Apr 18 2002
Earthquake
96 years ago, the buildings I live and work in hadn’t been built yet. On this day in 1906, the city was awakened at 5:12 a.m. by an earthquake that measured 8.25 on the modern Richter scale (compared to 6.70 for the 1989 quake). Three thousand people were killed, 225,000 were injured, and most of the city burned. Though the quake itself lasted only a minute, it is still considered one of the worst natural disasters of our time.
Here’s how the Financial District, where I work, looked after the quake.
I would have been a little luckier in where I live: the great mansions on my street, particularly the Haas-Lilienthal House, three blocks away, survived. Legend has it that the H-L house’s inhabitants stood on their balcony and watched the city burn. The house preserves a crack in the wall from that disastrous Spring day almost a century ago.
People who don’t live here often ask how we can, when there have been the two “Big Ones” in the past 100 years, countless little ones, and more to come. I wonder the same thing about people who live in places that are routinely flooded, or destroyed by hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards. I guess the answer is that you live with the natural disaster you can handle.
I don’t worry every day about the big quake that is supposed to send California back into the ocean from whence it came, though I know there’s the possibility. We keep a good supply of bottled water, candles, canned food on hand at home, and have a plan for what to do if it strikes while we’re at work.
So while we know it could happen, it’s at the back of our minds, not the front. For us, it’s worth the small risk to live in such a beautiful, temperate, tolerant place, where 96 years later, it looks like this at the dawn of a new Spring day.