Disaster By the Bay: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

Since the fire department had few means to combat the blazes, it was agreed that firebreaks would have to be created, by ruthlessly dynamiting buildings that were in the path of the growing conflagration.

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In the end, Schmitz allowed himself to be persuaded, but orders were given to wait until the last possible moment before a building was blown. Unfortunately both civilian firefighters and soldiers had little or no experience with explosives, and their clumsy efforts actually spread the fire.

Funston made an effort to consult with Schmitz, but at times he acted in a high-handed, arbitrary manner, virtually ignoring civilian authority. Martial law had not been declared, but the general issued orders as if he were on a campaign. When dynamite stocks ran low, Funston became obsessed with finding more. The general ordered that all such vessels be pulled out of the firefighting line and sent for more dynamite. Briggs, and then sent it to Point Pinole to get more explosives.

The fabled Palace Hotel, iconic symbol of the Bay City, survived the earthquake only to succumb to the fire. Guests like Caruso were shaken, windows were broken and some interiors were wrecked, but the building seemed to have remained structurally sound. The Call Building was also a fire victim. Steel frame buildings generally perform well in earthquakes, and the Call building was no exception.

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Unfortunately it too was gutted by the great fire. In Chinatown, one of the most densely populated sections of the whole city, casualties must have been high. Most Chinese were from Kwantung Guangdong , so shouts and pleas for aid were in the Cantonese dialect. Hundreds of Chinese ran to the relative safety of Portsmouth Square, where they gathered in large groups.

In some respects, the Chinese were even more vulnerable than other San Franciscans. Traumatic memories of white persecution ran deep, and most Chinese were afraid of seeking food, medical attention or shelter from city aid stations. Soldiers evacuated Chinatown as they did other parts of the city, and the dynamiting began. Lieutenant Freeman, so heroic in other respects, shared the common prejudices of the time. The fires coalesced into three major blazes — south of Market, north of Market and in the Hayes Valley, west of the shattered City Hall.

Fanned by high winds, this malevolent trio soon united to become one raging firestorm. The inferno grew so intense that temperatures reached upward of 2, degrees Fahrenheit. Flames crackled and roared, producing a huge black column of smoke that some claimed rose five miles into the sky. The great city by the bay seemed to be doomed, immolated on its own funeral pyre.

There were still residential areas west of Van Ness that were relatively unscathed by the earthquake — but would they succumb to the fire? The great inferno jumped Van Ness in one or two places, but exhausted firefighters managed to hold the line. By Saturday, April 21, the fire had essentially burned itself out.

Not long after, a drenching rain fell, too late to fight the fire but welcome nevertheless. In the coming months, relief and reconstruction were the top priorities. No fewer than city blocks — four square miles — had been destroyed by fire. City fathers, worried that future investors might be scared off, downplayed the number of casualties. Various figures were bandied about, but they had one thing in common — they were suspiciously low, at least given the magnitude of the disaster. One early estimate claimed dead and missing. Pioneering research by San Francisco City Librarian Gladys Hansen put the death toll at more than 3, people, while recent researchers suggest around 4, All generally agree that , people were rendered homeless.

The plan was foiled, in part due to the building plans of local businessman Look Tin Eli. The idea caught on, and pagoda roofs and other Chinese motifs helped make the restored Chinatown a major tourist attraction.

Ironically, the disaster had an unexpected silver lining for the Chinese. The earthquake and fire completely destroyed city records, including birth certificates. The only way a Chinese person could be a citizen was to be born in the United States, so hundreds came forward after the quake to get new documentation, claiming their birth certificates had been consumed by the flames.

Many were successful, though eventually the authorities caught on. San Francisco has a history of surviving disasters. In the Gold Rush period, the city burned to the ground no less than six times between and The phoenix was adopted as its symbol, a mythical bird that arises reborn from its own ashes. San Francisco did rise again, and by it was hosting the Panama Pacific International Exhibition.

San Francisco survived because of the courage, endurance and unfailing sense of humor of its citizens. Join us at http: Join today and your membership will help ensure that this site can continue to serve geoscience educators. Your membership is helping to ensure that this site can continue to serve geoscience educators. Material on this page is offered under a Creative Commons license unless otherwise noted below.

Teaching about Hazards in Geoscience Topical Resources. What would you like to search? The earthquake that struck San Francisco on April 18, remains one of the strongest and most significant earthquakes in US history. The fire that developed in its aftermath brought the city to its knees. This collection presents links to images, films, panoramas and animations about the earthquake and fire. Hazards resources from Teach the Earth include: Explosives were ferried across the bay from the California Powder Works in what is now Hercules.

During the first few days, soldiers provided valuable services like patrolling streets to discourage looting and guarding buildings such as the U.

Catalog Record: Disaster by the bay : the great San Francisco | Hathi Trust Digital Library

Mint , post office, and county jail. They aided the fire department in dynamiting to demolish buildings in the path of the fires. The army also became responsible for feeding, sheltering, and clothing the tens of thousands of displaced residents of the city. On July 1, , civil authorities assumed responsibility for relief efforts, and the army withdrew from the city. On April 18, in response to riots among evacuees and looting, Mayor Schmitz issued and ordered posted a proclamation that "The Federal Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force and all Special Police Officers have been authorized by me to kill any and all persons found engaged in Looting or in the Commission of Any Other Crime".

Ord later wrote a long letter [35] to his mother on the April 20 regarding Schmitz' "Shoot-to-Kill" Order and some "despicable" behavior of certain soldiers of the 22nd Infantry who were looting. He also made it clear that the majority of soldiers served the community well. Political and business leaders strongly downplayed the effects of the earthquake, fearing loss of outside investment in the city which was badly needed to rebuild.

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Fatality and monetary damage estimates were manipulated. Almost immediately after the quake and even during the disaster , planning and reconstruction plans were hatched to quickly rebuild the city. Rebuilding funds were immediately tied up by the fact that virtually all the major banks had been sites of the conflagration, requiring a lengthy wait of seven-to-ten days before their fire-proof vaults could cool sufficiently to be safely opened.

The Bank of Italy had evacuated its funds and was able to provide liquidity in the immediate aftermath. Its president also immediately chartered and financed the sending of two ships to return with shiploads of lumber from Washington and Oregon mills which provided the initial reconstruction materials and surge. In , Bank of Italy was renamed and is now known as Bank of America. William James , the pioneering American psychologist, was teaching at Stanford at the time of the earthquake and traveled into San Francisco to observe first-hand its aftermath.

He was most impressed by the positive attitude of the survivors and the speed with which they improvised services and created order out of chaos. Wells had just arrived in New York on his first visit to America when he learned, at lunch, of the San Francisco earthquake. What struck him about the reaction of those around him was that "it does not seem to have affected any one with a sense of final destruction, with any foreboding of irreparable disaster.

Every one is talking of it this afternoon, and no one is in the least degree dismayed. I have talked and listened in two clubs, watched people in cars and in the street, and one man is glad that Chinatown will be cleared out for good; another's chief solicitude is for Millet 's 'Man with the Hoe. Just as there would be none at all if all this New York that has so obsessed me with its limitless bigness was itself a blazing ruin. I believe these people would more than half like the situation. The earthquake was crucial in the development of the University of California, San Francisco and its medical facilities.

Following the San Francisco earthquake, more than 40, people were relocated to a makeshift tent city in Golden Gate Park and were treated by the faculty of the Affiliated Colleges. This brought the school, which until then was located on the western outskirts of the city, in contact with significant population and fueled the commitment of the school towards civic responsibility and health care, increasing the momentum towards the construction of its own health facilities.

Finally, in April , one of the buildings was renovated for outpatient care with 75 beds. This created the need to train nursing students, and, in , the UC Training School for Nurses was established, adding a fourth professional school to the Affiliated Colleges. The grandeur of citywide reconstruction schemes required investment from Eastern monetary sources, hence the spin and de-emphasis of the earthquake, the promulgation of the tough new building codes, and subsequent reputation sensitive actions such as the official low death toll.

One of the more famous and ambitious plans came from famed urban planner Daniel Burnham. His bold plan called for, among other proposals, Haussmann -style avenues, boulevards, arterial thoroughfares that radiated across the city, a massive civic center complex with classical structures, and what would have been the largest urban park in the world, stretching from Twin Peaks to Lake Merced with a large atheneum at its peak. But this plan was dismissed during the aftermath of the earthquake.

For example, real estate investors and other land owners were against the idea due to the large amount of land the city would have to purchase to realize such proposals. Chinatown was rebuilt in the newer, modern, Western form that exists today. The destruction of City Hall and the Hall of Records enabled thousands of Chinese immigrants to claim residency and citizenship, creating a backdoor to the Chinese Exclusion Act , and bring in their relatives from China.

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While the original street grid was restored, many of Burnham's proposals inadvertently saw the light of day, such as a neoclassical civic center complex, wider streets, a preference of arterial thoroughfares, a subway under Market Street , a more people-friendly Fisherman's Wharf , and a monument to the city on Telegraph Hill , Coit Tower. The earthquake was also responsible for the development of the Pacific Heights neighborhood. The immense power of the earthquake had destroyed almost all of the mansions on Nob Hill except for the James C.

Others that hadn't been destroyed were dynamited by the Army forces aiding the firefighting efforts in attempts to create firebreaks. As one indirect result, the wealthy looked westward where the land was cheap and relatively undeveloped, and where there were better views and a consistently warmer climate.

Constructing new mansions without reclaiming and clearing old rubble simply sped attaining new homes in the tent city during the reconstruction. Reconstruction was swift, and largely completed by , in time for the Panama—Pacific International Exposition which celebrated the reconstruction of the city and its "rise from the ashes". Since , the city has officially commemorated the disaster each year by gathering the remaining survivors at Lotta's Fountain , a fountain in the city's financial district that served as a meeting point during the disaster for people to look for loved ones and exchange information.

The army built 5, redwood and fir "relief houses" to accommodate 20, displaced people. The houses were designed by John McLaren , and were grouped in eleven camps, packed close to each other and rented to people for two dollars per month until rebuilding was completed.

They were painted navy blue, partly to blend in with the site, and partly because the military had large quantities of navy blue paint on hand. The camps had a peak population of 16, people, but by most people had moved out. The camps were then re-used as garages, storage spaces or shops. Most of the shacks have been destroyed, but a small number survived.

A study found that the fire had the effect of increasing the share of land used for nonresidential purposes: The study also provides insight into what held the city back from making these changes before In reconstruction, developers built relatively fewer of these buildings, and the majority of the reduction came through single-family houses. Also, aside from merely expanding nonresidential uses in many neighborhoods, the fire created economic opportunities in new areas, resulting in clusters of business activity that emerged only in the wake of the disaster. These effects of the fire still remain today, and thus large shocks can be sufficient catalysts for permanently reshaping urban settings.

Individual citizens and businesses donated large sums of money for the relief effort: All residents were eligible for daily meals served from a number of communal soup kitchens and citizens as far away as Idaho and Utah were known to send daily loaves of bread to San Francisco as relief supplies were coordinated by the railroads. After the earthquake, global discussion arose concerning a legally flawless exclusion of the earthquake hazard from fire insurance contracts.

It was pressed ahead mainly by re-insurers.

1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Visualizations

Their aim; a uniform solution to insurance payouts resulting from fires caused by earthquakes. Until , a few countries, especially in Europe, followed the call for an exclusion of the earthquake hazard from all fire insurance contracts. But the traumatized public reacted with fierce opposition.

Thus the state decided that insurers would have to pay again if another earthquake was followed by fires. Other earthquake-endangered countries followed the California example.

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Gold transfers from European insurance companies to policyholders in San Francisco led to a rise in interest rates, subsequently to a lack of available loans and finally to the Knickerbocker Trust Company crisis of October which led to the Panic of The Centennial Alliance [62] was set up as a clearing-house for various centennial events commemorating the earthquake.

Award presentations, religious services, a National Geographic TV movie, [63] a projection of fire onto the Coit Tower, [64] memorials, and lectures were part of the commemorations. Eleven survivors of the earthquake attended the centennial commemorations in , including Irma Mae Weule May 11, — August 8, , [67] who was the oldest survivor of the quake at the time of her death in August , aged Another survivor, Libera Armstrong September 28, — November 27, , attended the anniversary, but died in , aged Shortly after Hamrol's death, two additional survivors were discovered.

William Del Monte, then , and Jeanette Scola Trapani April 21, — December 28, , [70] , stated that they stopped attending events commemorating the earthquake when it became too much trouble for them.

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Nancy Stoner Sage February 19, — April 15, died, aged , in Colorado just three days short of the th anniversary of the earthquake on April 18, Del Monte attended the event at Lotta's Fountain on April 18, and the dinner at John's Restaurant the night before. In the National Film Registry added San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, , a newsreel documentary made soon after the earthquake, to its list of American films worthy of preservation. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the earthquake, see Loma Prieta earthquake.

For the earthquake, see South Napa earthquake. Burning of the Mission District left and a map showing the extent of the fire. San Francisco Bay Area portal Disasters portal.