San Francisco after the big quake
It takes three days to extinguish the fires. People quickly try to return to some semblance of normality in spite of the chaos. San Francisco is in a difficult position, because its reputation is at stake. The city must have better protection against earthquake disasters. And time is pressing if the city wants to keep up with its competitors.
The aftermath
Saturday, 21 April 1906: The fire has been extinguished, but isolated whiffs of smoke are still drifting up from heaps of rubble. Long tables have been placed in the streets that have been cleared of debris. They are used for serving free meals to destitute citizens. Some families build little kitchens in the street to provide for themselves. Restaurant owners rig up canvas shelters over what remains of the restaurant walls and offer meals at a fraction of the normal price so that none of the 400,000 inhabitants has to go hungry.
Huge camps are set up in parks and on vacant land. The tents provide shelter for the 225,000 people who have been made homeless. The relief workers lay water pipes to supply the camps and install latrines and bathing facilities. Gradually the army tents are replaced by some 6,000 green wooden shacks. The camps grow into little townships with their own administrations. Many people are still living there years after the quake.
Post and banking services start up again
Work starts on rebuilding the city's infrastructure immediately after the disaster. Just two days afterwards, postal clerks at the main post office are already sitting at their counters again. Although the telegraph lines are down, telegrams are being delivered within the city by couriers. Post offices are even set up in the refugee camps. The people greet this with jubilation because it is a first indication that things are getting back to normal. When the postal workers arrive to collect the first batch of letters, they are confronted with a mountain of suitably addressed pieces of wood and cardboard and pages torn out of newspapers and books. Everything is delivered — with or without stamps.
The banks also endeavour to get monetary transactions going again quickly and unbureaucratically. Clients who need cash are issued with certificates that the Mint exchanges for gold coin, which is still accepted at this time as a means of payment alongside the dollar.
Fears for the future
The situation seems to be returning to normal quickly. But San Francisco faces the biggest challenge in its history. Fears are growing that the city will not be as attractive as it was before 18 April. The media attempt to play down the disaster and intentionally understate the number of fatalities. For a long time there is talk of only a few hundred people killed. It is several decades before realistic figures emerge, on the basis of which there were more than 3,000 deaths. The city fathers and business enterprises claim that the disaster was due not to the earthquake itself but to the subsequent fires. The lack of fire protection installations, structural deficiencies, and poor disaster management are man-made errors that could be prevented in the future. This is the argument used by the biggest investor in the region, the Southern Pacific Company, in trying to pacify its shareholders. It has taken out large loans to finance the building of California's railroads and now fears that the price of its shares will plummet.
Capital losses not only threaten the companies that are directly affected by the earthquake. Many insurance companies have to mobilise financial reserves in the form of equities and sell their best holdings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 10% in the first few weeks after the quake.
The new San Francisco
Just one day before the earthquake, the famous American architect and town planner Daniel Hudson Burnham presents a plan for the renewal of San Francisco: a gigantic metropolis in baroque style. Burnham's idea is practically a blueprint for the restoration of San Francisco. The opportunity is there, but the city fathers decide differently. There is no time for such an elaborate rebuilding programme. What the city needs now is not elegance but economic growth — and fast. The new San Francisco rises in a similar way to the old one: swiftly, organically, and sometimes haphazardly.
The next large quake
On 17 October 1989, San Francisco was shaken by the Loma-Prieta earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale. 68 people die, and losses to the economy as a whole come to US$ 6bn. Buildings in the city centre survive the tremor unscathed. As is to be expected, it hits the very houses that were built hastily, especially in Oakland in the East Bay. (Note: there are not many victims, and the majority are due to the Cypress Viaduct collapse. Again it is the areas on "made ground" that suffer most. The buildings in the Marina District — built on the debris of the 1906 earthquake — subside by 13 cm. As in 1906, water and gas pipes burst and a number of fires break out. The area created on reclaimed land for the World Exhibition in 1915 is almost completely destroyed. The Oakland Bay Bridge is closed to commuter and goods traffic for a month.
Worrying forecast
There is a 70% probability of a further large quake in the vicinity of San Francisco by the year 2032. This is the outcome of a study by the US Geological Survey. It will have a magnitude probably ranging between 6.7 and 7.2. There is a strong likelihood that it will be caused not by the San Andreas Fault but the Hayward Fault, which is further east. There is no doubt that California is better prepared to cope with a megacatastrophe today than it was in 1906 — in all respects including insurance. Building codes and standards are among the best in the world, there is a centralised coordination of disaster management for the Bay Area, and private firms have disaster recovery plans and back-up facilities.