SANTA BARBARA TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 10

SANTA BARBARA TRAGEDY

THE BIG SHAKE WRECK AND AWFUL RUIN (Auckland ‘ Star’s ’ ’Frisco correspondent.) July 1. A hot June sun rose on a physically prostrated city by the blue Pacific that throbbed', nevertheless, through every pile of her earthquake debris with the indomitable spirit of reconstruction, but the tablets of death indicated that twelve victims had paid with ther lives their portion of the toll taken by earth tremors that started on the morning of June 29, at 0.44 o’clock, and continued at various intervals throughout the clay and on through the Jght, and even until the time this dispatch was leaving San Francisco, three now shocks doing extensive damage and shaking down mere chimneys and buildings in toto. In the hospitals lay thuty seriously injured persons, while conservative estimates of material damage, which, however, oou.d not be definitely confirmed until i>n .architectural survev had been made, lived the los- at 30,000,000.1 01. The piincipal artery of ibe city is State street, some two miles long, extending from the beach to above the magnificent Arlington Hotel, now a wreck and awful ruin. State street is now a torn and twisted business district, presenting as it Joes a desolate appearance that threw into bold relief the optimism ol the men and women who owned the wrecked stores, hotels, banks, Rnd other buildings, which were converted into dust heaps in 'a few minutes by the terrible series of upheavals that visited the fair city.

In front of one shop lay what was lofc of a small automobile. Blocks of stone weighing 4001 b or _ 5001 b each had crushed it flat, and in vliair fall had ground out tho life of William Proctor, window cleaner, who bad just driven up to his early morning task when tiic temblor came.

Acro.Vi tiic way stood a five-ton truck, one of the burly giants of the highways, shattered under a similar avalanche of stone, brick, and mortar. In the crumpled ruins of the exclusive Arling f on Hotel, ibe mecca of world travellers fo r years, the fall of a tank containing (30,000 gallons of water had swojii ti their deaths Airs Claries E. i’orkins, aged millionaire widow, of Burlington, jowa, and Bertram J 3; Hancock, roc ol Allan Hancock, wealthy Los Angeles realty dealer. Th 3 latter es;ip;d v'th th'-ce broken ribs and scalp wounds, after failing and sliding three stones to the ground from the room beside that in winch his son met Id's death.

The finest building in the town, the San Marcos, a big four-story, first-class structure, built as an L 011 a corner, bad its whole centre pushed into the debris. Dr Janes Angle, dentist, was killed in this crash, and his body was not recovered for nearly twenty four hours. MASS OF JUNK. Diehl’s grocery, said to have been one of the finest shops of its type in the West, which represented an outlay of 250,000d01, was a mass of junk. At the other end of the fourteen blocks of State street, which approximately marked tho extent of the serious business district damage, the brand new California Hotel, a hostelry of 100 rooms, oonipleted within the week, was.a total wreck. The roof had collapsed in several places, and throughout its entire height one corner had been ripped bare, exposing the beds as they stood prepared for guests, careening at a dizzy angle, and threatening at any moment to skid out into tiie brick-littered street. Another comparatively new hotel, the Carillo, two largo wings of filled concrete construction, was badly shaken in its two lowest floors, but above that the walls seemed to be as good as now. The interior furnishings, however, all showed the mark of the. temblor.

Here and there throughout the downtown section the pavement and streets bulged and cracked, while in some locations it had been slashed and chopped into fragments a foot square by tho grinding force of the successive tremors. in the older and less pretentious residential districts the earthquake had played queer pranks with the wooden homes built a quarter century and abalf ago. One sagged crazily in front, its gable hanging 2ft nearer the road thaq its foundation posts. Another bad buckled in the middle, and leered at the passing world through bay windows, which, until tho ...visitation of the previous day, had been sheltered from tho summer sun by an old-fashioned verandah. LIKE AJAR INF .'ORAL

“ I have boon through fifty earthquakes, but never one like this before,” said Alanagcr Richmond of tho Arlington Hotel. “It just took the hotel that wo considered as strong as a fortress and shook it back and forth as if it were a rag. It was precisely as if one were at sea, in a storm. One would not believe it were possible for a building to move with such force in so many directions, and apparently so limply as did the Hotel Arlington. The hotel is a total loss.”

Father Angnsten, at the old Santa Barbara Mission, told a thrilling story of what bo declared to be a miraculous delivery. At ihe first tremor ho went to tho sccond-story room, where Father Englebrccbt, aged priest and author of 1 Historic,s of the Mission,' was confined as an invalid. Lifting the invalid priest to his back, Father August en proceeded to tho stairway, when, with the second shock, ho fell through a hole to the tloor below with tho invalid priest on his back. Neither was injured.

Ole Hansen, former Mayor of Seattle, gave the following eye-witness account of the catastrophe;—“lt was about 6.44 a.m. The air was sultry. Kverv- : thing was quiet. I noticed as 4 lay on my bed that quite a large wave dashed against the beach. The ground seemed to rise up with a crunch, something like a million dogs crunching a hone. I leaped out ol bed, and the floor seemed to rise up and hit’ me. 1 stepped again, and it seemed as if I could not roach tho floor. Then I heard an explosion like a great fuse, and 1 saw the walls of the power plant, a block away, fall, then a bright blue flame, such .-is they use iii movies at night, lit up the heavens, and then flashed out. Right behind mo I heard a rending. Two blocks away I saw the walls of the new California Hotel lean over gradually and collapse, leaving tho occupants lying safely in bed, some covered and some uncovered. They all escaped.” OTHER VERSIONS. Parts of the residential district of Santa Barbara wero thrown into an indescribable panic by the earthquake, according to Walter'Hamilton, of Los Angeles, and John Spray, of Santa Barbara, two carpenters who wero in the ill-fated city “There came a sudden jolt ; I was sitting on the bed,” said Hamilton, “and wo knew that an earthquake was on. Everybody ran out on the street. The .children especially were scared, and their cries liljed the air. Everybody was scared.

“Women and men were running around, not knowing what to do. Many of them were half dressed or still in their night clothes. But they got quiet after a while, and people would run back' into their homes and get something to, eat, and then run out again with it and eat it. You never saw such a sight on the street, with everybody all out. I did not know there were so many people in Santa Barbara. “Three houses went on fire, and there was no water and no-gas. The city reservoir broke, and the water ran down the streets like a river. We saw lots of homes wrecked—lots_ of little houses. The residential district looked

terrible, and they were taking out the dead when we left.” “It was worse than the San Francisco earthquake of 1906,” emphatically declared another Santa Barbara man, who had turned special officer for the evening, delegated to take a party of San Francisco newspapermen through the streets that were peing patrolled, in order to keep curiositv' seekers at bay. “Not so severe a shock as the one experienced in San Francisco,” said Lynn Simpson, who was then telegraph editor of the San Francisco ‘Chronicle,’ and is now editor; of the Santa Barbara ‘Daily News.’ “The main shock /lasted about 12sec to 15sec, but it did not have that final tlirust we experienced in San Francisco that April morning.” ROLLED LIKE WAVES. A taxi driver at Hoff’s garage declared he was at the depot when the first quake occurred. He said the ground rolled like the sea in waves. Earl Sylvester, who drives for the Santa Barbara Packing Company, had just carried a side of beef from his truck into the market, and returned to crank his truck. When the ground beneath him commenced to wave and the walls lean, he dashed past the truck just as the front wall* ■ of the building fell, crushing his truck ; with its load of beef under tons of brick and mortar. One of the peculiar features of the earthquake was the bursting of the connections of some of the gasolen* tanks m the lower part of the city. When these pipes burst gasolene poured in a flood over the low part of the city and into the drainage areas. For a time’ danger of fire was desperate. The leaking pipes were attacked immediately by a force of repair men, and in a short time the leakage was stopped and the menace of fire removed. The Sheffield reservoir was completely swept away by the tremor, and the wall of water which swirled down the channel of Alisos creek carried with it hundreds, of thousands of dollars’ worth of small buildings and homes. ,

That a fire more destructive in its magnitude did not follow the ’quake was due entirely to the heroism and presence of mind of William Engle, who braved tons of falling' bricks to turn off the electric switch in the Southern California division powerhouse on Castollo street. When the ground trembled under the impulse of the first terrific crash the power-house roof toppled in, and Tingle leaped through the tumbling debris, and threw one Switch after another, shutting out from the city the current of electricity. Ho was bleeding from painful cuts about the face-and hands, but bo stayed by the job until he knew all was safe. FURTHER DISASTER.

Beautiful Santa Barbara, sleeping wearily but warilv among the ruins, was shattered, and shaken by a now ami devastating earth tremor on June 30 on three separate occasions. One shock, equalling in intensity the original quake, seized and tossed and rattled the city at an hour when inhabitants and rescue workers alike believed danger had passed. For several minutes following the initial crash the earth continued to tremble violently. The din as ruined walls collapsed further and new buildings came down was terrific. Then followed the cries and shouts of tho people who had thought to snatch a brief respite from the terrors of the previous day Out from houses and from tents, in which many had taken the precaution to sleep, poured Santa_ Barbarans to view the fresh destruction. Hundreds of special officers were at their posts, and assisted in keeping order as boss they could through Hie disaster. , Darkness added increased danger, as bricks, debris, and the m.turosque Spanish cornices that were Santa Barbara’s pride, came hurtling down. All possible illumination was turned on the ruins in an effort to determine if the now shocks had added to the death list. When the second disaster occurred there was a groat exodus 1 f residents to the outside cities, many families not waiting for daylight, but starting along tin highways, carrying clothing and household goods with them. There was the inevitable “ earthquake baby,” born to Airs Christena Rodriguez, in the St. Francis Hospital while Hie building trembled in the grip of the quake. Ruth Clarke, the nurse attending, was felled „by a balustrade that gave way when she was descending the stairway, and she was pitched tli".ougb a window to the "ourtyarcl below. On State street a dog, both hind legs broken by slabs of falling concrete, dragged, itself to safety. .It was accorded the same medical care furnished humans, and will live. \Vhile Bed Cross nurses wete teeming into Santa Barbara from -ill parts of the West millions of dollars were being subscrib'd for tho rebuilding of. the stricken ,itv. and it was predicted that it will .fiostly follow the example of San Fran-isco. which was destroyed in 1000 by earthquake and /ire, only to be rebuilt on more pretcnt’.o’.m lines., A programme of with tho indomitable, cheerful spirit of pioneers in a virgin land, was quickly mapped out, and whore the walls had crashed work soon began with tho clatter and buzz of the hammer and saw, while motor trucks wore carting away tho thousands of ions of debris. All the banks reopened, doing business in temporary quarters, and grocery shops soon followed suit. Trainloads of food and clothing were rushed into Santa Barbara from ibo outside world. President Coolidgc giving orders Hint every assistance was to be afforded the stricken sufferers of the Californian queen resort.