Arnold GenthePeople survey the destruction of the earthquake on Sacramento Street in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906.Historic Headlines
Learn about key events in history and their connections to today.
On April 18, 1906, an earthquake struck San Francisco and set off raging fires. The quake had a magnitude between 7.7 and 8.3 on the Richter scale and came shortly after 5 a.m. in two shocks that lasted more than a minute.
The April 19 New York Times reported: “The people became panic-stricken, and rushed into the streets, most of them in
their night attire. They were met by showers of falling bricks, cornices and walls of buildings. Many were crushed to death, while others were badly mangled. Those who remained indoors generally escaped with their
lives, though scores were hit by detached plaster, pictures and articles thrown to the floor by the shock. It is believed that more or less loss was sustained by nearly every family in the city.”
More than 3,000 people died and more than a quarter-million were left homeless. Tens of thousands of people were forced to live in tents, where they remained for months and even years after the earthquake. The unsanitary conditions of the tent cities contributed to an outbreak of bubonic plague in the city in 1907.
Before the earthquake, San Francisco had been the largest city in the American West and its financial and cultural center. The quake caused a shift in population; Oakland, situated across San Francisco Bay, saw its population double, while the countryside of Marin County north of the city grew into a populous suburb. The quake also caused a gradual shift of trade and population to Southern California; by the 1920 Census, Los Angeles had surpassed San Francisco as the West’s largest city.
The leaders of San Francisco moved quickly to rebuild the city. They first considered plans from renowned architect and urban planner David Burnham for a city with large boulevards and classical structures, but instead opted for the far more practical solution of rebuilding the city largely where it had stood. They relaxed building codes to encourage a speedy rebuilding, and thousands of buildings went up in just a few years, creating a new, modern city.
Connect to Today:
In 2006, for the 100th anniversary of the earthquake, The San Francisco Chronicle compared the government response to the quake with that of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005. While the response to Katrina was marked by slow progress at the city, state and federal levels, the response to the quake, nearly a century before, had been, swift, forceful and somewhat reckless.
Gen. Frederick Funston of the Army oversaw the federal response to the quake. With water cut off, he ordered the use of dynamite to halt the fires, though this needlessly destroyed many buildings and may have spread the fires at some points. He also strictly maintained law and order, threatening to shoot looters. Dan Kurzman, author of “Disaster,” said, “Whether his foes in Washington liked it or not, whether he would be court-martialed or not, General Funston was now the military dictator of a fascist-style San Francisco.”
What lessons in emergency response do you think can be learned from the San Francisco and New Orleans disasters? In your opinion, what steps should the federal government take to ensure that neither inaction and neglect nor unnecessarily forceful martial law takes the place of effective safety and security measures? Why?
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