Features

We’re in a seismic season. From the recent South Asian disaster to the approaching Centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, earthquakes are attracting increasing public attention. 

In particular, numerous local activities are being planned to remember and memorialize 1906, one of the defining years in regional history. Organizers aim not only to tell the story of that great earthquake but to apply its lessons to personal, institutional, and community planning for major earthquakes to come. 

One activity is an eight-lecture series at both UC Berkeley and Stanford University, running through March 2006. Journalist and author Malcolm Barker gave the second lecture in the series on Oct. 26 at Sibley Auditorium on the Berkeley campus. 

Barker is the author of Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, which recounts the story of the disaster through the writings of eyewitness survivors.  

The raw statistics still compel attention. In San Francisco, some 500 city blocks spread over 4.7 square miles were destroyed and more than 3,000 people killed. 28,000 buildings were ruined or burned and more than half the population—some 225,000 out of 400,000—left homeless.  

Barker offered up some powerful accounts gleaned from his research, such as the recollections of a resident of a downtown hotel. Clutching the knob of the jammed door to his fourth-floor room, he rode the building down as it collapsed floor by floor beneath him. Only seven of some 50 people in that building survived, Barker said. 

Throughout downtown San Francisco, people hopelessly trapped by building collapses died in the fires, sometimes begging would-be rescuers to shoot them before the flames arrived. 

Elsewhere, “those who lived away from downtown weren’t too aware of what was happening downtown,” Barker said. “It was just another earthquake.” 

Walls and chimneys cracked and objects fell in the outer residential districts, but most houses stood largely intact. Some residents were shaken awake then, unperturbed, went back to sleep. Even the mayor, after surveying his house for damage, calmly sat down to breakfast. 

Down at the Stanford campus, which suffered major damage, visiting philosopher William James, who had been told an earthquake was a California experience not to be missed, initially thought the shaking was “pure delight and welcome.”  

Fire quickly disabused San Franciscans of similar thoughts. “The quake was bad enough, but what destroyed the city was the fire,” Barker emphasized. Only here and there did rescuers—often office workers and homeowners—save scattered buildings.  

The Old Mint (still standing a century later, and now slated to become a San Francisco history museum) and the Main Post Office were preserved by the efforts of employees. At the stone-faced Mint the heat was so intense that “the windows didn’t break or crack, they melted like butter from the heat,” said Barker. 

Immediate disaster relief included the quick arrival of nearby troops, including Army units from then active posts at Fort Mason and the Presidio and naval units. Regular police, National Guard units, specially deputized civilians, and the Cadet Corps from the University of California—600 students shipped across the Bay on ferries—completed the temporary face of order and authority although, contrary to popular belief, martial law was never actually declared.  

Not all went well. “These young soldiers took their orders too seriously,” inflexibly carrying out forced evacuations of threatened districts, rousting those who wanted time to save their valuables or fight the fire. “If people had been left there, they could have done it,” Barker said. 

Some soldiers also became drunk, executed suspected looters with little evidence, or looted themselves. Later investigations criticized the authorities. 

“Only the Berkeley Cadets escaped without blemish,” Barker noted, to laughter and applause from the largely Berkeley audience at his talk.  

Tens of thousands of homeless San Franciscans of all classes found themselves camping outdoors in parks and squares. Social strictures relaxed. 

“I’ve added hundreds to my acquaintance without introductions,” wrote one 17-year-old girl, enthusiastic about the opportunity to mingle without formal etiquette.  

Some 5,000 small wooden cabins were erected for refugee families, reminiscent of the mobile homes and trailers now headed for the hurricane-devastated Gulf coast. Some of these were later moved to city lots and became the nucleus of larger, permanent, houses; a few still survive. 

Economic disparities quickly reasserted themselves. Wealthier refugees found surviving houses to buy or rent, rebuilt quickly, or were taken in by friends with larger homes, while many of the poor were stranded for months in tents. “Rains came and turned their floors into mud baths.”  

Racial tensions arose over land use, as in today’s New Orleans. Influential white San Franciscans promoted the idea of moving Chinese residents to then-rural Hunter’s Point, clearing the traditional site of Chinatown for other development. San Francisco’s Chinese retaliated by threatening to move to Los Angeles or Seattle, drawing lucrative East Asian trade to those ports instead of San Francisco.  

Other aftereffects included “lots of tourists (who) poured in from across the Bay” to see the ruins, drawn in part by lurid newspaper accounts based on distorted stories gleaned from the first wave of fleeing refugees. 

“Talk about media hysteria,” Barker mused.  

The joint UC Berkeley/Stanford earthquake disaster lecture series features six free talks to come. Most will be given at both campuses. At Berkeley all are at 7:30 p.m. in Sibley Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. 

Nov. 16: Room 155, Dwinelle Hall. Professor of Architecture Stephen Tobriner, “Engineers, Architects and the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.” 

Jan. 17, 2006: (Stanford only, Kresge Auditorium). Chris D. Poland, “A Tale of Three Seismic Projects at Stanford.” 

Feb. 1, 2006: USGS seismologist Mary Lou Zoback, “Lessons Learned, Lessons Forgotten, and Future Directions” from 1906. 

Feb. 15, 2006: Engineer Eric Elsesser, “Improving Seismic Safety and Performance of Buildings Through Innovative Structural Engineering.” 

March 1, 2006: Kathleen Tierney, “Social Dimensions of Catastrophic Disasters.”  

March 15, 2006: Professor of Architecture Mary Comerio, “Designing for Disaster — U.C. Berkeley Looks Ahead.”  

For more information on UC Berkeley’s 1906 commemorative events—including talks, tours, and exhibits and even a disaster film series at the Pacific Film Archive—visit http://seismo.berkeley.edu/1906. Events are open to the public.  

Another excellent resource is the website of the 1906 Earthquake Centennial Alliance, www.1906centennial.org/, a consortium of dozens of local museums, educational institutions, historical groups, and scientific organizations. Click “activities and events” for an ever-expanding list of local commemorations, exhibits, and programs, including a major exhibit at the Oakland Museum.  

The Berkeley Historical Society will also stage an exhibit, “On the Doorstep of Disaster,” exploring the events of 1906 from the local perspective. If you have 1906 family stories, artifacts, or other accounts with relevance to Berkeley circa 1906, the curator would welcome hearing about them. Contact Steven Finacom by e-mail at stuart60@pacbell.net, or by mail via the Berkeley Historical Society at P.O. Box 1190, Berkeley, 94701.