Earthquake Fire

 Earthquake Fire: San Francisco, on April 1906

When a magnitude 7.8 quake rumbled from the San Andreas Fault to the working-class center of town, continuous explosions formed a lurid tower of smoke throughout the city. But the first of our 10 Worst Disasters of the Last 101 Years teaches the lessons of reconstruction — and set the foundation for a century of earthquake research to come. For expert survival advice and tips, visit our ultimate guide to getting ready for any disaster.

At the turn of the last century, San Francisco could fairly count itself as one of the world's great cities. Formed out of the gold rush of 1849, it transformed from a rough-and-tumble mining town into a cosmopolitan center of 400,000 people. Aspirational locals called it the Paris of the West. There were fashionable department stores, urbane hotels, a new sprawling city hall said to be the biggest in the West, and a Grand Opera House that hosted the greatest tenor of that time, Enrico Caruso. All of that changed on April 18, 1906. 

At 5:12 am, a powerful earthquake centered just off the coast grabbed San Francisco by the throat and nearly shook it to death. The magnitude 7.8 quake arrived in two pulses, the second more powerful than the first. "[It] hurled my bed against an opposite wall," wrote Emma Burke, the wife of a local attorney. "It grew constantly worse, the noise deafening; the crash of dishes, falling pictures, the rattle of the flat tin roof, bookcases being overturned, the piano hurled across the parlor, the groaning and straining of the building itself, broken glass and falling plaster, made such a roar that no one noise could be distinguished." 

Sea captains said it felt as though their boats had run into a sea of rocks. Wooden houses splintered, cracked and collapsed, while poorly reinforced brick buildings tumbled to the ground. Bleary residents scurried into streets that were rippling like waves and firing off cobblestones. Trees whipsawed, telephone poles snapped and streetcar rails buckled. Amidst the noise, all of San Francisco's church-tower bells rang out, sounding an eerie alarm that lasted until the shaking stopped nearly a minute after it had begun.

If the epicenter of the earthquake was 2 miles out in the sea on the San Andreas Fault, the focal point of the quake's damage was in the working-class neighborhood south of Market Street. When the shock waves rippled through this reclaimed swampland, they temporarily liquefied the man-made ground, causing scores of buildings to collapse. Several hotels were destroyed, including the four-story Valencia Street Hotel, which pancaked to street level; top-floor guests simply stepped outside. Chinatown, just north of Market Street, was also particularly hard hit because of the extensive use of unreinforced brick masonry. 

Like the second seismic shock wave, the quake sparked dozens of fires to life, causing a second, more powerful pulse of destruction. The tremors had broken the city's fire alarm system, but firefighters could see enough smoke billowing up to know where to go. They hooked fire hoses to hydrants, but when they opened the valves no water gushed forth. Most of the city's water lines had ruptured, too. 

The tightly packed wooden-frame construction concentrated south of Market Street made fast fuel for a blaze that jumped from building to building and from block to block. What was later dubbed the "ham and eggs fire" burned down the house of a family cooking breakfast and then swept east until it had completely destroyed a local college, San Francisco's Hall of Records and the massive City Hall. Walls of fire converged from all angles until smoke filled the sky, as if San Francisco itself had erupted. 

"Within an hour after the earthquake shock, the smoke of San Francisco's burning was a lurid tower visible a hundred miles away," wrote Jack London, who rode from his ranch in Glen Ellen to San Francisco on the day of the quake. "And for three days and nights this lurid tower swayed in the sky, reddening the sun, darkening the day, and filling the land with smoke." 

San Franciscans quickly retreated, hauling in trunks what possessions they could. Navy boats and local firefighters had saved the city's wharf, a feat that allowed tens of thousands to leave the city. Others fled to high ground at Telegraph Hill and at Lafayette Square in the Western Addition. Men in dark ties and bowler hats and women in heavy dresses stared in disbelief as the 2000-degree inferno incinerated their city.

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