The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1906-05-07

The following are portions of a let
ter received by q T. Henshall from
his brother. a San Francisco attor-
ney:
April %, 1906.
Dear George This will let you know
that I am alive but that is all The
office is burned to the ground and the
house in which l lived utterly destroy
ed. I saved nothing but the clothes I
have on. ! cannot speak positively
about Alice. Elsie or Vera. but l am
confident all are safe. Elsie is i'm Oak
land, but exactly where l can not say;
but l think l can find her today. She
is. of course safe.
l would have written before this but
couldn't do it; if you had seen what l
saw, your pen would refuse to write.
It seemed to create a sort of paralysis
of the BRAIN had forgotten the num-
bers on the streets, where my friends
lived, even but / am feeling fairly
well today
Perhaps you would like a slight de-
scriptiOn of the earthquake and fire,
from an eyewitness for l saw the
whole thing from Wednesday morning
Wednesday night. At 5:13 on Wednes-
day morning l was awakened from
deep sleep by a fearful defamation. ac-
cOmpanied by a rocking motion of the
room, of an indescribabe character
you could not stand on the floor, when
you stepped on it, it wasn't there.
did not have time to get out of my
room until it was all over; and then I
stayed and dressed. There We're two
shocks: and the second one was Il
peach"
When I got on the street, people We're
about, and i'm the district where | was,
things were fairly i'm good order. The
buildings had not suffered much dam
age apparently. But when 1 got down
to the city. what a sight / saw. The
City Hall dome had shifted about ten
feet to the right, and seemed to stand
on stills; bricks were everywhere,
stones and dirt covered the streets,
buildings were half-down. and general
ly a ruinous scene presented itself. All
this, however, was not so bad the city
had stood the shock; buildings were
there and while the loss of life and
damage was very great, it was not
half so great as might have been eX-
pected. 1t was bad enough, but it was
a trfle to what followed.
Within ten minutes after the shock
had passed, and while each was con-
graduating himself on his escape, fires
broke out in over twenty-five different
places. The water supply had prac-
tically stopped, and, of course, the fire
l.
struck together were inadequate to
cope with such a situation. Not since
the fire-age,N nor since Dante dreamed
his hell, did anyone see such a fire, as
that one. 1t swept forward and on
ward, backward and around, through
brick and stone, iron and steel burn
ing, crushing, eating, leaping across
streets jumping over buildings, eX-
ploding oil tanks-it seemed to be COM
manded by a general superhuman sa-
gacity. Very soon the city was under
martial law, and you found it difficult
to get around. Back fires We're COM
menced, and parts of the city We're
dynamited by those who little knew
their work The effect of these eXplo-
sions was to wreck buildings and dis
tribute the fire to other parts. The
work, if done right, as l later saw it,
caused simply a collapse, and that two
of several structures at once. I saw
a back fire started in a house that
must have cost $4,000 to 100000 Very
soon all of south of Market street was
gone, the Palace Hotel simply crum-
bed away. the Winchester disappeared
like magic, and the Call building, the
supposed five-proof structure, caught
fire at the cafe. and burned down
wards
There is no use to describe anything
further You know the city and yol