Additional information available.[1]

NOTE: The Herald, Thursday, April 18th 1985

San Ramon Valley Edition
'With nothing but the clothes on our backs'
Survivor recalls quake of '06
by Wendy Cornell

Walnut Creek-Although it has been 79 years since her mother whisked her out of the house at dawn, Jessie Currier says she can still see the bricks falling from the chimney of her family's home on Broadway between Hyde and Larkin streets in San Francisco.

She was 11 years old when the Earthquake, followed by a fire that destroyed most of the city, struck at 5:12 a.m. April 18, 1906, sending panicked residents racing from their homes.

"I remember seeing Chinese people going all day long with big baskets," says Mrs. Currier. "There were so many of them and they all looked so sad."

Her family escaped with "nothing but the clothes on our backs." she says. They spent the first day and night on the street in front of their former home, except for her father, who wasn't afraid to sleep in the house, she recalls.

The next day they walked to Golden Gate Park where the American red Cross had set up tents and brought in food and blankets for the hundreds of thousands of homeless people.

"I remember walking up the hill and seeing all the fire ," said the 90-year-old woman. She managed to salvage a wicker doll buggy filled with some dolls, as well as games and Easter Eggs she had recently received. She pushed the buggy all the way to the park, keeping one dolls porcelain face covered with a piece of flannel, "I was so afraid it was going to get ruined."

The night at the park was scarey, she said, and it was to be her last night in San Francisco. The next day the family took the ferry to Alameda, where, with the help of her future husband's family, they made a new home.

Before the Earthquake, the broadway neighborhood where Mrs. Currier lived was was quiet and residential, she says. She spent much of her time playing with girls who lived across the street, where she herself was born.

After April 18, 1906, she never saw those childhood friends again and to this day does not what became of them, she says.

"I guess everybody moved away. There was nothing to come back to----it was flat for a long time before they built it up again."

From Alameda, she watched her home town burn.

"It was terrible," she recalls. The fire burned for three days and consumed almost all of a 490-square-block area.

For Mrs. Currier, the story had a happy ending. She met and later married Charles Currier as a result of the disaster. His family was one of many in Alameda who helped earthquake victims re-settle there, and a few years later Currier's family moved to within a block of his future wife's home.

"One day his mother sent him down to borrow a bucket, and I gave it to him", recalls Mrs. Currier. "I guess that's when it all started."

They married when she was 20 and remained together for nearly 55 years before he died.

For the past 15 years she has lived in Walnut Creek, where she is near her son and other family members including Diane Condrey of Danville.

Today Mrs. Currier, her granddaughter, and her 11-year-old great-grandaughter planned to cruise the San Francisco Bay on the a 1906 Earthquake and Fire Commemorative Ferry Ride sponsored by the Golden Gate Transportation district.

[1]Nowlin1-05.ged . Date of Import: Jan 22, 2005