April 17, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 8Oakland, CA

1906 disaster spurs new ministries in East Bay

• Holy Names Sisters move three times to escape fire engulfing San Francisco

• Presentation Sisters become refugees and relief workers

• Providence Sisters comfort quake victims at hospital in Oakland

The 1906 earthquake and fire that struck San Francisco sent aftershocks throughout the Bay Area and changed not only the San Francisco skyline, but also the population of the East Bay.

Believed to have been at least 7.8 on the Richter scale, the quake wrought severe damage to San Francisco’s buildings and its major water mains, but it was the fires started from severed gas lines and toppled stoves that destroyed some 500 city blocks, including the city’s financial, business and industrial districts.

The human toll was particularly grim. Although the official death toll was set at about 500, a revised examination of data estimates that more than 3,000 people died. About half of the city’s 400,000 were left homeless.

At least half of the Catholic churches and institutions operated by the Archdiocese of San Francisco were destroyed or damaged. The quake destroyed St. Dominic Church and Mission Dolores; nearly a dozen more were consumed by fire.

Religious communities were also hard hit. Among the schools and church institutions lost were:

The Presentation Convent School (North Beach) the Sacred Heart Presentation Convent School, St. Vincent’s School (South of Market), St. Mary’s Hospital (Rincon Hill), Sacred Heart College at Eddy and Larkin, Our Lady of Mercy Academy, St. Francis Day Home (North Beach), Sacred Heart Day Home (Hayes Valley), Holy Family Kindergarten (South of Market), the Youth’s Directory, and Our Lady’s Home on Rincon Hill. St. Ignatius College (now the University of San Francisco) was also destroyed.
Thousands made homeless by the disaster in San Francisco found their way to Oakland and Berkeley.
The large influx of refugees, many of whom were Catholic, quickly increased the populations of several parishes.

One of the most notable changes occurred at St. Elizabeth Parish, established in 1892 as a German National Church within the boundaries of St. Anthony Parish. On July 3, 1906, San Francisco Archbishop Patrick Riordan declared it a “mixed parish” to serve the huge influx of displaced people now living in the area. The parish was given its own territorial
jurisdiction in 1907.

Archbishop Riordan also established several new parishes and missions to serve the new East Bay residents. Parishes formed in Oakland were St. Andrew (in 1907), St. Augustine (1907), St. Louis Bertrand (1908), St. Jarlath (1910), and St. Leo (1911).

Two missions were also established -- St. Bernard (1909) which became a parish in 1912, and St. Lawrence O’Toole (1911) which became a parish in 1916.

The increasing numbers of Catholics in Berkeley, then served solely by St. Joseph Parish, led to the establishment of St. Ambrose Parish in 1909.

Holy Names Sisters move three times to escape fire engulfing San Francisco

(Below is a first-person account by Holy Names Sister Imelda of the Blessed Sacrament who was living at St. Joseph School in San Francisco on April 18, 1906, when fires caused by the earthquake began to spread throughout the city.)

We soon learned that the city was on fire and that this fire would, in all probability, reach us before the day was over. Sister Superior secured two carriages and sent two boarders with several Sisters to the ferry thinking the passage to Oakland was as usual.

These dear Sisters suffered on that trip. They passed down streets where the buildings were on fire on both sides of the street, they saw men fall dead, they saw animals on the street that had been killed by live wires, they prayed, thinking they would be killed any moment. When they were almost at the ferry they were ordered back as no boats were running.

Meanwhile things were being done at the convent. … Mattresses and pillows were thrown from the windows and bedding with the Sisters clothing were bundled and carried to drays. There were typewriters and pianos, holy habits, house chronicles, house account books, statues (that had not broken), altar furnishings. …

After a long, hard walk, all the Sisters arrived at St. Peter’s Convent and were welcomed by the Sisters of Mercy. …

The fire had turned and we must move again… to St. John’s, a distance of many miles.

… On Friday, April 20, the report came – ‘the fire is out’. All our Sisters were safe. In fact, no priest or Sister or religious in the city was hurt…

Sister Superior decided not to take all our Sisters back to St. Peter’s but to send them to Oakland, about 10 in a group. On arriving in Oakland, they were treated royally. They were given a place to take a warm bath and a good steak dinner afterwards.

Presentation Sisters become refugees and relief workers

By Voice staff

When the earthquake hit on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, it awakened the Sisters of the Presentation who were living in their two convent schools -- one at the corner of Taylor and Ellis streets and the other at the corner of Powell and Lombard.

Their buildings were not seriously damaged, but within hours the Sisters had to abandon them because of several fires that were ravaging the city.
The Sisters at Taylor and Ellis watched as the fire burnt its way up Market Street, then they watched as Army engineers began dynamiting structures to create fire breaks.

At 10:35 p.m. the convent and school which they had nurtured for nearly 50 years and all that it contained, including a library that was known as one of the best private libraries in the city, was blown up by fire crews.

Sixty-three Sisters from both convents evacuated to a wharf on the Embarcadero where they boarded crowded ferries for a pier in Oakland.
There an improvised relief corps helped refugees board trains. The corps provided cars for the Sisters, who finally arrived at their convent in Berkeley on Friday at 2 a.m.

On April 25, four Sisters returned to San Francisco to help at a relief station on Telegraph Hill. Two days later, another two Sisters crossed the Bay to open a temporary school for the children of refugee families. It was the first school in San Francisco after the fire.

The Sisters in Berkeley opened a relief station with funds and supplies from the Central Catholic Relief Bureau, which had been established by the pastor of St. Francis de Sales Church in Oakland because the civic relief program was discriminating against Catholics.

St. Joseph Parish in Berkeley also established a relief station at Presentation School, and, in the first days after the quake and fire, cared for more than 1200 homeless people.

Because of the growing demand for clothing, the Sisters set up a sewing center in their Berkeley convent.

“Sewing machines hummed and nimble fingers plied needles and thread as the nun-seamstresses turned bolts of material…into piles of new garments and mended clothes,” wrote Presentation Sister Mary Rose Forest in her book “With Hearts of Oak.” By May 5, the Berkeley convent had given clothes to more than 150 women and children.

In early May, Sister Mary Xavier and three other Sisters opened a school at the Hearst Refugee Camp in Oakland’s Adams Point neighborhood. They taught classes in a tent that had no seating. There were only a few old books available, so students had to pass the books among themselves.

The Sisters also visited the families of their students. These visitations resulted in an increase in baptisms and the return of a number of people to the sacraments, Sister Forest noted.

Two weeks after the opening of the Adams Point school, the Sisters opened a school at the Dimond Canyon Camp in East Oakland. Mother Mary Calasanctius, the mistress of the novices, and four of the young Sisters conducted this school.

The Presentation Sisters also took charge of an infant shelter set up at St. Francis de Sales Church. Father Thomas McSweeney, pastor, had opened the refuge to care for children who had been separated from their parents. Over a two-month period most parents found their children, but a few children were never reunited with their parents, possibly because the adults had died in the disaster. These children were sent to the Daughters of Charity at Mount St. Joseph Orphanage in South San Francisco.

(Information for this account is taken from “With Hearts of Oak” by Sister Mary Rose Forest, PBVM.)

Providence Sisters comfort quake victims at hospital in Oakland

In the days after the April 18, 1906 earthquake, the Sisters of Providence sent reports from Providence Hospital at the corner of Broadway and 26th Street in Oakland. Below are excerpts from those reports:

Sister Marie Raoul to the Superior General:
The 5 a.m. bell had just rung; we were, therefore, all kneeling for the offering of the day when a terrible earthquake, accompanied by a sinister sound, shook small beds, wash basins, etc. One second later, another tremor, but stronger, demolished statues, walls everything.

Neither Sisters nor patients were hurt; but it was different to see the terror on every face and how terrible was the crackling sound which completed the destruction.

It is now 10:00 p.m. The ground has quaked at every hour of the day, but those tremors are light. This is nothing comparable to the sight of the beautiful City of San Francisco in flames. We hear, at every moment, the explosion of dynamite, of electric power, etc. the entire population is in panic.

We visited every room so as to pacify the patients and to supplicate Heaven to spare us further tragedy.

At 1:00 a.m., another tremor. San Francisco burns unceasingly; the patients arrive in overloaded ships. Kindly recommend us to the prayers of the community.

Sister Raoul to her brother:
At approximately 5:12 a.m., on the morning of April 18, a first shock was felt in Oakland which was at the same time of that felt in San Francisco; the census of the hospital, at the time was 80 patients, most of whom needed very special care. Some had undergone surgery on the previous day; others were victims of accidents with fractures and bandaged heads.

We had to multiply our activities under these circumstances: knowing that Providence would protect us, we went ahead with haste, without worrying for the possibility of further danger.
Fifty children were born on the streets of San Francisco on April 18 and here in Oakland, we have had 20 premature babies.

Every day we receive poor persons from San Francisco who have not shelter. These poor people plead with us to take them in and that they will work for their room and board only.

Sister Irene:
We had to place beds on every corner of the house wherever possible to accommodate one more victim of the catastrophe. As for those who had become mentally ill, we had to tie them to their beds. We endeavored to convince them that the belts were built with an electric current that would help in their recovery.

Others, who had heart attacks, cannot overcome the fright caused by the horrors they witnessed and they constantly scream in despair for they see the flames at all times and believe the flames come toward them.

A goodly number of Sisters have refused to remain in their beds in the dormitory, for fear of a new panic. The shocks continue to be felt, although weakly, but are sufficient to have them relive their first emotions. I can say that we feel as though on board ship, tossed by the waves of an agitated ocean, then again we feel thrown into mountainous torrents of water; this sensation is so strong that we can barely realize whether they are real or only the effect of the imagination…

A group of Presentation Sisters set up a school for refugee children living at Dimond Canyon Camp in Oakland.
PHOTO: PRESENTATION ARCHIVES, SAN FRANCISCO

Soon after the quake neighbors gathered around St. Joseph School in San Francisco. Later in the day, fire destroyed the school.
PHOTO: HOLY NAMES SISTERS ARCHIVES

Presentation Sisters and some of their students pose for a photo amid the ruins of Presentation Convent in San Francisco.
PHOTO: PRESENTATION ARCHIVES, SAN FRANCISCO

Saint Mary’s College in Oakland survived the quake with little damage. The granite cross and coping on the gable of the roof fell and demolished the front porch and upper flight of stairs and there were a few cracked ceilings inside. The Christian Brothers suspended classes for a few days while the 300 students helped clean up the debris. Cost of repairs was about $20,000.
PHOTO: CHRISTIAN BROTHERS ARCHIVES

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