The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-04-20

the park system, Ia down. In Union square,
where stood the st. Francis Hotel and where
many people slept last night before the
flames reached it, the Dewey Monument, a
high shaft Of granite and bronze, has shifted
from its base and is leaning like the Tower
Of Pisa. The troops kept people away
from 1t all last night.
CITY GOVERNMENT SEAT SHIFTED.
The seat Of city government and Of mill
tary authority has shifted with every shift
Of the flames. Mayor SohmitS and Gen.
Funston are sticking close together and
keeping In touch with the fremeni the
police, the volunteer aides and the oom-
mittee OF safety through couriers. At
present their headquarters must be m
whore out in the Western Addition or toward
the Preside. By morning they will prob
ably have been pushed back into the military
reservation. The branch Of the fire which
is sweeping the Western Addition must
have reached Mayor sohmitz's residence
by this time.
EXPLOSIVES FROM n PREs1Dlo USED
There are louder reverberations along
the FIRE line tonight, and we know from
this that the supplies OF guncotton and
cordite from the Preside have been oom-
mandeered and that the troops and the few
remaining fremen are making their last
stand at about Van Ness avenue, which
1890 ~ x.aiInnAn llatriok tN aaua What
remains of the Western Addition. The regu-
lar supplies Of dynamite and giant powder
are already gone and a requisition was
passed in to the military authorities early
In the day.
Much damage has been done by ignorant;
careless and premature use OF explosives.
This morning whom the fire reached the
Municipal Building on Portsmouth square
the nurses, helped by soldiers, got out fifty
bodies in the temporary morgue and a num-
Der Of patients in the receiving hospital.
Just after they reached the street a building
was blown up and the flying bricks and
splinters hurt several OF the soldiers who
had to be taken to the out Of door Presidio
Hospital with the patients. In ~dynamiting
a building on Sixth street Lieut.. Charles
C. Pulls, Twenty-fourth Company, Light
Artillery, was severely injured. His skull
was fractured and several of his bones
broken
And the troops have shut down with
iron hands on the city. For where one
mar was homeless last night five are home
less tonight. With the fire running all
along the waterfront. few have managed
to make their way over to Oakland; the
people are prisoners in the peninsula.
There were barely enough soldiers to
hold the people in last night, and now their
work is multiplied by five. They are taking
no chances. They are enforcing the rule
against moving about except to escape
the flames, and no one absolutely can enter
the city who has once left. All this we
get second hand from the refugees who
have made their way over by boat and
ferry.
The horror of it has spread to Oakland,
but we are hardly sensible Of it in our con-
temptation Of the greater horror behind
that cloud of smoke, National Guards
men, realizing the danger caused by the
refugees piling up in Oakland, have put
us also under practical martial law. Rooms
in hotels would sell at ten times their regu-
lar price were there any to sell. There
are few instances of extortion in this re-
spect; the people in their present temper
would not stand it, But every few minutes
there float through the suburbs into town
those professions Of miserable, smoke
b~lackened, ~haggard, weeping people which
made yesterday the beginning of this hell.
New and then you recognize som man,
dressed like a tramp, dirty, dragging a
miserable woman, as a prosperous business
man or q sleek clerk whom you have known
in San Franoisoo. They come to us hungry,
mainly penniless, fairly begging some
thing to eat from the public kitchens which
the soldiers have set up in the streets.
Public halls, the Easements Of churches
and the squares have been set apart for
their use. Such houses as have accommo-
dations to spare are being used for the
sick, the wounded and the scorched who
are arriving every hour.
In addition to those injured by falling
walls and by fire, many frail women and
delicate children have broken down with
exhaustion and with actual disease caused
by the exposure. News came of one woman
who has been dragged from park to park
since the first shock and who was finally
got out by boat tonight dying tonight
with her newborn child, Of a little girl dead
with pneumonia, Of a man suffering from
internal injuries who succumbed on the
boat on the way over.
The we'll and hearty are crowding the
open country and the hei ghte about Lake
Merritt. Still, the after feeling Of the
great shock ia over them all. They seem
to fear houses and low lands, remembering
that time when the earth seemed to be going
away from them. Every one feels hat,
The sliehteat vibration OF a house ~stiffens