When thinking of San Francisco, people usually think of a city that’s beautiful, attractive
and elegant.
But in 1906, those words could not be further from the truth.
San Francisco resembled a war torn city, a heavy contrast from the crown jewel of the
American west.
The question now is, what happened?
On the early morning of April 18th, 1906, a loud noise erupted in the San Francisco
area.
A noise so loud that the local residence described it as the roar of 10,000 lions.
A few moments later, at precisely 5:12 am, San Francisco was hit by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake.
An earth so powerful that it was recorded in Cape Town, South Africa.
A city that was more than 16,000 km or 10,000 miles away.
Immediately, the earthquake did some damage.
The cable cars immediately stopped, many buildings crumbled and the streets were in total chaos.
The city’s water supply network was also destroyed, this will be important later.
While the earthquake did do some damage, it was nothing compared to the fire.
After the initial tremors, a fire broke out from the financial district.
Quickly spreading to the surrounding areas and only leaving ashes behind.
Fire fighters could do nothing to contain the inferno, as they had no luck with the
destroyed water network.
The flames raged on for 4 days before being extinguished by rain.
In the end, the earthquake and fire caused more than 3,000 deaths.
It destroyed more than 28,000 buildings, causing roughly $500,000,000 million dollars worth
of damage.
More importantly, it led to more 250,000 people becoming homeless.
These people were forced to either camp out in tents or move to nearby towns while relying
on international and government aid to survive.
As you can guess, it was an unpleasant experience.
Speaking of unpleasants, the earthquake and fire also gave rise to looters and scavengers.
These groups would go through buildings and rubbles taking anything of value.
Absolute scum.
As for the city, everything was rebuilt within 4 years, with most of the cost being covered
by insurance.
Ironically, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was actually good for the city.
San Francisco had been developed in haphazard manner since the Gold Rush of 1849.
The earthquake and fire, while bad for the people (may they rest in peace), gave San
Francisco a clean slate in which to rebuild.
As such, San Francisco was rebuilt to be much more organized and logical.
The city also became more earthquake and fire resistant, ensuring that future disasters
would not lead to this much destruction.
Setting that aside, from what I found, San Francisco has a 75% chance of being struck
by at least a magnitude 7 earthquake within the next 30 years.
So if you live in San Francisco and expect to live for another 30 years, you should probably
keep an eye out for that.
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See you next time.