Today is Always the Day Before the "Big One"

The video above is a genuine treasure. It’s a trip down Market Street by cable car through downtown San Francisco. In the distance, you can see the Ferry Building standing where Market Street meets the bay. The film was shot in 1905. At the time, San Francisco was the largest city in California, with over 400,000 residents.

Within a year, the city captured on this film was gone. In less than 5 minutes, it was leveled when the San Andreas Fault ruptured beneath the city. What survived the quake was razed in the resulting firestorm, which raged out of control for the next 75 hours. At least 3,000 people died, very likely some of the people captured on this film.

No one, not even the camera operator, knew it at the time, but this film is an extreme close-up of a ticking time bomb. When the bomb went off, it released a gigaton of energy, or 1,000 1-megaton bombs. For perspective, imagine if the U.S. had dropped over 3,000 atomic bombs on Nagasaki, instead of just one. That gives you an idea of the magnitude of the event. To this day, it is the single greatest natural disaster to ever strike the United States. But on that sunny day in San Francisco back in 1905, the people you see here had no idea what was coming, nor how soon.

Like many of you, I have experienced a major natural disaster, the destruction of Grand Island, Nebraska by seven powerful tornadoes in a single evening. Some of my most vivid memories of that tragedy are details from the day before: the people I saw, what I had for dinner that evening, the way the sky looked, and most of all, the normalcy – the lack of awareness or any thought of what was about to happen – the not knowing of fate. That’s what strikes me when I watch this film, that all the people are so close to an end of things, and they have no idea that their lives will never be the same again.

The power of tornadoes is an awesome, terrifying thing to behold and the Grand Island tornadoes rocked my world. But even that disaster doesn’t compare to the experience of feeling the entire world rocking. We associate our strongest sense of security with the idea of “being on solid ground.” Therefore, it stands to reason that you’ll never feel more helpless than when you feel the ground you’re standing on waver (and even turn to liquid).

Nebraska has earthquakes, of course. They’re less frequent than in California, and typically moderate. Just two months ago, a magnitude 2.9 quake struck east of Ainsworth, and last year, a 3.9 tremor shook the Valentine area. The strongest quakes recorded in Nebraska were magnitude 5.1 in 1964 and 1877. A major fault line, the Humboldt Fault, extends from our Capitol City, Lincoln, south to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is part of a seismic region known as the Nemaha Uplift.

But of greatest concern to you folks on the Plains is the New Madrid Fault in Missouri, which has produced the strongest quakes ever recorded on the North American Continent – quakes that nearly split the continent in half about 200 years ago. Check out this web site for an interesting comparison between the San Francisco quake and the New Madrid quakes of 1811 and 1812 (and note the strongest “shaking intensity” of the 1906 quake measured a V and VI – which is the same amount of shaking the entire state of Nebraska experienced in the New Madrid quakes of 1811 and 1812).

In all my years in Nebraska, hardly a year went by that I didn’t see at least one tornado, but I never felt an earthquake. I’ve felt a few earthquakes since moving to San Francisco – all of them little ones that just make things wiggle a little. But we’re all living here on borrowed time, and we know it. There will be another huge earthquake here. And this time, when it comes, it will strike a metropolitan area with a population of over 8,000,000. It will replace the 1906 earthquake as the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States. Until then, every day is like the day before the tornado. We see our friends. We eat our dinner. We live each day like any other day – like it’s normal.

And virtually everyone agrees – from our city leaders, to engineers and architects, to the citizens themselves – we’re not prepared for another big earthquake.

This past week, San Francisco marked the 100th anniversary of the great earthquake and fire of April 18,1906. In true San Francisco form, we may not be prepared for a disaster, but we’re always prepared to party. All week long, events were held throughout the city. There were documentaries of the disaster on every local station. There were exhibits of post-earthquake photography. A memorial at Lotta’s Fountain drew a crowd of thousands to the streets of downtown SF at 5am. Frankly, I got a little sick of hearing about it all.

However, it was interesting to learn about the history of the city’s rebirth (while frightening to think of it’s destruction happening again). It was moving to hear the sirens wail and the bells ring in observance of the exact moment of the event in the early morning hours of April 18 (visit Jackson West’s Obsessive Compulsion to download his recording of the sirens and bells as a ringtone for your phone!). But the sight of the Ferry Building was most beautiful of all – triumphantly lit in a rainbow of ever-changing colors to celebrate its (and the city’s) survival.


Above: San Francisco's Ferry Building glows with a dazzling array of colors during the centennial celebration of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.
Click photo to enlarge. Click here to view the entire gallery.
What's different about today? There was such a rush to rebuild, they didn't even bother to count the bodies. Today's San Francisco is no less headstrong in its embrace of progress. But what's different? We know we're living on borrowed time. We know this will all come down around us.

And some day, people will look at old pictures dating from days before the big quake, and they will see us in those pictures. And what will strike them about our faces is that we knew what was coming...

Take a gander at these other interesting web sites for more information on quakes in Nebraska, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Nebraska Earthquake Information
The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire
1906 Earthquake Virtual Museum

And thanks to Craig for providing the following links:
Weird Facts About the San Francisco Quake
Aerial Photos Taken from Kites (with article)