The San Francisco Earthquake of April 18, 1906, remains a seminal event in U.S. history. In its aftermath, residents from Bloomington and the surrounding area, though living some 1,800 miles away from the quake's epicenter, lent a helping hand to the devastated region and its people. | From Our Past page

At 5:12 a.m., a foreshock followed by 45 to 60 seconds of violent shaking left the Bay Area in ruins. An estimated 25,000 buildings fell in less than one minute. The quake ruptured gas and water lines, igniting fires while simultaneously making it impossible to put them out, and many buildings that survived the shaking were soon lost to the flames.

The disaster leveled nearly five square miles of the largest and most important American city on the Pacific Coast (at the time, San Francisco had three times the population of Los Angeles). Some 250,000 residents were left homeless, with most of them living in tent cities at the Presidio army post and municipal parks. The official death toll was around 700, though it's generally agreed that more than 3,000 lost their lives since many buried under debris were incinerated in the firestorms that swept the city.

"San Francisco Is In Ruins" blared the front-page, four-column, double-deck headline in the April 19 Pantagraph. Information traveled rapidly over vast distances via the telegraph. Unfortunately, the earthquake left San Francisco cut off, telegraphically speaking, from the wider world. For those lines that remained open, traffic was so heavy that messages were delayed by several days or more.

For most local residents with family and friends in the Bay Area, letters carried by rail reached Central Illinois before telegrams.

The first "consignment of mail" from San Francisco arrived five days after the earthquake.

Thirst for news was so great that The Pantagraph asked readers to submit all such private correspondence for publication, creating, in effect, a public message board.

A typical letter came from survivor James Hamilton, whose father lived in Beason. "Such was the confusion that strong men, otherwise sane and responsible, ran through the streets, decrying their God and heaping vile imprecations on heaven in their terror," he wrote. Bernard Read, who worked in the counting room of an Oakland newspaper, sent Parke Enlow of Bloomington a letter written the night of April 18. "As I sit here [across the bay] writing by the light of a lantern I can see the flames leaping up into the sky and the whole city is lighted up."

On April 23, Illinois State Normal University senior Mary Dammon received word from her brother Edwin Dammon, an ISNU graduate who was in San Francisco teaching at a YMCA. "The house in which he lived was burned, but he saved nearly all of his belongings," reported The Pantagraph. The first night after the earthquake, Dammon slept in a cemetery alongside his worldly possessions.

Local railroads, including the Chicago & Alton, offered to transport donations of nonperishable food, clothing and other supplies. The Bloomington Canning Co. donated $600 worth of canned corn. Wholesale grocers chipped in, and the public was asked to contribute staples such as beans and coffee.

Local relief contributions totaled more than $1,500 (or about $35,000 in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation).

Donors included the Bloomington City Council, Pantagraph employees, the Elks Lodge, the McLean County Medical Society, labor unions and other businesses and organizations.

On April 22, a concert at the Grand Opera House on East Market Street in downtown Bloomington raised $220, which was forwarded to a relief committee in San Francisco. General admission tickets were 5 cents and box seats a half dollar. The program included selections from popular Wagner, Rossini and Verdi operas.

On April 30, The Pantagraph reported that former Bloomingtonian Will Tucker, the brother of current resident James T. Tucker, was pulled unconscious from a quake-damaged building and taken to a hospital in Los Angeles.

He spent 10 days comatose before waking up and writing a letter to his brother. "He dimly remembers the shock and being dug out of the ruins," The Pantagraph reported, "but his mind was a blank for a week after that. He lost everything he had in the world."