Here are a few eye witnesses stories about what it was like.

"The whole house was creaking and shaking, the chandelier was swinging like a pendulum, and I felt as if I were on a ship tossed about by a rough sea. 'This can't go on much longer,' I said to myself. 'When a house shakes like this, the ceiling is bound to collapse. As soon as the plaster begins to fall, I'll cover my head and accept what comes.' "

- Arnold Genthe,“As I Remember It”

This perpective "Nobody knew what to do and everybody seemed rattled. The fire was rapidly increasing and at intervals slight earthquakes would cause small sized panics. People would rush to the middle of the street between the car tracks and stay there quite a while after the shock had passed away. We had stayed in the house and ran down stairs at every slight shock."

-Lloyd Head,“One Boy’s Experience”

"Earthquakes come like Christmas – once a year – or, rather, once a century. I have lived in Japan, Honolulu and Naples, and these are the earthquake countries. They quake only now and then, and as a rule more people die from stale fruit in the tropics than from earthquakes. An earthquake is as innocent as a kid. Keep out of the way of the kid. In truth I know nothing in nature quite so innocent as an earthquake. Look around you in every little village here. Half a dozen houses, and half a dozen happy families, but everything built close down to the ground, with all California to build over. I don't see why we have to crowd into one little plot of land."

- Joaquin Miller,“A Fire So Richly Fed”