Travel through the Qing Dynasty and become emperor

Chapter 465 San Francisco Earthquake
"Just now I said that at this time, the arrow is on the string and we have to launch it. For now, we have to put all our eggs in one basket. Only when Singapore becomes independent can we have a chance!"

"What? Singapore's independence? Is this possible? Just relying on our subordinates to dare to confront the imperial court?"

"Haha, brother, don't say anything else, I just ask if you want to or not?"

"My lord, don't leave me, me"

"It's not you. Everyone knows that in this kind of thing, if you don't succeed, you will be benevolent. If it is done well, it will last forever. If it is not done well, we will die worse than Wang Zhixin. Anyway, we will die sooner or later. It's better to preemptively strike now. You I am not a thing in the pool, a man standing between heaven and earth, should be doing a vigorous career!"

Lu Yongxiang was sweating non-stop, the expression on his face changed a few words, and his whole face was twisted to one side.After a long time, he let out a heavy breath, clenched his fists and said every word: "Okay! He's going to reverse it anyway, and there's no way for me to survive anyway!"

"Okay!" Yuan Shikai took a draft agreement from Liang Shiyi, put it on the table, and said to Lu Yongxiang: "My brother, since it's a matter of raising an issue, I ask you to sign this agreement form just to be on the safe side."

Lu Yongxiang took a look at the alliance list, it basically said that we are willing to form an alliance and make troubles, regardless of life or death, we will be at odds with the imperial court, so he signed Yuan Shikai's name first at the end.He thought for a moment, gritted his teeth, and finally signed his name on the alliance form with difficulty.

Yuan Shikai put away the alliance list and laughed loudly: "Brother, from now on we will be brothers in life and death, we will share good and bad, haha"

"My lord, I agreed, but there is another Fan Xuecheng. This person has always been at odds with your lord. If we want to make trouble, I'm afraid it will be difficult to get things done with this person blocking the way." Lu Yongxiang asked worriedly.

Yuan Shikai's eyes flickered and said: "I have a solution for Fan Xuecheng, as long as your brother can send troops from the side to support it."

Lu Yongxiang patted his chest and said, "Okay! When the time comes, I will just listen to the governor's order."

Yuan Shikai said sadly: "I just received the news when I came here. Now the Yellow River is flooding, and the six northern provinces have been seriously affected. The emperor is being overwhelmed by this matter, and has no time to take care of the southern affairs. Therefore, it is a good time to start an incident. Good opportunity, Haha Zijia, let me make a wish to you first, if I become emperor in the future, you will be the regent of this country, how about it?"

Lu Yongxiang was full of surprises, and hurriedly cupped his hands and said, "Thank you for your cultivation, my lord!"

Southern floods and northern droughts are the most common natural disasters in large areas of China over the years.At the same time, it is also the fuse of the cycle of chaos in ancient China.When the drought in the north was severe, thousands of miles of barren land, tens of millions of people left their homes and wandered around.Great floods in the south often sweep across the coast, destroying the entire army in cities and villages.But this time, a catastrophic flood occurred in northern China. Millions of people were displaced, countless houses collapsed, and were swept away by the flood. China is facing the biggest challenge since the founding of the empire!
At the same time, shortly after the financial turmoil on Wall Street subsided, news came from San Francisco that at around 4:18 am on April 5, 12, the Richter scale was 7.8, and the epicenter was located on the San Andreas fault near San Francisco. superior.The quake's force was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, California, and even as far inland as Nevada.The earthquake and subsequent fires wreaked havoc on San Francisco, arguably one of the worst natural disasters to hit a major city in U.S. history.At that time, officials worried that if the real death toll was announced, it might cause a drop in land prices and affect the severely damaged San Francisco City Hall, so the fabricated death toll was only 478.However, according to Zhao Bingjun's military information network conservatively estimated that the death toll was more than 3000, and it may even be as high as 6000.Most of the casualties were concentrated in San Francisco, while about 189 people were killed in the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area.Santa Rosa, San Jose and Stanford University were also severely damaged. About 40 to 22.5 people are homeless out of a population of 30, and about half of those refugees left the Bay Area for Oakland.

The local San Francisco Express newspaper described makeshift tents strewn across Golden Gate Park, Panhandle Park, and beaches from Ingleside to North Beach.According to the analysis made by Chinese statistical experts afterwards, the loss caused by the earthquake is estimated to be as high as 4 million US dollars.

What was even more frightening was that a fire broke out shortly after the earthquake, making San Francisco even worse after the earthquake.The ensuing fires caused even greater property damage than the massive earthquake and subsequent aftershocks.Several fires broke out in the city, some caused by ruptured natural gas pipelines caused by the earthquake, others by arson, or by bonfires in makeshift tents.Because insurance companies only pay for fire damage and not earthquake damage, some homeowners set fire to their quake-damaged homes to recover.U.S. Army Information Corps Capt. Leonard Weldman reported that a firefighter told him that nearby residents were burning their houses.Because they were told that the house damaged by the earthquake will not be compensated unless the house is also damaged by fire.In the city center, several similar fires mingled into one larger fire.At that time, people who mentioned other places in the reporter's report should understand that it was not a fire in some places in San Francisco, but that the entire city of San Francisco was shrouded in fire.The fire eventually destroyed more than 500 buildings on Yunes Avenue in downtown.Yunes Boulevard is a major artery that divides San Francisco in two and leads directly to the coast of San Francisco.

The fire burned for three days and three nights, and everything in an area of ​​about 8 square kilometers was destroyed.Under the double blow of fire and earthquake, San Francisco experienced an unprecedented catastrophe.Since then, San Francisco has also experienced other earthquakes, but the disaster that occurred at the beginning of the last century is the biggest nightmare for San Francisco people in the past 100 years.

There were erroneous reports at the time that the mayor had declared martial law.In fact, the mayor only issued an order allowing police and soldiers to shoot looters on the spot.In all, about 500 people were shot and wounded.They also tried their best to control the fire. They used the method of blowing up buildings on the edge of the fire zone to create isolation zones, but contrary to expectations, gunpowder often did not destroy buildings but caused fires.The earthquake was so violent that houses inside and outside the urban area collapsed one after another like a deck of cards.Although the housing structure in San Francisco is different from that of Tokyo in the past, it also caused fires when an earthquake occurred. At that time, more than 50 places in the city suddenly caught fire.Brave firefighters rushed to the scene at the risk of collapse of houses on both sides. They turned on the faucets to put out the flames, but no water came out.Only then did people notice that all the underground water pipes buried in the ground were broken.

The situation underground, like the surface, was a mess.The destructive force originally came from the ground, and people should have thought about it long ago.Because the water supply system is still paralyzed, the fire department has very limited resources to use.The desperate firefighters were helpless. Seeing that the fire was burning more and more fiercely, they had to use the gaps in the street to block the fire desperately, trying to confine the fire to a few blocks and prevent it from spreading outward.However, there are too many fires in the city and too few firefighters, so it is impossible to get what you want.The fire finally got out of control, and the flames jumped across the narrow street, quickly licked the opposite block, and spread to other places.The fire burned for three days and three nights, engulfing an urban area of ​​about 10 square kilometers.The firefighters made up their minds, gritted their teeth and used gunpowder to blow up a wide fire zone around the fire area, and finally controlled the fire, preventing San Francisco from being completely burned down like Tokyo 17 years later.

After the disaster, the U.S. Army built 5 redwood and fir relief homes.Relief housing is divided into 610 districts and built similarly, and then rented out to people for $11 a month until their homes are rebuilt.These relief houses are all grass green, on the one hand to coordinate with the surrounding environment, and on the other hand because the army has a lot of green paint on hand.The maximum number of people admitted to these relief houses was as high as 2.But by 16, most people had moved out of the relief housing.These relief homes were then reused as garages, warehouses, or shops.When the eyes of the world were on the disaster of the San Francisco Earthquake, the Yangtze River Basin in southern China actually suffered a flood that caused far more casualties than the San Francisco Earthquake in the United States.

(End of this chapter)