Thursday, April 19
At Fort Mason

Yesterday’s sights and sounds and experiences are forgotten in today’s. We rose when the sun looked up over Union street hill — red as wine through the smoke — and dragged our mattresses back to my house with the fire still many blocks away. While we were eating cold food on the balcony, Xavier Martinez, the artist, came up with some friends to see if there was a way of making coffee. There was not, but I offered an acceptable substitute and threw in the house. They accepted. This was certainly lucky because Maynard and Lillian wanted to go home to Sausalito. They urged me to come along, but I refused. I know now why the people who live at the foot of Vesuvius all stay till it is too late to escape the lava.

The Dixons departed taking with them a few cherished things on a two-wheeled push-cart.

Vail Bakewell, the lawyer, came over from Oakland on a tug to rescue us and take us over to his home in Oakland. We all refused to go. I, for one, must see the closing act of this monster tragedy, a whole city for a stage, 500,000 actors and everyone playing his part. We were joined by Porter Gardnett, he critic, but soon he left us to save his mother from danger.

At four this afternoon a big cloud of smoke came over us — cinders as big as dollars began to fall and a shower of plaster dust. This frightened us. I packed three trunks and the boys carried them into the neighbor’s garden. I wrapped a wet blanket around the band-box containing my new spring hat and hid it in a rose bush. We bought a four-wheeled cart from a small boy, made two two-wheeled carts out of it by using the pantry shelves for the body, loaded up one with food and the other with clothes and started out for my friends’, the Towarts’, sand lots on the other side of the Presidio. Van Ness avenue was full of people and movings — so full it spilled out into every vacant lot and side street. Going was difficult. Our cart broke down. I experienced the most terrible and senseless fear that this great mass of people, animals and things would stampede. After a council we decided to stop here in Fort Mason for the night.

We are in the middle of an immense field — there must be thousands camping here — people of all nations thrown together higglety-pigglety. Our nearest neighbor is an Italian vegetable peddler and he has brought his entire family and household effects. When they went for the second load they left the baby here wailing an obligato to the accompaniment of a German fellow with a fiddle. Behind us sit a newly wed couple beside their trunk. The little bride is quietly weeping while her inexperienced spouse shows plainly that this is too much for one day. In the camps of the Latin races the men are doing all the talking, while among us English speaking people only the women can be heard. On the top of the hill stood a bearded Italian waving a large chromo of St. Francis at the ever approaching fire, while he called upon the patron saint to save his city.

11 p.m. — Vail Bakewell and Rob Towart have just returned from an adventure. They went over to see if the Towarts’ house had burned. It is still standing but it is only a question of a few hours. Fire is coming up all sides of Russian Hill. I started out with Vail on an exploring expedition. The first startling sight was a rose garden, with hundreds of huge roses glowing red in the light of the flames. We had the luck to get inside the fire lines. It was a thrilling experience while it lasted, until we were peremptorily ordered out by the Colonel in command of the troops. We went so close to the fire that I felt my hair curl. We saw some people loot a grocery and bar — the proprietor inviting everyone to help themselves. We went inside. There were no lights, only that ghastly light coming in the windows of the fire across the street. It made me sick.

Outside a puppy sat whining. I took it up in my arms and it was trembling. There were many dogs and cats that had been forgotten or abandoned by their masters. Some we saw ran away from us, back into the burning houses. A cry was raised that we were surrounded by fire, but there was an avenue of escape down the north side where the hill makes a sheer drop of 50 feet. My nerves still tingle with the excitement of this. Everything has been on such a big scale today! Has Fate thus set a measure while will make all other experiences which are to come to me seem puny?

Still later a span of horses broke their tethering straps and came charging into our camp. We scared them away with umbrellas, which we are using for tents. This so upset the tranquility of our crowd that Vail and I volunteered to go back to my house to fetch some restoratives. We went by way of Van Ness avenue. Everything has burned from there to the ferry up to Vallejo street. It was the most wonderful sight! Many miles — a limitless space of blue flames with the last red glow of big timbers between — of dancing, palpitating, living light.

The great dwelling houses on the west side of Van Ness avenue were ablaze. Soldiers were dynamiting them. It was like the booming of artillery fire.

On our way back we saw two men sitting on the front steps of a big house. They asked us in to see how their home had been wrecked by the earthquake, as well as by the fire across the street and the dynamite. We groped around inside, by the fire light. Vail Bakewell tried to play on the pipe organ — but where was no sound. In the street a man came running up to us and presented me with a box of face powder — said he had no use for it and it might come handy!

Friday, April 20
Fort Mason

6 a.m. An army surgeon made an inspection of the camp this morning and found a sick child next to us, which he diagnosed as suffering from small-pox. Even this announcement did not create a panic. It seemed all in the day’s doings.

1 p.m. We are at the little dock below the Fort waiting for a navy cutter to take us around to the Oakland ferry.

The fire is within two blocks of my house — everyone in my block had been told to leave. Our house has been ordered dynamited. The apathy of the last two days has given way. The firemen are frantic. If they don’t stop the fire now a whole Western Addition will go — a policeman with a red face is running up and down in front of the house. A dead Italian lies in the middle of the street opposite my house. Members of his family sit around his body in a circle. I got so scared I couldn’t swallow a glass of water. The heat on the balcony was intense — too hot to stay out there. The paint on the woodwork was blistering. Everyone was fire mad. My home will surely go.

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