Lifestyle India Buzz Fashion Digital Vibes Reflections France Counterfeits Hub San Francisco Earthquake a Century Ago Entertainment Women & Society Health Prev Issue Next Issue

Mission Street, outside the main post office, which was ripped up by the force of the great 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.
© AFP/Getty Images/File Justin Sullivan

A bungled government response made it worse. Racism plagued survivors.

It wasn't Hurricane Katrina, which slammed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast last year. It was the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked San Francisco one hundred years ago on April 18.

"It's a lot like Katrina," said curator Aimee Klask as she stepped into a 1906 earthquake "Aftershock" exhibit at the Oakland Museum across the bay from San Francisco.

"It's hard not to make those kinds of contemporary comparisons."

Emergency workers in San Francisco and throughout the state of California hope the earthquake's anniversary and Katrina will convince people to prepare for the worst.

Seismologists calculate a 62 percent probability that a devastating earthquake will hit the San Francisco area within the next 26 years.

Surveys have shown that residents do little to brace for what scientists say is an inevitable next big earthquake.

A recurrence of the 1906 earthquake, or a weaker temblor directly under an urban area, would "wreak havoc" with California's multi-billion-dollar economy, said seismologist Jack Boatwright of the US Geological Survey.

"I'm not prepared," said Shamela McClain, 23. "It's kind of scary. Now, we have to worry about this along with tsunamis, bird flu and terrorism."

Residents are being warned to take a lesson from Katrina and not count on help from the government.

The Hearst Newspaper Building after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and on 7 April 2006.
© AFP Justin Sullivan

They have been urged to make survival kits with necessities ranging from bottled water and medical supplies to blankets, food and solar-powered radios so they can fend for themselves for at least three days if necessary.

State studies have revealed that hospitals, schools, apartment houses, wood-frame homes, and office buildings would crumble in a major earthquake.

Ironically, it wasn't the shaking that ripped out the heart of San Francisco a century ago. It was the aftermath.

"It's not the earth's fault," Klask said. "It's people's fault."

Part of a hotel collapsed onto a firehouse and killed the chief when the temblor struck at 5:12 am that fateful day.

Fires fueled by broken natural gas pipes raged.

Army general Frederick Funston seized command.

Funston, a Spanish-American War veteran with a reported fondness for cruelty, deployed soldiers in the streets and convinced the city's graft-prone mayor to issue a "shoot-on-sight" proclamation.

Funston had portions of the city blown up in an effort to contain the inferno with chasms flames could not breach.

"They used the wrong kind of dynamite and it started more fires," Klask explained, calling the tactic a blunder.

The "Great Fire" burned for three days, devouring housing, shops, and offices in what was then the state's most populous city.

The earthquake and fire left half the city's 400,000 residents homeless.

A tent city was set up near the Golden Gate Bridge. An estimated nine million dollars in international aid money was donated, the largest contributor being Japan.

However, Japanese-Americans shunned at the tent city formed their own camp near the famed Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, according to Klask.

Chinese citizens were also treated harshly, with officials pushing to rebuild the obliterated Chinatown far from downtown. A set of Chinese-American families fought off the effort.

Chinese residents faced with strict immigration barriers capitalized on the fact that birth records were incinerated along with most city paperwork, history showed.

"If all the Chinese men who claimed to be US-born actually were, it meant every woman in Chinatown would have to have had 800 sons," Klask said, citing earthquake lore. "That gives you an idea what was going on."

Armed with US citizenship, Chinese men brought in real and pretend sons from their homeland. San Francisco's Chinatown grew larger than it was prior to the earthquake.

"If that hadn't happened, Chinatown would have died," Klask said.

San Francisco wasn't humbled by another earthquake until 1989, when the deadly 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta temblor fractured buildings and streets, collapsed an elevated freeway and caused a section of the Bay Bridge to give way.

"The same earth that made us the golden state made us earthquake country," Klask said, referring to the state's legendary Gold Rush.

View and Post comment on this article

© 2005 AFP. All rights of reproduction and distribution reserved. All information displayed on this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.