.THE 1906 SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE Page 1 of 3 }Imito·com Posted on Sun, Apr. 16, 2006 THE 1906 SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE 100-year-old letters provide vivid accounts By KEVIN HOWE Herald Staff Writer It was California's Hurricane Katrina. But there was no Federal Emergency Management Administration, no Department of Homeland Security when the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 struck 100 years ago Tuesday; just troops ready to shoot looters on sight and a tough, resilient citizenry ready to pitch in and help one another. "Wednesday, April 18th," wrote Monterey attorney Silas Mack to his mother in Canada two days after the quake, "will go down in history as the day of the most terrible calamity the United States, and particularly California, has ever known." Vivid, firsthand descriptions of the earthquake's effect in Monterey survive in the form of letters written within days of the cataclysm and sent East to friends, relatives and business associates, sometimes by private courier when the U.S. Mail shut down. The letters tell of a rude awakening at 5:13 a.m. by "the frightful rumbling and shaking," wrote Louis Magee, a business executive from New York who was staying at the Hotel Del Monte, located on the property now occupied by the Naval Postgraduate School, which suffered major damage in the quake. "Everything seemed to be boiling and seething," said his letter to friends, dated April 19, 1906. "The window-screen against the gray light of the outside world seemed to shake like an ill-adjusted kinetograph. It seemed as if the house was falling about us as crashes and thunders were heard above the general rumble. This proved to be the falling of the chimneys." Mack described that predawn temblor as "accompanied by a dreadful rumbling noise and roaring, not particularly loud but coming as it were from mighty forces at war in the distance. "The house swayed back and forth, it seemed quite a while but I think not more than 25 seconds, then with a sudden wrench stopped." One of the chimneys on a Del Monte Hotel tower toppled and fell through the roof of an adjoining wing, slamming a sleeping honeymooning couple on the second story through their room's floor and down to the ground floor, killing the husband and fatally injuring his bride, who died two days later. In Salinas, buildings on Main Street and a span of the Highway 68 truss bridge over the Salinas River near Spreckels collapsed. Monterey spared the worstl Mack's letter, now in the archival collection of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History of New York City, and Magee's, part of the Pebble Beach Co. archives, describe an early morning confused by swirling fog and a day of aftershocks. Downtown Monterey and Pacific Grove escaped serious damage, which Mack credits to their granite bedrock foundation. "There was not the least damage done in the house," he wrote, "and no dishes, vases or anything breakable hurled to the floor." At the Del Monte Hotel, the story was different, according to Magee's account: 30 of the hoters 40 brick chimneys fell or were so damaged they had to be pulled down later. Magee and his wife went back and forth into their hotel room, unaware that the chimney above was teetering so precariously that "another shock would have sent it down." http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/14355814.htm?template=conte... 4/17/2006 , OCR Text: .THE 1906 SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE Page 1 of 3 }Imito·com Posted on Sun, Apr. 16, 2006 THE 1906 SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE 100-year-old letters provide vivid accounts By KEVIN HOWE Herald Staff Writer It was California's Hurricane Katrina. But there was no Federal Emergency Management Administration, no Department of Homeland Security when the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 struck 100 years ago Tuesday; just troops ready to shoot looters on sight and a tough, resilient citizenry ready to pitch in and help one another. "Wednesday, April 18th," wrote Monterey attorney Silas Mack to his mother in Canada two days after the quake, "will go down in history as the day of the most terrible calamity the United States, and particularly California, has ever known." Vivid, firsthand descriptions of the earthquake's effect in Monterey survive in the form of letters written within days of the cataclysm and sent East to friends, relatives and business associates, sometimes by private courier when the U.S. Mail shut down. The letters tell of a rude awakening at 5:13 a.m. by "the frightful rumbling and shaking," wrote Louis Magee, a business executive from New York who was staying at the Hotel Del Monte, located on the property now occupied by the Naval Postgraduate School, which suffered major damage in the quake. "Everything seemed to be boiling and seething," said his letter to friends, dated April 19, 1906. "The window-screen against the gray light of the outside world seemed to shake like an ill-adjusted kinetograph. It seemed as if the house was falling about us as crashes and thunders were heard above the general rumble. This proved to be the falling of the chimneys." Mack described that predawn temblor as "accompanied by a dreadful rumbling noise and roaring, not particularly loud but coming as it were from mighty forces at war in the distance. "The house swayed back and forth, it seemed quite a while but I think not more than 25 seconds, then with a sudden wrench stopped." One of the chimneys on a Del Monte Hotel tower toppled and fell through the roof of an adjoining wing, slamming a sleeping honeymooning couple on the second story through their room's floor and down to the ground floor, killing the husband and fatally injuring his bride, who died two days later. In Salinas, buildings on Main Street and a span of the Highway 68 truss bridge over the Salinas River near Spreckels collapsed. Monterey spared the worstl Mack's letter, now in the archival collection of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History of New York City, and Magee's, part of the Pebble Beach Co. archives, describe an early morning confused by swirling fog and a day of aftershocks. Downtown Monterey and Pacific Grove escaped serious damage, which Mack credits to their granite bedrock foundation. "There was not the least damage done in the house," he wrote, "and no dishes, vases or anything breakable hurled to the floor." At the Del Monte Hotel, the story was different, according to Magee's account: 30 of the hoters 40 brick chimneys fell or were so damaged they had to be pulled down later. Magee and his wife went back and forth into their hotel room, unaware that the chimney above was teetering so precariously that "another shock would have sent it down." http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/14355814.htm?template=conte... 4/17/2006 , Heritage Society of Pacific Grove,Historical Collections,Names of People about town,L through M File Names,Mack,MACK_007.pdf,MACK_007.pdf 1 Page 1, Tags: MACK_007.PDF, MACK_007.pdf 1 Page 1