EAETHQUAKES ON THE PACIFIC COAST 305 



tied into streets all over the city, and not a few buildings came 

 near collapsing. 



The men in the tower of the fire-alarm station were sure that 

 structure was going to go down. At the Palace Hotel there was 

 great fear among the guests, and all over the city there was 

 alarm. 



The motion was entirely unlike that of earthquakes. Investigation 

 showed that the giant powder works at Highland Station had 

 exploded, and this had involved the Judson Chemical Works near 

 b3^ At this writing three white men are known to be killed, 

 two Chinese are dead, and about twenty Chinese are badly 

 wounded. The explosions started in a nitro-glj'cerine tank about 

 fifty yards from all the other buildings at the works. 



What caused this will never be known, for the men who were in 

 the building were blown into fragments. All that saved the 150 

 men who were at work in the outer buildings was the interval 

 between the original explosion and the next. This was six 

 minutes, and in this time all the hands, white and Chinese, made 

 a rush over the neighboring hill to put that elevation between 

 themselves and the awful death that they knew^ was so near at 

 hand. 



The force of the first explosion was heavy, but it was slight com- 

 pared with the others. First, the powder-mixing house, about a 

 rod from the nitro-glycerine house, went up in a sheet of flame and 

 with a roar that could be heard clear across the bay. A moment 

 later a storehouse followed, also about one rod distant. The 

 houses all caught from the flames, but full 100 rods farther, over 

 a little hill, were three great magazines of giant powder, black 

 powder and dynamite, all of which were exploded by the con- 

 cussion. The first three explosions had been heavy, but they 

 ■were dwarfed by the terrific effect of the blowing up of the first 

 magazine, which contained 350 tons of giant powder. This 

 enormous amount of explosive was in a brick hoiase about 30 

 by 140 feet, and 20 feet high, lying close to the bank, near the 

 water's edge. In quick succession followed the blowing up of a 

 magazine containing 150 tons of black powder and another con- 

 taining an unknown amount of dynamite. These terrific explo- 

 sions caused so great a shock that a large pile of sulphur on a 

 neighboring wharf was set on fire and a vessel that was un- 

 loading it was allowed to drift away to save it from the sarae 

 fate. The force of the explosion wrecked the strong wooden 

 buildings of the Judson Chemical Works a quarter of a mile 

 away. The Avails fell in, and the chemicals began to blaze 

 fiercely. Within one hour the large plant of both works w^as 

 totally destroyed. 



The only building of the powder works remaining is a large mag- 

 azine of gun-cotton which the firemen are trying to save. It 



