the sidewalk, and the elevators refused to work, all the interior
being just twisted out of shape. It afterward burned as I watched it. I
worked my way in from the ferry, climbing over piles of brick and mortar
and keeping to the centre of the street and avoiding live wires that
lay around on every side, trying to get to my office. I got within two
blocks of it and was stopped by the police on account of falling walls.
I saw that the block in which I was located was on fire, and seemed
doomed, so turned back and went up into the city.

"Not knowing San Francisco, you would not know the various buildings,
but fires were blazing in all directions, and all of the finest and best
of the office and business buildings were either burning or surrounded.
They pumped water from the bay, but the fire was soon too far away from