The San Francisco of early 1906 was as exciting a place to be as could be found around the world. San Franciscans of 1906 were familiar with earthquakes, at least with those that rattle windows but do little, if any, damage. Over two hundred temblors had been recorded in northern California between 1850 and 1886, with most of them occurring around San Francisco Bay. However, during the first months of 1906, there was diminished activity and for the first sixteen days of April none at all. According to a U.S. Geological Survey report published in 1907, "it is fair to assume, therefore, that the great earthquake resulted from an accumulation of stresses which would ordinarily have been relieved by smaller movements." San Francisco refused to learn the lessons of its past history. During its previous140-year history, the San Francisco Bay area had a number of devastating earthquake hit the area. The earliest large earthquake known occurred in June of 1836 along the Hayward Fault and may have had a magnitude of more than 8.0 on the Richter Scale. The next occurred in late June 1838 and was on the San Andreas Fault in the foothills west of Palo Alto. This temblor was also compared in magnitude to the June 1836 earthquake. At these early dates, the San Francisco business district was called Yerba Buena and consisted of only eight or ten simple wooden structures and the immediate area had only 60 or 70 people. In 1865, another eight on the Richter Scale hit in the hills south of San Francisco. Three years later, San Francisco was hit again by a severe earthquake. With over $400,000 in property damage, the shock was the magnitude of a 7.5.

The most significant earthquake in the history of the San Francisco Bay vicinity in terms of lives lost and property damage was the great earthquake of April 18, 1906. Early that morning, the San Andreas Fault once again yielded to the earth's accumulated pressure. For years, deep in the earth, fearful and little understood forces were at work on the earth's crust, twisting and straining the great layers of rock. That morning, at about twelve minutes past five at a point called the epicenter, the rock gave way, snapping and shifting in an instant with an approximate force of 12,000 Hiroshima-size atomic explosions. The devastation spread with terrible speed along a 270-mile corridor from Point Arena in the north, all the way south to Hollister and Salinas. Incredible displacements of up to 25 feet were immediately recognizable and the temblor was felt 400 miles away. The shock severed water mains in San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and Fort Ross, restraining firefighting units of their necessary water supplies.

The entire San Francisco peninsula began to tremble as the quake centered somewhere near Woodside, approximately twenty miles south of the Golden Gate bridge. The shaking lasted, and, although the Richter scale was not developed until about 30 years later, it had an estimated magnitude of more than 8.0. It was the most devastating earthquake ever recorded along the San Andreas Fault. Crackling through the earth at thousands of miles an hour, the shock wave sliced the San Francisco peninsula like some enormous disc harrow drawn over the surface. Jolting San Franciscans into instant terror, the entire city of San Francisco rocked as the ground rippled and swelled. Accompanied by a roar which sound d like a thousand freight trains out of control, streets and avenues billowed with the upward thrust of the shock, shaking and pitching the few pedestrians on the streets. Downtown buildings began to shudder, loosening glass, ornamental stonework, and granite. Large hunks of office buildings were shaken loose by the tons within the first few seconds of violent vibration. The entire San Francisco skyline rocked like a large clipper in a hurricane. Brick structures were destroyed by the earthquake, as their interiors became maelstroms of flying dishes and bookshelves.

During the earthquake, tons of brick chimneys crashed through roofs, injuring and killing hundreds. Damaged and spark-leaking chimneys that did not topple were the cause of many terrible fires that started in the morning hours following the quake. The usual occupant of this bed was fortunate to be somewhere else at the time of the earthquake.

Less than 30 seconds had elapsed since the first jolt was felt, but everywhere there was unbelievable destruction. While the shock waves were still being felt, fires began erupting everywhere, Firefighters had quickly scrambled into action, but their trucks could not handle the torn-up streets. Because of the broken water mains, fire hydrants were useless to the firefighters. Meanwhile, dust and smoke-blinded people who survived the first shock circled around the toppled buildings and brick-piled avenues in stunned horror.

Everyone living through those endless seconds knew that the city was enduring a tremendous ordeal, and those who were not too terrified, began to find the extent of mother nature. As the streets in the residential districts were being filled with hastily attired people aroused from their early morning sleep, more than fifty small fires began. Gas connections had broken, electric wires had crossed, chimneys had fallen, stoves had turned, and countless jars of chemicals toppled from drugstore shelves. The final cost for removing the debris from the streets alone was twenty-million dollars. It was also estimated that some 200,000 people had been left homeless by the great earthquake and fire. According to the official statistics, 28,188 buildings burned. Especially because of this earthquake, most historians agree that there is no great example the destruction and replacement of a city than San Francisco.

The Survivors tell their stories

"A low, rumbling noise, a savage succession of twists, a rocking motion to the south and north, a cessation of an instant and now the twist and the shake, as of the earth in agony, and then the monstrous quake and the low rumbling noise like the fluttering of wings of steel, dying away to nothing, followed by a silence so keen that all nature seemed to stop to listen. This was the minor chord to the great smash and clash of groaning buildings, the creaking of battered walls, the snapping of steel, the cracking of glass and the shrieks of dying men. The cries of the wounded were mingled with those of frightened horses, frightened into speech, to call out in horrid unaccustomed tones the affright of all things that live. The earth quaked and rocked and heaved and rolled and swelled, and ,aye, it groaned in agony."

-Pierre N. Beringer

"I was awakened at 5:13 on the bright sunny morning of April 18th...and enjoyed the wheezy undulations of the house, which mark the usual harmless California earthquake. The wave which woke me was gentle enough, but the next one, like the bump of an express train, seemed a little severe, But it was a straight wave and harmed nothing. Then the temblor began to take hold. The bedroom on the second floor swayed like a ship in a hurricane. A lantern standing in the hall leaped in through the open door. Pictures swayed, earthenware leaped about. Some mighty force seemed to hold the house, and to be trying to whip the ground with it.
...this was the REAL THING. And it seemed to be overdone. A California earthquake was due to last for a few seconds only, but this did not know when to stop. Now the power was trying to twist the house about its chimneys, taking each of the three in turn. I rushed along the reeling gangway of the house, seized the baby and got out on the veranda, where bricks could not fall. The older boy, who was sleeping on the roof, clung on as to a runaway horse. As things became a little calmer he shouted down: 'The church is falling! The gymnasium is caving in! Everything has gone burn!' I saw the dust of mortar rising, and the students crowding in the roads, and then I knew we had had an epoch-marking earthquake."

-David Storr Jordan

"Right away it was incredible -the violence of the quake. It started with a directness, a savage determination that left no doubt of its purpose...First, for a few scones a feeling of incredulity, capped immediately with one finality-of incredulity at the violence of the vibrations. 'it's the end-St. Pierre, Samoa, Vesuvius, Formosa, San Francisco-that is death.' Simultaneously with that, a picture of the city swaying beneath the curl of a tidal wave foaming to the sky...
I got up and walked to the window. I started to open it, but the pane obligingly fell outward and I poked my head out, the floor like a geyser beneath my feet. Then I heard the roar of bricks coming down I cataracts and the groaning of twisted girders all over the city, and at the same time I saw the moon, a calm, pale crescent in the green sky of dawn...Just then the quake, with a sound as of a snarl, rose to its climax of rage, and the back wall of my building of three stories above me fell...It struck some little wooden houses in the alley below. I saw them crash in like emptied eggs and the bricks pass through the roof as through tissue paper.
Throughout the long quaking, in this great house full of people(the Neptune Hotel on Post Street) I had not heard a cry, not a sound, not a sob, not a whisper. And now, when the roar of crumbling buildings was over and only a brick was falling here and there like the trickle of a spent rain, this silence continued, and it was an awful thing. But now in the alley some one began to groan. It was a woman's groan, soft and low.
...the streets...were full of people, half-clad, disheveled, but silent, absolutely silent, as if suddenly they had become speechless idiots...I went down Post Street toward the center of town, and in the morning's garish light I saw many men and women with gray faces, but none spoke. All of them, they had a singular hurt expression, not one of physical pain, but rather one of injured sensibilities, as if some trusted friend, say, had suddenly wronged them..."

-James Hopper

(About the fire)

"Then came the season of the awful silence, the hust of awe, when mankind held its breath and things stood still and humanity gazed on havoc and hideous horror and then, out of the silence, out of toppled buildings, ruined palaces, and dismal hovels, came the besom of flame. With hideous roar it advanced, this terrible thing, this red and yellow monster, and its fiery arms outstretched, it reached the seven hills and it hissed and roared and with infernal intensity, it consumed, ate, and devoured. Here it creeped along, a fawning thing, a fascinating though hideous snake and there it advanced boldly, compelling obedience by the sudden smash and relentless roar and rack of flame. One moment it subsided, the next it rose and flung itself upon all that it could consume in its mad fury. It followed the ground, it scaled the heights, it burned through steel and rock and then licked up wood as though it were straw."

-Pierre Berlinger