Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Great Quake
There are always earthquakes in San Francisco, and there always will be,
but there is only one that can be called the Quake with a capital Q. The
disaster that earned this capitalized shorthand was no ordinary shaker. It
was a cataclysm that destroyed an entire city, something unimaginable by
most modern minds. You'll hear a lot about it on your visit, but talk of the
Quake is not simply tourist-friendly theatricality. I don't think it's possi-
ble to underestimate its importance; nearly everything in today's San
Francisco has roots in that awful period, and even today, you can trace its
aftermath everywhere.
The earthquake, which lasted for less than a minute at 5:12am on April
18, 1906, was rough, but contrary to belief, it was not the most destruc-
tive aspect of the day. Even the mayor went back to bed afterward, think-
ing it was routine; he had to be roused later by citizens who filled him in
on just how bad things were. No, San Francisco's real downfall was fire. In
that age, natural gas was a primary fuel, and the earthquake snapped lines
across town. Snapped with them were the water mains, leaving firemen
mostly without resources. Back then, San Francisco was mostly a wooden
town with buildings thrown up by profiteers—relatively few buildings,
aside from commercial ones around Market Street and some mansions, were
made of stone and stood much of a chance.
What started as a few fires quickly whipped into a true nightmare. At
the wrong moment, the winds changed, fanning already-monstrous blazes
into one mighty firestorm in which the air itself was so hot that it caused
everything in its path to spontaneously combust. Few living souls have
ever witnessed a phenomenon like this. People who had been trapped by
the earthquake but remained alive were now consumed by the conflagra-
tion. Troops were called in, suspected looters shot on sight. And to stay
the flames' advance, whole city blocks were blown up—but as fate had it
the troops, lacking high explosives, had to use low explosives, which
caused even more fires. No structure, no matter how well-built, could seal
itself from something so unprecedented.
Imagine an entire city reduced to charred fields and scattered crum-
bled walls, like Hiroshima after the blast. Nearly everything from the
Embarcadero west to Van Ness Avenue, the biggest dynamite barrier, was
gone, as was SoMa, then a warren of wooden tenements. The tops of
Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill mostly escaped, but the Mission and Hayes
Valley, both west of Van Ness, were also consumed after citizens, not
understanding the extent of the earthquake's damage, tried cooking their
breakfasts under chimneys that weren't structurally sound (one massive
blaze was dubbed the “Ham and Eggs Fire”).
“San Francisco is gone,” wrote Jack London, who was there. “Nothing
remains of it but memories.”
