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When the Earth Moved
In April 1906 San Francisco was “the Queen City of the Pacific,” the largest city in California and the busiest port on North America’s Pacific Coast. It was a city of superlatives, most banks, best entertainment, richest rich, and greatest ethnic diversity. Then the earth moved and San Francisco lay in ruins.
“The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906,” by Matthew J. Davenport, tell the story of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. It describes the pre-earthquake city and how it became what it was. It then recounts the events of the earthquake and what followed in the immediate aftermath.
Davenport takes readers into the ethnically-diverse streets of San Francisco of the late 1800s and the first half-decade of the 20th century. Readers visit Chinatown, the Italian, Russian, and Mexican enclaves in the city and the homes of the very rich and very poor. He shows how San Francisco grew from an obscure Mexican town to the economic dynamo of the West Coast. He shows how rapid growth created a town ripe for disaster. Poorly-built, crowded buildings were common. Infrastructure was neglected. Much of what existed was shoddy.
Then the earthquake struck. Davenport shows that while the earthquake caused substantial damage, the real destruction was caused by fires started after the earthquake. They raged for days before finally being controlled. He shows how the city fought the fires. They had first-rate fire-fighters, but he shows how the loss of infrastructure crippled firemen’s efforts to stop the fires.
He also describes the relief efforts, both in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and long afterwards. He shows how the US Army and Navy provided immediate assistance and how the city organized itself. He relates the experiences of the survivors and the fate of those killed during the disaster.
Davenport took a fresh look at the earthquake, conducting extensive research in writing this book. He reviewed existing public records prior to and after the earthquake. He made extensive use of previously un examined resources including letters, unpublished memoirs, and diaries from survivors to piece together his account. The result is a remarkable in both the breadth and depth of what Davenport relates.
“The Longest Minute” is a dramatic and fascinating account of the 1906 Earthquake. Readers feel they are actually in the San Francisco of the time. Exciting and fast-paced, it offers a human account of a natural disaster.
“The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906,” by Matthew J. Davenport, St. Martin’s Press, October, 2023, 448 pages, $35.00 (Hardcover), $16.99 (Ebook), $35.00 (Audio and Audio CD)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in History
I truly thought your next sentence was going to be about the moral and political decay that has laid the city in ruin.
It’s probably flippant and unkind of me to say: but maybe recovery to normalcy is more easily accomplished from the aftermath of nature’s earthquake than from the aftermath of the cultural earthquake of men.
It may be flippant and unkind, but it has the virtue of being true.
This is one of two books about San Francisco during its golden age I reviewed this month. (The other one a biography of a SF-based sea captain was for Epoch Times.) Both reminded me of the tremendous drive and energy San Francisco had between the American Civil War and World War II. It is a real illustration of the aphorism that hard times make hard men, hard men make good times, good times make soft men, soft men make hard times. SF went through hard times which made men that turned it into a great city – which in turn filled it with soft men who turned it into a cesspool.
Davenport’s chronicle will be a welcome addition to anyone interested in earthquakes and/or the history of San Francisco.
I am curious if the author noted the more recent research regarding the total casualties from the 1906 earthquake and fire, or stuck with the older statistic.
Not long after the earthquake, the statistic of 3,000 fatalities entered the lexicon of its statistics. This figure soon became the be-all and end-all of the discussion, for a very long time.
But decades later, a woman undertook the task of combing thru records and discovered some much larger figure. She published a book that examined the situation.
On edit: I totally mis-remembered below figures. Pls read seawriter’s comment in #5.
I forget if it was 25K or 32K fatalities but it was a significantly greater number.
I had begun to doubt the smaller number within 6 months of my moving to the Bay area in the early 1980’s. Within that short time, I had become friends or acquaintances with 3 people who claimed to have lost a grandparent or other relative to the catastrophe. The idea that among the first 200 people I had encountered, there was a death recorded in their family histories made me suspect the lower figure was wrong.
The only way the number could be that small was if the death lists focused on San Francisco deaths only. Among the three deaths I had heard of were two men who had come in from other spots, one being Oakland and the other being Livermore. They both had spent the night in town, as back in the day, neither location was a short drive in a car driven on a modern freeway.
Usually guesstimates of overall casualties of an event are on the low side. City power brokers naturally want to see the area rebuilt and become strong and vibrant once again. Large fatality figures would scare people off.
A bit off-topic perhaps, but the “Hall Of Flame” firefighting museum in/near Phoenix has some very interesting displays of equipment from the past. Including public fire alarm systems, etc. Worth a visit if you can. And there’s a golf club nearby where we had a very nice lunch afterward. The golf club restaurant is open to the public, and was recommended by the museum staff. We made sure to let the restaurant know who sent us. Hopefully they return the favor too.
He did. Gladys Hansen was the woman who researched it and raised the death count from the “official” 478 to 3400. This was research done in this century. There is a discussion of it in the Afterword chapter.
It’s not going to be 32,000, especially since most of the damage was done by the fires that raged for days after the earthquake.
You are right, and I can only say in m defense: “Goodness, getting old is a
b-i… poodle!”Great article mentioning Hansen (I’m not vouching for the website as a whole, as this is all I’ve read on it.)
https://www.grunge.com/210885/the-1906-san-francisco-earthquake-was-worse-than-you-thought/
Plus I like this photo from “grunge” detailing how the horror of the earthquake itself soon became the nightmare of the over consuming fire:
Alternate Title: “The Day The Earth Didn’t Stand Still.”
Eventually the earthquake stops. The men-quake doesn’t.