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San Francisco and the Great Earthquake of 1906
by Robert Cherny
Professor of History, San Francisco State University
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| Proclamation by the Mayor, San Francisco, California, 18 April 1906 (GLC 04967.01) |
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At the beginning of the twentieth century, San Francisco
still reigned as the major seaport on the Pacific Coast.
The city traced its origins to 1776, when a Spanish expedition
planted a mission and a military post at the end of the
great peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco
Bay. An earlier Spanish expedition had discovered the
bay in 1769, and quickly recognized it as one of the finest
natural harbors in the world and potentially the most
important harbor on the Pacific coast. In the 1830s and
1840s, the village of Yerba Buena grew up near a cove
within the bay where seagoing ships could anchor and trade
with local ranch owners and storekeepers. In 1846, during
the war between the U.S. and Mexico, the U.S. Navy took
control of the bay end of Yerba Buena. One of the first
acts of the naval officer in charge was to change the
village's name to San Francisco, so that it would be indelibly
associated with the great bay.
Soon after the name change, thousands of people were clamoring
for passage to San Francisco -- in 1848, gold was discovered
in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, inland from San
Francisco. However, California remained remote from the
eastern half of the nation, accessible only by difficult
and dangerous routes. Most people chose to travel there
by sea, either around the southern tip of South America
or to Panama, over the isthmus by land transportation,
then up the Pacific coast by ship.
San Francisco was on everyone's lips, and the recently
renamed village became the point of arrival for thousands
of eager gold seekers. The village boomed, growing from
800 people in 1848 to 35,000 in 1852 and 57,000 in 1860,
making it the fifteenth largest city in the nation. By
1880, San Francisco ranked seventh in size among the nation's
cities, and it remained among the ten largest cities through
1900 [see the interactive map
of urban expansion in this issue of History Now].
From the Gold Rush onward, San Francisco was the metropolis
of the West. It was by far the largest Pacific coast port
at a time when ocean transportation was the dominant mode
of travel for people and goods. Its banks dominated western
finance. The most powerful western corporations had their
headquarters in San Francisco. The city's foundries and
iron works produced locomotives, technologically advanced
mining and agricultural equipment, and ships. By 1900,
to be certain, San Francisco's dominant role was beginning
to be challenged by other western cities including Los
Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Salt Lake City, but San
Francisco was still the largest port and the center of
western commerce and finance.
Then, at 5:12 a.m., on April 18, 1906, the residents of
San Francisco, and many other Californians for many miles
north and south, were jolted awake by a monstrous earthquake.
The earthquake set church bells ringing, knocked down
chimneys, twisted city streets and streetcar tracks, and
broke water lines, gas pipes, and electrical wires. Hundreds
of miles away, in Los Angeles, Oregon, and Nevada, people
felt the earth shake.
The earthquake was one of the largest in American history.
Recent geologists estimate the magnitude of the earthquake
as 7.7-7.9, as compared to older estimates of 8.3, on
the Richter scale. The earthquake was caused when the
San Andreas fault suddenly shifted along a distance of
296 miles. The epicenter of the quake was a short distance
out at sea, near the southwestern part of San Francisco.
Geologists estimate that the fault moved as fast as 1.7
miles per second. "I could see it actually coming,”
a policeman in San Francisco said. “The whole street
was undulating. It was as if the waves of the ocean were
coming toward me."
The San Andreas fault, the source of this disaster, lies
ten miles or more deep, at the meeting point of two tectonic
plates, the Pacific and North American. (A tectonic plate
is one part of the earth's crust. There are seven major
tectonic plates and many more minor ones. Earthquakes
and sometimes volcanoes occur where these huge plates
of rock rub up against each other.) Geologists describe
the San Andreas fault as right-lateral strike-slip, which
means that the Pacific side of the fault is slowly moving
horizontally northward, usually by an inch or two per
year. At times, however, the fault may suddenly lurch
as much as several feet. Such movements deep in the earth
produce earthquakes--and such movements along the San
Andreas fault and its branches have produced most of the
largest earthquakes in American history.
During the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, new buildings
with steel frames held up quite well. Buildings of brick
or other masonry construction, without steel or iron reinforcement,
were most likely to be damaged. Some lost entire walls.
Brick chimneys collapsed all over the city. The fire chief
was killed when a chimney fell into his bedroom. The most
dangerous parts of the city were areas that had once been
lakes, creeks, marshes, or branches of the bay, and that
had been filled in to create solid ground for construction.
Such areas tend to liquefy in an earthquake. Structures
on such fill land suffered the most. Some wood-frame buildings,
especially on fill land, were knocked off their foundations,
but most other wooden structures held up reasonably well.
Fires broke out almost immediately, fed by gas from broken
gas lines. Broken water mains meant that most fire hydrants
were useless. Among the first parts of the city to burn
were the densely populated wooden buildings south of Market
Street, home to many of the city's working class. For
the next three days, city residents struggled to contain
what became a firestorm--the heat of the fire was so intense
that it pulled air into the fire, generating significant
winds. Jack London, the novelist, watched the fire from
a boat in the bay, and described the firestorm this way:
"It was dead calm. Not a flicker of wind stirred.
Yet from every side wind was pouring in upon the city.
. . . The heated air rising made an enormous suck. Thus
did the fire of itself build its own colossal chimney
through the atmosphere. Day and night this dead calm continued,
and yet, near to the flames, the wind was often half a
gale, so mighty was the suck."
General Frederick Funston, commander of army troops at
the Presidio, directed soldiers to keep order and help
fight the fires. Without water, firefighters and federal
troops tried to build firebreaks by blasting buildings.
Some firefighters pumped water from the bay to fight fires
near the waterfront. In the Italian part of the city,
residents used huge vats of wine to put out fires.
Rumors of widespread looting were mostly without basis,
but those rumors led Mayor Eugene Schmitz to issue an
order of doubtful constitutionality: "The Federal
Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force, and all
Special Police Officers have been authorized by me to
KILL any and all persons found engaged in Looting or in
the Commission of Any Other Crime" [see an image
of this document at the top of this page]. Some people
were killed, either because they were looters or because
they were mistaken for looters.
Because the fire burned for three days, many people had
an opportunity to leave their homes as it became clear
that the fires were moving in their direction. Some took
ferry boats across the bay to Oakland or Berkeley. Others
moved west, to neighborhoods not yet touched by fire or
to Golden Gate Park. The refugees all carried what they
could of their most prized possessions.
Earthquake, fire, and blasting destroyed the heart of
the city -- 4.11 square miles and 28,188 buildings. More
than half the city's residents were homeless. Destruction
was almost universal within the fire zone--new corporate
headquarters as well as the shabby homes of the poor,
churches and brothels, and a million books. The official
record listed 498 deaths in San Francisco. Civic leaders,
however, seem to have minimized the death count so as
not to discourage future investment in the city. Recent
research suggests that 3,000 or more died, either in San
Francisco or in nearby areas. Total property damage, in
1906 dollars, was estimated at nearly $400 million, of
which $80 million was due directly to the earthquake.
One recent calculation suggests that reconstruction costs
in today's dollars would total $32 billion.
Donations poured in from individuals, organizations, and
governments, some $9 million in all. Mayor Schmitz, suspected
of corruption, appointed a special committee of 50 prominent
citizens, led by former mayor James Phelan, to distribute
the funds and plan relief and recovery. The Army set up
twenty refugee camps, some on Army land and some in the
city's parks, which remained for a year or more. The Army
and the city's public health officials quickly restored
sanitation and thereby averted a potential public health
disaster.
San Francisco's business leaders felt a special urgency
to rebuild quickly--they feared that any delay would endanger
their place as the financial and commercial center of
the West. Business leaders and leaders of the construction
unions, who had been warring for years, declared a truce.
Some civic leaders urged a careful, planned approach to
rebuilding that would include new boulevards, wider streets,
and other civic amenities, but in the haste to rebuild
few people were willing to wait for new street plans,
and, in the end the city was rebuilt with virtually the
same street plan as before. Some civic leaders tried to
use the devastation as an excuse to remove Chinatown from
its location near the central business district, but they
failed. The political fragmentation that prevented planned
approach to rebuilding also hindered reconstruction of
public buildings--not until 1916 did the doors open on
a new city hall.
San Francisco's civic leaders wanted to demonstrate to
the world that their city had arisen from the ashes. In
1909, with reconstruction still underway on every side,
a mass meeting of the city's business leaders launched
the city's bid to host a great international exposition
to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. Called the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the great fair
opened in 1915, dominated by a dazzling "Tower of
Jewels." Though the exposition presented vast exhibition
halls that displayed the commercial and cultural products
of much of the world, San Francisco civic leaders had
a larger purpose—they wanted to demonstrate to the
world that their city had completely recovered from the
devastation of 1906.
The 1906 earthquake was important in other ways as well.
Scientists who studied the earthquake of 1906 significantly
improved their understanding of earthquakes. Careful examination
of the effect of the earthquake on various types of buildings
helped architects and engineers to improve technologies
for resisting seismic stress, and the rebuilding of the
city showed efforts to strengthen buildings against seismic
stress. Throughout the burned district, a new auxiliary
high-pressure water system for fighting fires was installed;
the new system had with special hydrants, reservoirs,
and cisterns, and water mains designed to withstand an
earthquake. In addition, San Francisco voters approved
construction of a huge dam across the Hetch Hetchy valley,
high in the Sierra Nevada, to increase the city's water
supply.
San Francisco today is a different city in many ways from
the city of 1906. Once the largest city in the West, San
Francisco today ranks third in size in the state of California.
Once a major port and manufacturing center, San Francisco
today is a center for finance, technology (especially
bio-technology), tourism, and culture.
Scholars differ on whether San Franciscans have learned
from the experience of 1906. Some suggest that San Franciscans
are too complacent about the dangers of another monstrous
earthquake, but others point to more stringent building
standards, seismic strengthening of older buildings, and
a significantly improved ability to fight fires. In 1989,
an earthquake of 6.9 magnitude, centered about sixty miles
south of San Francisco, did significant damage in some
places. A few unreinforced masonry buildings collapsed
or lost walls. A few buildings on fill land crumpled.
In a few places, broken gas lines ignited fires, and broken
water lines hindered fire-fighting. Across the bay in
Oakland, a freeway collapsed, killing forty people. In
1989, unlike 1906, the damage was limited, the fires were
quickly contained, and the total death toll other than
those killed in the freeway collapse was 23. In the wake
of the 1989 earthquake, further efforts were made to strengthen
buildings and other infrastructure. Only time will tell
if these preparations are adequate preparation for the
next "big one."
| For a list
of books and websites about the history of
San Francisco, including information on the
Hetch Hetchy dam and controversies over natural
resources in California, visit our Additional
Resources Page |
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