The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1906-05-03
Letter from San Francisco.

Baisch we are permitted to pub
lish a letter from his son, J.. G..
Baisch, who is in the Z. S. navy,
employed as hospital steward on
the battle ship Baltimore. He is
now stationed at the naval hospi-
tai, sMare Island, CAL, and saw
active service in rescue work after
the earthquake.
At the present writing / am in San
Francisco and for five days have not
| had my clothes off. We have taken
care of oyer 5000 wounded people in
our hospital. Tuesday morning l was
awakened out of my sleep at 5 o'clock
by the most violent shaking I ever ex-
perienced. l was sleeping on the third
floor of the hospital. | knew at once
that it was an earthquake. / wanted
to run down stairs but the building
shook SO hard / couldn't walk. In 3
minutes it was all over, so l put on my
clothes and ran down stairs to see what I
had happened, but every thing was all
right, (our hospital mere is built earth.
quake proof In an hour we were
ready to &C to the city. Frisco is only
a few miles from here. When we got
there the streets We're full Of dead peO-
pie and thousands buried and wounded
by falling buildings. Fire broke out
all over the city. We worked steadily
Tor ~ hours rescuing people and dress
ing the hurt. Some with heads cut
wide open, some with both legs crush
ed,-sights too horrible to relate. At
ter ~ hours half of the city was afire.
Our hospital got on fire and we had to
get 1900 wounded out, carried them to
the Clara Barton hospital and went to
work again. IN "a hours more the
Clara Barton hospital caught fire and
it was move the wounded to the Pris-
lido, six miles away. BY Thursday
the fire extended over five miles square
and going at the rate Of a block every
half hour and eighteen blocks wide.
1 N'l'S l / wv" ttiiN
as the earthquake broke all the water
mains the only thing the people could
do was dynamite to fight fire.
Small poX began to break out and /
with five more hospital stewards We're
ordered to vaccinate every man, wom-
an and child we could get, Over 10000
people We're vaccinated in one day.
We alone ~vacrlnated 600. Crooks We're
busy stealing but if caught by our boys
were shot in the streets. Chinese who
refused to carry our wounded We're
shot down like dogs On Friday even
ing SOC, 1000 people We're without
homes, Babies We're born in the
streets; mothers and children died in
parks from hunger and thirst. Bread
was $500 a loaf. If we found any body
with whiskev, beer or wine we were
ordered to take it away from them and
break the bottles. My chum and I on
Wednesday morning rolled Is barrels
, of whiskey into the street and broke
the barrels, then blew the saloon up.
l VI I'hSllL LII ~ w
to the horrors the earth shook twelve
times after the first big shock. No mar
living can describe the awful calamity.
One had to be here to see it. People
!: tried to a V a little but after carrying
their stuff around for miles got SO weak
they dropped every thing and fled.
At the present writing the fire is
nearly all out, but San Francisco is nc
more. I am going over to the island
this evening and change my clothes
and take a bath, / only pray to God
that | may never witness another such
! a calamity. I would have telegraphed
you, but the only way was by wireless
t and that was too expensive. Will write
you again as 0 as this is all over.