As the milkman slows to navigate wreckage in the street, I hear one woman dressed in finery ask another if she thinks it is safe to leave their homes unoccupied while they await utilities to be restored, because surely there will be looters. When disaster strikes there are always looters. The other says she doesn’t know but she is afraid to go back inside her house. Besides, her maid can’t even so much as make her a cup of tea. Her entire set of Royal Doulton is in pieces on the floor, and on top of that, the toilet isn’t working. The first woman says she’s returning to her house anyway.

We move past them and I hear the clang of a fire brigade as it bursts out of its shed. A man on the street yells that the wharf is on fire, and someone else answers that Market Street is on fire, too, as is a building south of Mission. Broken gas lines are sparking and feeding hungry flames. I look to the east, toward the bay, and it’s hard to see past the tallest buildings, a great many of which are still standing. But then I see a plume of slate-colored smoke, and then another farther to the south. The smoke is different from the dust: The dust hovers and then eventually falls; the smoke reaches for the sky like it means to own it. We pass a four-storied building just as it starts to cave in on itself, and the milkman urges Ginger away.

“My family is inside!” a woman yells, and I have to look away as several people rush to pull her back from the trembling building. Seconds later, the structure falls behind us and the horse spooks. Kat and I are tossed to the floor of the wagon as the animal lurches forward in fright. Several tense seconds pass before the milkman again regains control of the horse.

Kat and I are now thoroughly covered in milk and dust and dirt.

“Are you all right, love?” I pull Kat to me and brush broken glass off the skirt of her dress. She doesn’t answer, not even to nod yes or no. “We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine,” I coo to her as the wagon returns to a steadier pace. She leans into me, and that movement is almost like an answer to my question, but I don’t know which it is. Yes, she is all right, or no, she is not.

The damage from the earthquake is worse the farther south we head. I think I see St. Mary’s Cathedral off to my right, but it looks different, smaller, as if emptied of its sacredness. Some buildings have collapsed around it; some are leaning. There are all manner of people in the streets and on the littered walkways, dazed or crying or bloodied. Some are pulling at bricks and planks piled in heaps to rescue those trapped inside partially fallen buildings. I see a woman and man sitting on the crumbled steps of an apartment building with a dead child in the father’s arms. I look away from them and pull Kat close to me so that she will see only the front of my dirtied shirtwaist.