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Show L-AN FRANCISCO DISASTER. No one can form any clear idea of such a calamity calam-ity as that which overtook San Francisco yesterday i orning, except by being on the ground and grasp-i: grasp-i: 2 it step by step, minute by minute, and then it vould require a day or two for such an one to be-come be-come calm enough to be coherent; for of all terrors that of a great earthquake is most appalling and comes nearer than anything else to making chaos of the human mind. ' In the confusion' of yesterday it was impossible to "make any reasonable calculations of , the awful calamity,' but enough is known to make it clear .that nothing so terrible has ever happened before in the United States. The loss of life is appalling, the loss of property is beyond estimation, while' the resultant effects upon San Francisco and California ,will be such that it will require years and years for the State and city to recover from it. When we jread of such buildings as the Call, and Occidental and City Hall being destroyed, that because of the rwrenching apart of the water mains such structures as the Palace hotel and Grand have been given over to' the flames, that hundreds of dead bodies have .already been recovered; that beyond San Francisco,' Fran-cisco,' Berkeley and Santa .Rosa the same destructive . agents have spread their wrecks, (and that even thirty miles up the bay at Benicia ,'the railroad tracks have sunk several . feet, and ' Ganta Rosa destroyed, and that fifty miles !in the other direction, at San Jose, the ; business part of the town has been turned into ruin, .we get a . little idea of the calamity which amounts 'practically to a cataclysm. . . We believe it is the first experience in the his-I'tory his-I'tory of skyscrapers where an earthquake has taken ;lts march under their walls It has always been sup-iposed.that sup-iposed.that on its foundations and its upper structure struc-ture of steel the skyscraper would be.safe against both hurricane and earthquake, but evidently in fian Francisco the ground of the city has been churned by the seismic throes, for it is said there are cracks six feet wide in the streets. Indeed it 1 seems it amounts to almost the annihilation of the lower part of the city. Then the fire came to complete com-plete the ruin. Of -course there ib anxiety from sea to sea over it. A great many Salt Lake students are in Berkeley Berke-ley and Palo Alto, a great many Salt Lake people are visiting in San Francisco, and we presume it is the same way with every important town in the -country. ; It is a calamity unparalleled in our country. The great earthquake at Charleston did not compare com-pare with it, neither did the earthquakes, which for a series of months raged in the Mississippi valley, '.in Western Kentucky and Tennessee. All man can do is to contemplate the horror and to mourn with the brave people who, through earthquake earth-quake and through fire, are left desolate and half-broken-hearted. |