Wednesday, April 18, 1906, 5:12
small village in 1848, that the gold rush that San Francisco owes its expansion. Two years later, the city already 50 000. In 1906, she became the ninth city in the United States with nearly 400,000 inhabitants. Then a modern and elegant has become a cultural center.
This cited growing will be totally destroyed April 18, 1906 at 5:35 am. The main quake occurred at 5:12. Its epicenter was 12 km west of San Francisco along the San Andreas Fault.
The tremors were felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland to central Nevada. The earthquake and resulting fire remain to this day among the largest natural disasters that have hit a major U.S. city.
But this earthquake with a magnitude of 8.2 on the Richter scale is not the real cause of the disaster. At this time, houses are mostly made of wood. The man responsible for many deaths is the huge fire that ravaged the city. Only half an hour after the first shock, there are already 50 fires. The fire raged for two days under the helpless gaze of firefighters.
- The destruction of an American metropolis
In 1906, San Francisco is a city booming. Boomtown born half a century before the gold rush, it became at that time the metropolis of the West Coast of the United States. But on April 18 at 5:35 am, an earthquake of considerable magnitude and the shaking causes a huge fire which destroyed almost entirely.
soon rebuilt, the city remains now under permanent threat of the great San Andreas Fault, in the heart of one of the most volatile regions of the world.
- A proud city
It is gold that San Francisco owes his fortune. Discovered in 1848, the year in which Mexico cedes California to the United States, the precious metal concealed in the Rocky Mountains cause a stampede towards the West. Small village in 1848, San Francisco is already a city of 50,000 people two years later. In 1906, became the ninth U.S. city with 400,000 inhabitants - nearly half the population of California - This modern and elegant, half of whose inhabitants were not born in California, lives by something other than gold mining or mining.
This 
After the earthquake in San Francisco (1906) - Views taken from a moving vehicle on East Market Street (1'40).
Proud of its 20 theaters and the opera, she is even more of its business district, where banks and trading houses thrive in the shade of the large newly built City Hall. Now, this business area, a symbol of the dynamism of the city, which is totally destroyed by the huge fire in April 1906. Indeed, far more than the earthquake itself, which, despite its magnitude of 8.2 degrees on the Richter scale, which has 9, that few victims in a city where buildings are still mostly of wood is the fire that causes triggering the catastrophe.
- A huge fire
For some, it is the escape of sparks son tramway fell on the ground after the quake, for others it is the kerosene lamps that are reversed in origin of the flames in a city where the main construction material is highly combustible, a thousand reasons why the fire started. Half an hour after the quake, in any case, there are already 50 fires. The fire raged for two days later, destroying half the city, killing 450 people, chasing 200 000 other homes.
lack of water - the pipes were ruptured during the earthquake - the authorities can do nothing: the firefighters attending nearly helpless in the fire, the administration is content to stay temporarily homeless tents hastily installed in the large city park. The army, Under these conditions, takes things in hand. The head of the garrison commander Funston, declared martial law and orders to shoot looters on sight who would benefit from the general panic. Faced with the inability of firefighters, the same man decides blasting large-scale buildings to save the neighborhoods still unaffected. Within hours, people are losing the most beautiful street in the city, Van Ness Avenue, whose facades were their pride. This sacrifice can protect the west of the city, but the neighborhood is, on both sides of Market Street is on fire: the wharves and warehouses on the bay business district and Chinatown are completely destroyed.
Images of the earthquake in San Francisco (9'50).
- Reconstruction and continuing threat
Residents to heart quickly erase the memory of the cataclysm. Barely a month later, the most famous citizen of the city, William Randolph Hearst (the newspaper magnate that inspired the filmmaker Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane), brought Sarah Bernhardt: French actress plays Adrienne Lecouvreur in the outdoor theater in Berkeley. The city rebuilt quickly, is even more beautiful. New construction techniques involving concrete and steel used to design a completely new city, made of skyscrapers.
In the summer of 1915, the opening of the Panama Canal is an opportunity to organize a major exhibition: 19 million visitors come to admire while San Francisco refurbishment. Despite this, even today, the catastrophe of 1906 occupies an important place in the collective memory of residents of San Francisco. As before her, Lisbon in 1755 or after it, Tokyo in 1923, San Francisco came in the category of cities martyrs of earthquakes. Some even attribute to the constant threat of earthquakes new carefree and whimsical character of a city whose atmosphere is unique today in the United States.
The first sequence (Western Addition) shows here many details suggestive of a neighborhood, a hundred years ago. The rest is turned west on Market Street (7'44)
- The San Andreas Fault
Straight over nearly 1000 kilometers north of the Bay of San Francisco in Mojave Desert The great San Andreas fault poses a continuing threat to California. It corresponds in contact with the Pacific Plate and North America. Instead of sinking beneath the other one, as is usually the case elsewhere, these two plates rub laterally.
The Pacific heads south and the American goes north. These frictions are the source of instability as permanent seismic around San Francisco. Seismologists have been able to assess a major earthquake occurred approximately every 80 years. With amazing regularity, San Francisco has experienced another earthquake in 1986 (force 7) and again in 1989 (force 6). If the skyscrapers have not moved, thanks to their seismic design, the collapse of a bridge killed 50 people in 1989 and lit fires which no wind that day was fortunately prevented from spreading. ______________________________________________________________________________
The sources of the article, pictures and videos and other information are available at the following sites, among a few examples:
- Wikipedia
- -alerts meteo.com
- SFGate.com [In]
- archive.org [In]
- Museum of the City of San Francisco [In]
- U.S. Geological Survey [In] Security
- , seismic risk
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