On the morning of April 18th 1906, San Francisco was struck with violent tremors coming from the San Andreas Fault. The resulting quake ranked a 7.8 magnitude on the Richter scale, it was a quake so massive that it was recorded as far away as Cape Town, South Africa more than 10,000 miles away. The tremors caused widespread fires that lasted for several days and resulted in the estimated deaths of around 3,000 people and more than 80% left in ruins. Over 28,000 buildings were engulfed in flames, leaving more than 200,000 people homeless.
As devastating as all this was, the city was actually somewhat prepared for incidence like, as the city had suffered many times from both fire and earthquakes over the 50 year period since its incorporation into the United States. It’s quite fitting that the city’s flag featured a phoenix rising from the ashes, as it had done so many times before, though never to the extent that they had to after the 1906 quake.
The scope of the disaster is only matched by the effort to almost completely rebuild the city, efforts to do so began almost immediately after the quake, though funds for the efforts were tied up for almost a month due to almost all of the banks having burnt to the ground and 27 days was roughly the amount of time needed to wait for the fire proof safes to cool down and be opened safely. Much of the businesses and politicians involved downplayed the earthquake in order to not scare off investors from outside avenues.
To keep the peace and provide relief, housing, and other services the army was brought in, they built over 5,600 redwood and fir “relief houses” which only managed to accommodate about a 10th of the homeless population.
While some like famous urban planner, Daniel Burnham had ambitious plans to make the city better than before by rebuilding it with avenues, boulevards, and arterial thoroughfares in the style of Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s famous rebuild of Paris (1853-1870), including a massive civic center complex, all culminating in the largest urban park in the world. Such grandeur was scrapped in favor of speed, money, and criticisms from property owners over how much of their land the city would have to purchase for such plans. Though is ultimate plans were dismissed, some of his ideas did see the light of day, like the neo-classical civic center, wider streets, arterial thoroughfares, a subway under Market Street, and a more people friendly Fisherman’s Wharf.
Sadly, these improvements are undermined by bribery and shortcuts. The city was in a mad rush to prove itself to the world, pushing construction faster than normal in order to host the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition as proof of the city’s rise from the ashes. Many historians now agree that the slip in standards during reconstruction left the city in and even more vulnerable state than it was in prior to 1906, though after 1911 the city enjoyed a lull in earthquake activity that lasted 68 years without a tremor registering over a magnitude of 6.0. It’s no doubt that this time period helped San Francisco residence avoid another catastrophe like the one felt in 1906.