Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1906. Journal helps readers reach loved ones after San Francisco quake

The Providence Journal was on the streets, and Rhode Island was stirring to life just after 8 a.m. on April 18, 1906, as the ground began to shake violently on the other side of the continent.

The trembling lasted about a minute. When it was done, much of the city of San Francisco lay in ruins. Most of what had not fallen down in the quake would burn down in the conflagration that followed.

The Journal's afternoon paper, The Evening Bulletin, swung into action, but information was slow in coming from the devastated Bay area. The day of the quake, The Bulletin published four extras, with news of the disaster filling two pages, including all of the front page.

The next morning The Journal devoted its first five pages to the earthquake. The Bulletin followed suit with three extras. The final edition, dedicating its first eight pages to the catastrophe, bore three stacked banner headlines on its front page, topped by: "BEAUTIFUL SAN FRANCISCO GONE; FIRE AND EARTHQUAKE CONQUER."

For The Journal's newly arrived managing editor, John Rathom, the disaster was personal. He had spent part of his early career in San Francisco, reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Perhaps using Rathom's contacts, The Journal, on the morning after the quake, offered its telegraph and other means of communication for Rhode Islanders to search for friends and relatives in San Francisco.

Journal file / UPI photo

Photographer J.B. Monaco recorded the devastation near the Hall of Justice after the 1906 earthquake that struck San Francisco, killing hundreds of people and leveling thousands of buildings.

On the morning of April 21, three days after the quake, The Journal reported it had made contact with its correspondents in Oakland, across the Bay from San Francisco. These correspondents were probably acquaintances of Rathom's; it seems unlikely The Journal had people stationed in Oakland in 1906. The correspondents were instructed to take the ferry into San Francisco and post the names of people sought by Rhode Islanders. The lists included instructions to contact Rhode Island by mail or by telegraph, at Journal expense. That first list had more than 300 names on it.

A week after the quake, The Journal's list had grown to 700 names, and reports began appearing in the paper of firsthand accounts of the quake from people in San Francisco who had sent word to family and friends back in Rhode Island.