A Tale of Two Cities: America's Greatest Disaster?

Much of the ornate but poorly constructed $7 million City Hall crumbled into the street, killing a passerby. The hospital lodged in its basement became useless. Gaping cracks in the earth's surface opened, swallowing whatever was above, and water and gas pipelines ruptured. Within minutes, the hot fires used to heat irons in Chinese laundries had kindled flames, and immediately the entire city was set ablaze, the fires fed by broken gas lines. It would burn for three days, destroying most of the city and its vital financial center. "Over 500 Dead, $200,000,000 Lost in San Francisco Earthquake," read headlines in The New York Times the following morning. "Nearly half the city is in ruins and 50,000 are homeless. Water supply fails and dynamite is used in vain," they reported, but their estimates were low by more than half. The death toll was estimated to exceed 3,000, but how many hundreds of unknowns, including perhaps thousands of illegal or semi-legal Chinese immigrants, is a mystery. Over 200,000 were left homeless. The property damage, in 2006 terms, was in the high billions of dollars. This was one of America's greatest disasters, natural or man-made.

What caused the disaster, and what resulted from it, is a story that should be told. The factors leading to it and the lessons learned from it are American legends. For one thing, the response both locally and nationally seemed to be far superior to what occurred in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans — much more akin to New York after the World Trade Center catastrophe. The role of insurers demonstrated both positive and negative qualities.

Even the insurance claim factors are similar to those involving New Orleans. In New Orleans, a covered peril (wind) triggered an uncovered peril (flood). In San Francisco, an uncovered peril (earthquake) triggered a covered peril (fire). In both incidents, the claim issue was the same — which peril caused the damage? The disputes also were similar. What should be the role of the federal government? How did it, and how should it react? How should private enterprise become involved? Ultimately, who should be in charge?

Reliable Resources

In anticipation of the centennial anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake, several books have been published. These include Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World (Harper Collins, 2005) and Dennis Smith's San Francisco is Burning (Viking, 2005). Although covering the same story, the two authors approach from different directions. Winchester, a geologist as well as a historian, analyzes plate tectonics. Smith's viewpoint is urban fire planning. Winchester's previous book, Krakatoa, featured the Indonesian island that exploded in 1883, a result of the same plate tectonics that caused the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Smith is a former New York City fireman, founding editor of Firehouse Magazine and author of a number of books including a best-seller of the late 1970s, Report From Engine Co. 82, a biography of a declining slum neighborhood in the Bronx.

Just as flooding has always been an anticipated peril in New Orleans (the city being saved in the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 only by dynamiting the levees north of the city, flooding out their neighbors), an earthquake is and was a constant danger in San Francisco. Those shaken from their beds that Wednesday morning knew what was happening — but none had experienced such a tremendous quake. Likewise, the city had suffered previous fires, as had practically every major city. New York, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Chicago all had their conflagrations that resulted in older wooden structures being replaced with modern stone, concrete, and steel buildings. There had been a San Francisco fire in 1847, the result of a brush fire that destroyed about 80 dwellings. There was another in 1850, and a third in 1852 that leveled most of the city. But the city arose again, adopting in 1900 a phoenix as part of the city's seal.

Geological Causation

Understanding earthquakes is at once simple and complex. By current theories, the earth consists of various large "plates" that float on a sea of magma many miles below the surface. These plates move about, perhaps all separating from a giant continent called Pangaea millions of years ago. Evidence for such a theory is easy to understand; cut out the continent of South America from a map, and fit it against a cutout of Africa. Then get a map of the ocean floor and note the wide and deep trench in the South Atlantic. It is called "continental drift," and the movement is extremely slow — perhaps an inch or less each year. Yet it explains so much of how our world geography, from volcanoes to mountain ranges, was formed. But there are many unexplained anomalies.

For example, the North American plate's eastern edge is in the middle of Iceland, running south down the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to a point east of Puerto Rico, where it abuts the South American Plate. The European Plate continues southward. The North American Plate then runs almost due west to the west coast of Mexico, where it abuts the Cocos Plate, and then goes northwest up the coastline, through the middle of the Gulf of California (abutting the Rivera Plate), then northward just slightly east of the Pacific Coast of California, abutting the Pacific Plate, to a point opposite Oregon and Washington, where it abuts the Gorda and Juan de Fuca Plates, and then moves north to Alaska. The North American Plate is moving westward, constantly slipping and sliding against and over these other plates, creating the earthquakes and volcanoes in the Caribbean Isles, the earthquakes and volcanoes in Mexico, and the earthquakes and volcanoes of the U.S. Pacific Coast. But plate tectonics do not explain why faults and earthquakes occur in other places, such as New Madrid, Missouri, or Charleston, S.C. Earthquakes can occur in any state, whether or not they are near the edge of a plate. Active fault lines crisscross the nation, each capable of creating a disaster.

The famous San Andreas Fault is but one of many such cracks in the Earth's surface that demonstrates plate movement. It runs northward from a point below the Salton Sea of California (once plush Imperial Valley farmland ruined when the Colorado River flooded, leading to the calls for control of the river and the construction of the Hoover Dam) far into Northern California, somewhere around Eureka. For the most part, it represents the boundary between the North American and the Pacific Plates. It is the eastward movement of the North American Plate and the westward movement of the Pacific Plate that pushed up the Sierra Nevada Range and caused the Shasta and Lassen volcanoes. Plate movement creates active volcanoes in Oregon and Washington, and the bubbling caldera of Yellowstone National Park, which some day again may explode.

Predictable Quakes

Seismographs have been around for more than a century, as have geologists seeking answers to earthquakes, but no one has yet come up with a realistic and practical way to predict when one will strike. Geologists are much better with where earthquakes will occur, usually along known fault lines. Logic would tell the intelligent, "Don't build there!" But then logic tells the wealthy who can afford shoreline homes on barrier islands of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast states not to build there either, for Ma Nature has a whole bag of hurricanes in her possession. If San Francisco is vulnerable to earthquakes, why would anyone want to build there? The answer is obvious. San Francisco is one of the best harbors on the Pacific Coast. Its location vis-?-vis commerce, agriculture, climate, transportation, and institutes of higher learning is unexcelled. Why not build there and construct buildings that will withstand earthquakes? If only we knew when they'd hit!

Studies indicate that there must be some sort of natural warning phenomenon triggered prior to an earthquake, but such a signal is imperceptible by humans. Animals, however, can detect that something may be about to occur. Domestic animals become nervous, birds fly erratically, and small animals scurry for safety minutes, hours, even days before an event. Winchester writes that prior to the San Francisco quake, some observers "noticed that a number of animals in the city behaved a little oddly that night. The horses in a livery stable on Powell Street, for example, seemed skittish; and in the fire stations, men could be heard behind the stable doors soothing animals that appeared unduly restless."

Earthquakes are a result of pressure and friction, which often creates pockets of gases that are released with the seismic event, sometimes with a sulfur-like odor. Some scientists believe that sampling air along fault lines might lead to the detection of changes in gases at the surface, providing warning of an event — but timing is crucial. If an event is detected three minutes before it occurs, there is not much a community in danger can do to prepare.

Geology of the Mississippi Delta

Just as geology plays a crucial role in San Francisco earthquakes, it plays an equally crucial role in the flooding of New Orleans. The Big Easy has flooded many times, leading to the construction of levees along the Mississippi, Lake Pontchartrain, and the various drainage and industrial canals. The original French Quarter was built more than 200 years ago on high ground, but it sank, and now the city lies below sea level, like a bowl set in a big dishpan of water. Every year the city sinks a bit lower.

Following the catastrophic Mississippi flood in 1927, Congress acted to create a flood control system operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. Whereas once the annual flooding of the Mississippi brought tons of sediments down the river to build islands in the swampy delta below New Orleans, the flood control dams and diversions cuts off the flow of sediments. The islands of Breton Sound, and St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes began to erode away in the Gulf of Mexico, gradually with tides but quickly in storms. Today what was once land — even inhabited land — is under water in the Gulf. Since Hurricane Katrina, entire islands have disappeared into the sea, and salt water incursion into the fresh water bayous has increased the pressure on what remains of the city.

In studying plate tectonics, it is evident that perhaps the sea once covered all of Louisiana, along with the rest of the Southeast. But as the plates shifted, the continent lifted and the South became land. Global warming — whatever the cause, including volcanic eruptions around the globe that pump more carbon dioxide into the air than all the power plants in the U.S. — is melting the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, raising the sea level. It may only be by fractions of an inch annually, but fractions add up when a city is already below sea level and still sinking.

Preparedness

While Winchester led his readers on a tour of Earth's geologic history, Smith focused on the fire. In New Orleans, the problem was too much water and insufficient pumps to hold back the torrents. The problem was exacerbated by insufficiently or negligently constructed levees. In San Francisco, the problem also was water — an insufficient supply once the earthquake ruptured water lines. Here, too, negligence played a role, some might say to the extent of criminal negligence.

For years, Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan had pressured local politicians to establish a sufficient water supply so that a high-pressure system would allow adequate fire control, Smith reports. At the time, the city's water system was owned by the Spring Valley Water Company, which provided a gravity-fed flow from three sources south of the city. There also was a system of cisterns in the city, but the Public Works Department had neglected most of them, and they were either dry or full of debris, totally useless in fighting fires.

"Chief Sullivan had begged the board of supervisors in the municipal reports of 1904-5 to build a specific reservoir of 10.5 million gallons in two bays on top of Twin Peaks and to have a separate feeding system of salt water coming from the bay through two pumping stations if an emergency called for it. But still the supervisors had not acted upon his request," writes Smith. One problem was the mayor, Eugene Schmitz, a political machine electee and orchestra leader who had no real experience in running a city as diverse and dangerous as San Francisco was in 1906.

There were an adequate number of fire stations, manned around the clock, each station equipped with either a steam-powered pumper and hose wagon drawn by a special breed of horse that was a cross between a Percheron dray and a race horse, or a chemical wagon that fought smaller fires with bicarbonate of soda and water. There was a fire telegraph system, consisting of bells to indicate the activated fire alarm location. Even the horses knew from the bells where to race with their wagons.

One part of the city, west of the Bay, had been built on reclaimed land, mostly sandy soil. It was topped with small shacks, tenements, saloons, and cheap hotels or flop houses filled with the bursting population. Smith explains: Take a jar of sand and add water until the water is just below the top of the sand, then bang the jar downward a few times on a surface; the sand sinks and the water rises above it. This is what happened in that part of town. In the quake, the buildings collapsed with their occupants inside, and the surface turned to mush.

Along the streets in the older parts of town, buildings of brick and wood collapsed against each other, crushing people inside. As fire wagons raced to alarms, victims cried out for rescue. When the hospital in the basement of City Hall became a ruin, the doctors commandeered a nearby auditorium and used volunteers and nurses to move patients to the new location. But they soon were inundated with newly injured patients and the dead, and had to divide the auditorium into a hospital and a morgue. Then the fires advanced toward the auditorium, and it became necessary to evacuate the patients once again. Rumors later arose that many patients were either shot or left to die in the fire, but other credible witnesses reported that all the living were evacuated. There was one story of a passerby who responded to the screams of a trapped man in a burning building. The man was pinned by debris, and the passerby could not get him free. The flames were quickly advancing and the trapped victim cried, "Don't let me burn!" so the passerby shot him in the head. Similar stories arose out of New Orleans, where it was alleged that elderly patients in a nursing home were euthanized as they couldn't be saved.

Next month (May 2006), Mr. Brownlee continues his comparison between the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and last year's events by analyzing the responses by the federal government and insurance industry.