Cities and disaster
The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906
What happened?
In the first years of the 20th century, San Francisco had come of age. In little more than 50 years, following the gold rush of 1849 and the subsequent influx of prospectors and immigrants, it had grown into a city of about 450,000 people – the financial capital of the American West and home to the newly rich landowners of California.
San Francisco’s wealth had also proved a magnet for corruption and greed, and no one was more prone to these two sins than the mayor of the city Eugene Schmitz. Popular with voters, who elected the former musician in 1901, his enemies claimed that his $1 million fortune was built on backhanders and bribes. Indeed an attempt to charge him with numerous counts of corruption was in the offing.
Then, at 5.12am on 18 April 1906, two massive tectonic plates – 50 miles thick and grinding together along a line known as the San Andreas Fault – slipped. A massive earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale rocked San Francisco for 48 seconds. A seismic wave tore through the city at more than 10,000 miles an hour, releasing energy equivalent to more than 1,000 nuclear blasts.
Whole sectors of the city collapsed. ‘Ground zero’ was the run-down district known as South of Market, home to some 90,000 people, which suffered the worst damage because its foundations were artificial. When land had become scarce during the gold rush, the city had expanded into the bay, reclaiming three square miles by creating a landfill of garbage, sand and rotting wood. When the powerful seismic waves hit this 'made ground', they forced water into the soft soil and turned it into quicksand, sucking whole streets into the earth. South of Market virtually disappeared.
The shockwave ripped through the city, levelling street after street. But the pattern of damage at first seemed inexplicable. Nearly every building in the South of Market area had been destroyed, but in his house high above the bay, Mayor Schmitz had slept through the quake undisturbed. His home and those of many of his wealthy neighbours on Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill and Pacific Heights had barely been damaged. It wasn't just the strength of the buildings that had saved them. The answer lay in the ground: all these buildings had been built on bedrock.
Panicked citizens grabbed their most precious belongings and abandoned what was left of their homes. The city was in chaos. Telegraph lines were down, the power was out, roads and rail lines had buckled and broken. And below ground, under the wreckage, were thousands of trapped and wounded people. Someone needed to take control, and the only man with the authority to do so was Mayor Schmitz. He transformed the basements of the Halls of Justice into his command centre and tried to turn the disaster into his own personal triumph.
At 8.14am, three hours after the quake, the city was hit by a massive aftershock. According to journalist James Hopper, ‘It was as if there was something personal about the attack: it seemed to have a certain vicious intent, leaving yet more victims crushed or struck by falling masonry.’ It was the first of 27 aftershocks, each one slowing the already overstretched rescue effort.
And now a new hazard was threatening the lives of all those who had survived the earthquake: fire. In the city’s rapid and often corrupt construction, gas and electricity pipelines had been laid side by side, which meant that a single spark could – and did – start an inferno. The city itself was one vast tinder box: in the tightly packed streets, 90% of the buildings were made of wood.
The fires advanced with terrifying speed, engulfing whole sections of the city spared by the earthquake. Ironically, the man whom the mayor needed urgently was Fire Chief Engineer Dennis T Sullivan. His ‘fire repression’ plan, which might have controlled the conflagration, had been rejected by Schmitz, ostensibly because of cost but actually because the money to achieve it had gone to line the mayor’s own pockets. However, Sullivan had been fatally wounded during the earthquake.
By 11am, flames had swept through more than 60 city blocks. They were now advancing through rubble where hundreds of people still lay trapped. There are over a dozen first-hand accounts of individuals begging for a mercy killing rather than be burned alive. At 11.30am, the emergency hospital had to be evacuated as the fire approached. There was no water to fight it – the earthquake had ruptured the city’s water mains.
As the residents fled, the rule of law was breaking down. Looters raided saloons and drunken gangs began to ransack the city. At a crisis meeting of the 50 most important men in San Francisco, Mayor Schmitz declared martial law and that all those caught looting would be shot. James Baker of the Museum of the City of San Francisco believes that the number shot, including army and National Guard troops killed by their own men, rivals the official count of 478 deaths overall.
Schmitz also turned to the army to help fight the inferno. He was shocked to learn that they recommended blasting whole city blocks with dynamite to create firebreaks – open areas too wide for the flames to cross. That would mean destroying millions of dollars of real estate owned by Schmitz's wealthy supporters.
But without water, the mayor had no choice, and his efforts to delay the dynamiting were overruled. He launched a bitter attack on the army, rightly accusing the dynamite teams of working at random and with too little experience. Shortages had also forced them to use the wrong type of explosive – instead of sticks of dynamite they were detonating highly unreliable, black powder charges.
The fires sweeping out of control through the city had reached a temperature of almost 2000ºF (1093ºC). Now the army wanted to blast a four-mile-long, 125-feet-wide firebreak along Van Ness Avenue. But by 6pm, less than half of the city to the east of Van Ness – which the army proposed to abandon to its fate – was ablaze. Schmitz was appalled at the idea that he would be held personally responsible for allowing the fire to destroy 200 city blocks – and that he would have to tell his wealthy supporters that he was going to let their houses burn.
First in the firing line was Nob Hill. Here, the rich had been picnicking for most of the day, watching the flames engulf the city below, convinced that they were safe. But at 8pm the wind changed direction, the fires surged past the dynamite crews and started to burn their way uphill. The city's élite was forced to join the exodus from San Francisco. There was now no distinction between rich and poor as, street by street, million-dollar mansions were consumed.
The mayor finally agreed to the firebreak on Van Ness, and the dynamite crews began to blow the street apart. At the same time, the army ran a mile-long fire hose from a tug in the bay, pumping saltwater all the way to Van Ness. But over such a distance the water pressure was low.
By Friday, 20 April, three quarters of San Francisco had burned to the ground, and the fight was on to save what remained. Many of the crews had already worked without rest for 48 hours, but there were no reinforcements left to call.
The fire at Van Ness raged for 12 hours, but each time it threatened to cross the firebreak, it was repelled. Finally, at 7am on Saturday, 21 April, the fire was officially declared at an end.
What was the cost?
In three days, the earthquake and fire in San Francisco destroyed an area six times larger than the Great Fire of London had. Although the official death toll was 478, it is now believed that as many as 6,000 people perished. Approximately 28,000 buildings lay in ruins, and the total damage was estimated at $1 billion, the equivalent of over $40 billion today.
More than 225,000 people were left homeless. There are records of at least a dozen individuals committing suicide when they discovered that all that they had had was lost and that the people they had loved were gone.
It cost $20 million to clear the streets of rubble before any rebuilding could begin. More than half the city had to live in 30 emergency camps on the outskirts, the army rushing 200,000 rations and all the tents it had to supply them. The federal government sent $6 million in immediate aid to feed and clothe the victims. But even as the aid poured in, disease overwhelmed the crowded tent cities. There were repeated outbreaks of typhoid, meningitis and smallpox. Some 70,000 people could see no future in San Francisco and abandoned the city for good.
What was the disaster’s legacy?
Amazingly, cable cars began running on Market Street on 1 May, only 10 days after the fires had been finally extinguished. Two months later, Eugene Schmitz – who was now regarded as a hero – ordered the army out of the city.
Schmitz's rush to rebuild the city was not driven by altruism. It was motivated by the fear that if business deserted San Francisco, it would lose its status as the financial capital of the American West for ever.
Earthquakes were not a common event in major US cities, and if the details of the San Francisco quake had become widely known, this would undoubtedly have had a negative impact on business development. However, fires were something that businesses were used to. Big money was at stake, so Schmitz systematically began to conceal the scale and horror of the earthquake.
Photographs were retouched to emphasise fire damage and downplay the destruction caused by the quake. City officials were instructed to refer to the 'Great Fire' rather than the 'Great Earthquake'. The San Andreas Fault was simply removed from the official geological map of California. Local newspapers and businesses colluded in the deception – and it worked. Business flooded back to the city and Schmitz reinforced his status as the saviour of San Francisco.
But in the race to rebuild the city, the mayor deliberately ignored vital lessons. Building codes were not beefed up, and South of Market – the area worst affected by the quake – was redeveloped and new areas were hastily reclaimed from the sea, sowing the seeds for future disaster.
On 17 October 1989, 68 people died, almost 4,000 were injured and San Francisco suffered $8 billion of damage in an earthquake that lasted just 20 seconds. It registered 6.9 on the Richter scale – the 1906 quake had been 32 times more powerful – and its epicentre was 70 miles from the city: a century ago, the quake had been only eight miles away. Today, the 1989 quake is regarded as a warning – and a wake-up call.
The earthquake was responsible for two other significant changes:
- The fires that followed the earthquake destroyed many of San Francisco’s records, including its birth records. This allowed many Chinese and Japanese – whose immigration into the United States was severely restricted – to claim that they had been born in the US and were therefore actually American citizens.
- The Pentecostalists, an obscure Los Angeles religious sect, found in the Bible what they thought was the meaning behind the quake: ‘When thy judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world shall learn righteousness’ (Isaiah 26:9). According to historian Simon Winchester, ‘All these people needed was a sign, a catalyst that bore the signature of the divine. What they got, in 1906, was the San Francisco earthquake.’ The Pentecostalists grew rapidly and have since become a major force in American conservative politics.
Eugene Schmitz was convicted in 1907 of 27 counts of graft and bribery. He appealed to the State Supreme Court, who reversed the conviction.
