addition, there was shelter for everyone.

The water supply improved every day. Nearly everywhere the order to
boil drinking water was enforced.

All vacant houses in the unburned district were seized. Many vacant
flats were taken where the homeless are housed and the sick found good
accommodations. Churches, and other buildings, including schoolhouses,
were turned into living rooms for the homeless.

In some of the provisional camps established for refugees near the
foot of Van Ness avenue and near Fort Mason it was difficult to
distinguish men from women. The supply of women's clothing had been
exhausted, and many women could be seen dressed in ordinary soft
shirts and overalls. In that garb they walked about their tents
unconcernedly.

It was no time for false modesty and those who were able to make
themselves comfortable in any sort of clothing were indeed fortunate.

Within a week conditions had improved so rapidly that there was
enough water in the mains to justify the removal of the restrictions
on washing. Up to that time the only way to get a bath was to dip into
the bay. Lights, only candles, of course, were allowed up to 10 p. m.

An idea of the Titanic task of feeding the refugees may be gained from
the figures of the number of hungry people fed in one day. Throughout
the city rations for 349,440 persons were distributed. At one point
provisions were given out to 672 people in an hour for ten hours.

Two thousand persons were fed daily at St. Mary's cathedral on Van
Ness avenue, a relief station organized by the Rev. Father Hannigan
and headed by him as chairman of the committee. This was perhaps the
best organized and most systematically conducted private station in
the city. The committee has a completed directory of the fifty square
blocks in the district, and so perfect was the system that there is no
duplicating and wrangling. Nine substations gave out orders, and it
was arranged for those stations to give out food also. Fourteen
members of the clergy were in charge of the various branches of the
work.

The emergency hospitals were well organized under direction of army
medical officers, and there were plenty of doctors and nurses after
the second day.

The only complaint that really existed at that time was the lack of
bedding. Though the army and navy were called upon for blankets,
quilts, and the like, the supply furnished by those departments was
not enough to relieve immediate needs.