The San Francisco earthquake and fire
Before dawn on 18 April 1906 a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the northern California coast. Fires burned for days afterward and destroyed about 80% of San Francisco. Around 3,000 people died and more than half the city's population was left homeless.
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What happened
At 5:12 in the morning on 18 April 1906, a rupture along nearly 480 km of the San Andreas Fault shook northern California for close to a minute. The earthquake, estimated at magnitude 7.9, toppled buildings across San Francisco, then the largest city on the American West Coast.
The fires that followed did even more damage. Broken gas mains ignited, water mains were shattered, and some blazes were started by residents themselves, since insurance covered fire but not earthquake. Attempts to create firebreaks with dynamite often spread the flames. Over three days about 28,000 buildings burned and roughly 80% of the city was destroyed.
Official figures long put the death toll in the hundreds, but historians now estimate around 3,000 deaths. More than half of the city's 400,000 residents were left homeless, many living in army tents in Golden Gate Park. The disaster led to the first systematic scientific study of a fault, producing the elastic-rebound theory that still underpins earthquake science, and the city was rebuilt in time to host a world's fair in 1915.
Part of a collection
- When nature struck. Volcanoes, earthquakes, storms and droughts that destroyed cities, moved whole populations and changed how people build and plan.
Around the same time
- The Panama Canal opens, Panama Canal Zone, 1904 to 1914
- The first modern Olympic Games, Athens, Greece, 1896
- The Battle of the Somme, Somme, France, 1916
- The Russian Revolution, Petrograd, Russia, 1917 to 1918
Earlier: The Panama Canal opens, 1904 to 1914 · Later: The Battle of the Somme, 1916
Further reading
Encyclopedia article: 1906 San Francisco earthquake (en.wikipedia.org)