100 years ago today, at 5:13am, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake shook northern California for around a full minute. While the earthquake was no walk in the park, it was the subsequent fires that wiped out 80% of the city. The brand new City Hall was destroyed. The official death toll is 500, but in the interests of keeping business coming, that number is much less than the 3000 estimated to have died.
Folks, if you have a chance today, raise a toast to San Francisco, who bounced back better than ever in but a few years, and hosted the 1915 world’s Fair to show it off. And let’s all hope that New Orleans can enjoy a similarly quick and grand recovery.
The SF Gate link above is a compilation of stories about San Francisco, then and now, and will run for another week. If you’re interested in learning about this turning point in my hometown’s history, I highly recommend it.
And if you live in an area prone to natural disasters, see what your local government recommends you do in preparation. As Hurricane Katrina sadly illustrated, we’ll be on our own for a while. San Francisco’s preparation site is here: http://72hours.org
I wonder if there is anyone in SF old enough to actually remember the event. They’d have to be at least 106 or 107 years old, but people actually do live that long sometimes.
I once read a book about the disaster, written in the late 60’s or early 70’s, and it said that to this day(when written) elderly folk were still having problems proving their age, because of the destruction of the City Hall and all it’s records. Church records, baptismal certificates, newspaper birth announcements and so on were used so that folks could qualify for Social Security and Medicare.
I szaw some of the news stories, and was surprised when they said that they couldn’t put a Richter number on the quake because they lacked modern equipment. But there’s a Richter reading in the OP here, and I know for a fact that there’s a book publuished that contains nothing but seismograph recordings of the 1906 earthquake, from seismograms all over the world.
that should have a few people a bit concerned in north calif.
there are quite a few things they did in 1906 san fran. that they should do in nola.
the small houses they built for people as starters were amazing. also amazing that many of them are still standing where they were moved to after the quake. looking quite different from 1906 now, but a great idea that worked and has literally stood the test of time.
There was an article in the recent Smithsonian magazine about the fairly small contingent of men who worked 'round the clock to save the mint from the fire after the quake. It said that in saving the mint, they went a long way toward saving the U.S. economy, since there was so much gold stored there. It always amazes me, how some seemingly small things have such wide ramifications. And how much personal courage and perseverence people can come up with when they have to.
I’m always confused by Richter ratings, even for modern quakes they’re all over the map. While growing up, the Great SF Quake was always 8.3, but now it’s anywhere from 7.8 to 8.5. Even the '94 Northridge quake, ranges from 6.5 to 6.9, depending on what day of the week it is or what color shirt your dog is wearing at the time. What’s up with that!!
Gotta say, California leads the world in disaster preparedness. We have to be…this is freakin’ disaster central! Floods, wildfires, riots…everything except tornados & hurricanes.
Of course, CA hasn’t had a “Great” earthquake (8.0 or higher) since 1906. They think all the newest infrastructure – freeway overpasses, skyscrapers, etc. – will survive a direct hit of 7.5 - 8.5 right under downtown L.A., or one of the other newly discovered faults, but nobody knows for sure until it happens. For all I know, the so-called “Big One” will make Katrina look like a tempest in a teapot. Eventually, we will find out.
I disagree with this. A massive quake would certainly cause a lot of damage and knock out basic infrastructure components. But by their very nature, earthquakes tend to be selective in their damage; one building collapses while the one next door remains standing. Or whole neighborhoods may suffer great damage while others are untouched. In New Orleans, most of the city was flooded.
And 100 years later yesterday, at 5:13am, a magnitude 79 decibel SIREN shook my entire body for around a full minute.
I appreciate the tribute and all but I sure wish I’d known in advance before it scared the bejeebus out of me.
(And as we’re in MPSIMS)…the man who designed the Ferry Terminal building and clock tower, A. Page Brown, lived in a fantastic old Victorian house on Russian Hill. When the fire was raging, he placed a huge American flag outside the house, and the firemen saw it and saved his house. It’s one of the few that pre-date the quake.
I happen to be friends with the current owners of that house. It’s amazing - tiny stairs leading to small private studies, balconies everywhere, something like 7 stories, many of them with only one room before the stairs continue up. He designed the home so that the main deck faced the clock in the terminal building, and it’s quite something standing out there, looking down to the Embarcadero and seeing the face of trhe clock looking right back at you.
I’m not sure what your point is. The 1995 Kobe earthquake killed twice as many people as Katrina. And this was in an industrial nation, in a city known to be prone to earthquakes and supposedly designed to withstand it.
The near complete lack of legal records predating the quake is a funny San Francisco thing. Doing property research or geneological reasearch just dead ends. My best friends’ family owns a commercial building in the heart of downtown that still has its pre-quake facade, and their business’s name carved into the facade is the only evidence that they owned the property, because every record was destroyed. If you do a title search, it’s like the property doesn’t exist, since it hasn’t been sold since before 1906.
Do they? If they do, that’s news to me, and I’ve been here 14 years. I certainly don’t remember hearing it before. Of course, seeing as how I didn’t know anything about it this year, I might be the wrong person to ask.
