The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

this video is brought to you by squarespace whether it's your new professional just a lifelong passion start your journey to website glory with squarespace check out their awesome all in one platform through the link in the description below more on them in a bit the san andreas fault that runs down the california coastline is one of the most active seismic zones on earth small earthquakes are a fact of life in this part of america with daily life being interrupted by the ground shaking so often that residents barely pay any attention to it anymore but all californians live in fear that one day the shaking that will erupt from the ground beneath their feet will be anything but harmless they call it the big one a massive earthquake that will wreak havoc across a wide area especially if centered on a metropolitan area like los angeles recent earthquakes in haiti nepal and japan provide a preview of this kind of destructive force and californians know that sooner or later it will happen to them too the frustrating part of course is that no one not even the smartest scientists can predict when the big one will strike but for residents of california a century ago the big one wasn't a future hypothetical but a very real disaster in 1906 one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded leveled an american city and killed thousands of people and changed the course of californian history the 1906 san francisco earthquake changed the way cities were planned and built it kick-started the fledgling science behind the study of tectonic plate movements and most important of all showcased for a shocked american public just how much power was contained within the san andreas fault as hard as it was to believe there was a time when los angeles wasn't even the largest city in california much less one of the biggest in the united states in the first decade of the 20th century that honor belonged to san francisco the city by the bay san francisco is a small port town dominated by an army post the presidio when california was ceded to the united states at the end of the mexican-american war soon after a man named james marshall found gold at sutter's mill california and the entire country was caught in the grip of the california gold rush people flocked to california from all over the world and across the united states hoping to strike a rich and for most of them their first stop was san francisco the city was the port of call for both travelers arriving by ship and for those who took the dangerous route over land in wagon trains and the population of the city exploded virtually overnight going from a thousand residents in 1848 to 25 000 in 1850 the gold rush ended in 1855 but san francisco's impact on the public's consciousness did not it continued to be known as the gateway to the west and the city continued to grow both in population and importance having been spared from the ravages of the american civil war the city benefited from the post-war movement to travel westward in 1869 the transcontinental railroad was completed which linked new york to san francisco by rail by 1900 san francisco was a city of over 300 thousand by far the largest city in the west and the eighth largest in the united states it was home to some of the largest and most important companies in the world such as the wells fargo bank and express company the guillardelli chocolate and levi strauss the inventor of blue jeans it was also a vast cosmopolitan city with intricate architecture ostentatious mansions in neighborhoods like nob hill and the beginnings of bohemian culture that still persists today with the city being visited by such luminary writers as mark twain redid kipling robert louis stevenson and oscar wilde some pundits referred to san francisco as the paris of the west [Music] mankind has been living with earthquakes since the time of the earlier civilizations they were often among the most destructive of natural disasters destroying cities and killing hundreds or thousands of people but nobody understood why they occurred many people dismissed them as a sign of divine wrath or disfavor or else just one of those naturally occurring phenomena that couldn't be explained in 1895 a uc berkeley geologist named andrew lawson identified a fault line a crack in the earth that ran north south along the california coastline it was eventually discovered that the san andreas fault extends more than 750 miles all the way down into mexico running the length of most of california most significantly the fault runs up the san francisco peninsula and right past the city itself scientists at the time recognized that these fault lines had something to do with earthquakes but had not yet identified what it was what would not be realized until later was that the earth's crust is broken up into a series of tectonic plates that sit on top of the earth's mantle these plates are in constant motion slowly but surely moving in one direction or another depending on the plate a fault line such as the san francisco fault marks the boundary line between two plates and the interaction between these two plates is the key to understanding how earthquakes work when two tectonic plates meet they either crash into each other with one plate sliding on top of the other or like the san francisco fault they slide against each other horizontally a movement similar to rubbing your hands together but this movement is not always smooth occasionally the plates get stuck caught up in an obstruction that prevents them from moving this causes the buildup of tremendous amounts of energy and the bigger the obstruction the more energy is built up eventually when sufficient force has been amassed the plates break through the obstruction when this happens all that built up energy is suddenly released through seismic waves that ripple through the earth at surface level this is felt as the ground shaking an earthquake there are an estimated five hundred thousand earthquakes every year around the world eighty percent of which are so small that they can't even be detected except by scientific instruments the ones that can be felt are almost always small in magnitude lasting only for a few seconds and causing no damage people who reside in places subject to frequent small tremors grow used to what robin williams described as living on god's etch a sketch barely paying attention to the small earthquakes that happen sometimes multiple times a day the people who lived in san francisco in 1906 were lulled into a false sense of security by these frequent benign quakes there hadn't been a major earthquake in california for 40 years as a result they were totally unprepared when the seismic lottery finally hurt the jackpot right under their feet now if you're looking to hit the jackpot with your new website you know who you need to visit it's squarespace now more than ever people are getting creative with their time they're reaching deep into their 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website can thrive email campaigns patronage portals social integrations member only areas analytics commercial options 24 7 customer support everything you could ever want all in one place so when you're ready to get started on the next project of yours big or small if it involves a website it's got to be with squarespace right now you can go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com forward slash geographics and you'll save 10 off your first purchase of a website or a domain and let's get back to see just how massive this earthquake is [Music] at 5 12 a.m on april the 18th 1906 the residents of san francisco were awoken by an earthquake hardly an unusual occurrence in the city even if this one was a bit stronger than they were used to however before they'd had time to even process what had happened 20 seconds after the foreshock they were hit by the main event a sudden 300 mile long rupture of the san andreas fault with the epicenter occurring somewhere in the san francisco bay it was massive lasting for 45 seconds and it must have felt like a lifetime for those who were caught in it the earthquake predated the richter scale by 30 years but it's estimated to have had a magnitude of 7.9 making it one of the most powerful earthquakes to ever hit the continental united states no one knew anything about earthquake-proof buildings at the time so when the earthquake hit it toppled whole blocks of buildings crushing occupants who were still in their beds city streets were cracked and ripped apart sinkholes opened up that swallowed structure's whole buildings along the coastline suddenly started sinking into the ground and the soil they were being built on was shaken to the point of liquefying and turning what had been solid earth into quicksand the ground shook from oregon all the way to south los angeles and could be felt as far inland as nevada seismographs in new york city detected the earthquake 19 minutes after it happened as the seismic waves rippled across the north american continent but the earthquake as bad as it was proved to be only a prelude the quake had ruptured gas lines throughout the city and fires broke out everywhere firefighters were hampered by the destruction of most of san francisco's water mains in the earthquake and also by the fact that the city's fire chief dennis sullivan had been killed when a building fell on his firehouse the city fire department as well as army troops from the nearby presideo attempted to create fire breaks by blowing up buildings but they were untrained in how to do it properly using flammable black powder explosives instead of dynamite this created more fires than they prevented for three days fires raged out of control across the city as incredible as it sounds some of these fires were intentionally set when homeowners found out that their insurance policies would not pay out for earthquake damage but would for fire damage they set their own destroyed homes ablaze to make sure that they'd be able to make a claim for the damage the fire choked off escape routes for city residents hemmed in on three sides by water and with fire at the back this meant that emergency sea evacuations were needed to ferry thousands of residents out of the disaster zone by the time it was all over between 80 and 90 percent of the city of san francisco had been destroyed either by the earthquake or the fire 75 percent of the city's 400 thousand inhabitants were left homeless the numbers are simply staggering 60 000 buildings across 20 square miles were now piles of charred rubble nearly every city landmark and factory was gone the city's commercial district was burned to nothing for all intents and purposes the city of san francisco just no longer existed the death toll will never be accurately known but modern estimates put it at more than 3 000 people killed the third deadliest natural disaster in u.s history in financial terms the property losses from the disaster were worth over 400 million dollars in 1906. that's the equivalent of 11.5 billion dollars in today's money over 250 million dollars in insurance claims were paid out with 20 insurance companies going bankrupt from the sheer number of claims received one story tells of wealthy city residents who returned to their ruined homes to find their safes which had survived intact but they did not wait for them to cool down sufficiently before opening them causing the superheated contents to spontaneously combust when exposed to a fresh source of oxygen for three months after the disaster what was left of san francisco was effectively under martial law with federal troops patrolling the streets and guarding places like the u.s mint in the county jail the army and the police department were authorized to shoot on-site anyone caught looting though this didn't prevent some of the less scrupulous soldiers from engaging in the practice themselves dozens of looters were shot as the troops struggled to keep order in the city thousands of people were living in refugee camps both in san francisco and elsewhere struggling to find food and water basic sanitation was virtually non-existent and doctors were overwhelmed treating the sick and injured in temporary hospitals it took days to bury the dead bodies that were everywhere throughout the city immediate relief efforts were hampered by a lack of ready cash most of the city's banks had been caught in the fire the bank of italy later known as the bank of america had evacuated its reserves and was credited with providing much needed liquidity to speed relief efforts in addition to providing the first batch of raw materials to start the process of rebuilding the destroyed city even while the fires continued to burn city and state politicians were coming up with plans for rebuilding they knew that a lot of investment from the east coast was going to be needed so they downplayed the scale of the disaster in the press and in public statements this was undercut by the fact that this was one of the first disasters to be extensively covered not only by photographers but by motion picture cameras as well which brought dramatic images of the destruction to a shocked nation one of the more grandiose plans for reconstruction came from the celebrated urban planner daniel burnham who had revitalized the central business district of chicago burdham's plan called for wide avenues tree-lined boulevards a completely redesigned street grid with arterial thoroughfares and a completely new civic center made up of classical structures and a city park that would have been the largest in the world dwarfing central park in new york city but the plan would have required the city of san francisco to purchase vast quantities of land which would have only been the beginning of the massive investment needed to build it so the city fathers rejected the plan although some aspects of it were eventually implemented the city wanted to rebuild as quickly as possible recreating the city pretty much the same way as it was before the disaster well almost the same city officials sought to use the destruction wrought on the city's chinatown neighborhood to force san francisco's population of chinese americans out of the center of town the residents of chinatown who had spent decades combating racism were determined to protect their enclave and fought bitterly against attempts to force them out chinatown was eventually rebuilt in a more modern western inspired fashion in fact rather than eliminate the chinese population of san francisco the disaster actually increased it both city hall and the hall of records have been destroyed taking with them countless legal documents including birth records and immigration papers this allowed many chinese immigrants to claim american citizenship which in turn permitted them to bring their relatives over from china creating a backdoor to the chinese exclusion act which was federal law at the time today chinatown is one of san francisco's most prominent landmarks drawing more tourist to visitors annually than the golden gate bridge and it's the largest chinese enclave outside of asia anywhere in the world scientists arrived on the scene in the aftermath of the disaster determined to understand all they could about what had happened in an attempt to prevent it from happening again the definitive report on the earthquake was written by professor andrew lawson who had discovered and named the san andreas fault 10 years before it was lawton that mapped out the entire length of the fault and he determined that the destruction was more severe in areas of the city where buildings have been reconstructed on land reclaimed from the bay rather than sitting on bedrock most important perhaps is his determination that many people were killed after their homes collapsed on top of them caused by two weak connections between a building's foundation and its walls the report is considered a seminal work in the field of seismology particularly the study of how earthquakes affect large cities american scientists spent decades studying the san andreas fault as part of the wider exploration of what causes earthquakes it would be 50 years before plate tectonics was accepted by the scientific community as the primary geological force behind them though earthquakes have been triggered by volcanic eruptions landslides and even nuclear bombs before structural engineers also studied the disaster with the goal of preventing buildings from killing their occupants in a large earthquake this was the beginning of what is today called earthquake-proof construction despite the name making a building earthquake-proof doesn't mean preventing the building from being damaged in an earthquake rather many buildings are designed in such a way to absorb the shock waves of a quake shaking back and forth along with the ground the building will probably take damage but it will do so without collapsing giving the building's occupants enough time to evacuate engineers in other countries have even come up with even more advanced construction techniques japan which is far more earthquake prone than the united states has thousands of buildings built with what is called base isolation construction a technique that separates the foundation of a building from the main structure with a layer of rubber and foam so that during a quake it protects the building from being shaken at all and saves lives and prevents damage the structure but base isolation buildings are expensive to construct and the practice has not been widely utilized in the united states what did the majority of damage to san francisco was of course not the earthquake but the fires that burned for three days as a result of it while natural gas lines continue to be vulnerable to rupture in an earthquake city and state fire codes have been beefed up across the country and city fire departments are well trained to respond to post-quake fires preventing them from becoming a firestorm that will consume large swaths of homes and buildings in san francisco for instance the fire department today has access to a large emergency water supply and has the capability to draw upon water from the san francisco bay neither of which the sffd had in 1906 when a city is so thoroughly destroyed as san francisco was in 1906 recovery doesn't happen overnight it took years and in some aspects the city has never fully recovered not its position as the undisputed capital of the west coast anyway while san francisco rebuilt other cities in california boomed as they picked up trade and commerce from companies that had abandoned the city by the bay many of them never returned to san francisco and the chief beneficiary of this financial shift was los angeles 400 miles to the south the 20th century would belong to the city of angels and today it is the second biggest city in the united states while san francisco's fallen to 17th the fourth biggest city in california behind la san diego and san jose still san francisco has recovered and recovered nicely it was largely rebuilt by the time of the panama pacific exposition that the city hosted in 1915 celebrating the city's rebirth after being one of the most important west coast ports for american troops and supplies coming to and from the pacific theater of world war ii san francisco became the unofficial capital of the counter-culture hippie movement of the 1960s and the city's castro neighborhood became known as a haven for lgbt americans at the very start of the gay rights movement today san francisco benefits from another economic boom this one coming from the tech companies headquartered south of the city while san jose is the primary beneficiary of all the jobs and cash flow that comes out of silicon valley san francisco has its share of tech transplants too perhaps too many depending on who you ask san francisco's housing market is one of the most expensive in the united states and many native san franciscans worry that the increased speed of gentrification might price most poor and middle class residents out of the city altogether san francisco is also one of the most popular cities for tourists to visit in the country chock full of landmarks such as chinatown the golden gate bridge fisherman's wharf and the notorious former federal prison on alcatraz island visitors are the primary riders of the city's historic cable cars nowadays and no car trip to the city could be complete without driving down the famous lombard street a beautiful albeit nausea inducing trip hanging over the city and the rest of california of course is the risk of another major earthquake san francisco was shaken again by the loma prieta earthquake of 1989 which ripped open the same part of the san andreas fault that ruptured in 1906. the quake did 6 billion worth of damage and claimed 63 lives most of them crushed in their cars when a double-decker freeway collapsed in the neighboring city of oakland loss of life might have been higher except for the fact that the earthquake happened to take place right before the start of a world series baseball game between san francisco and oakland's teams an event for which many people took off early from work and thus weren't on the highways during rush hour when the quake struck the last time a large earthquake hit anywhere in california was in 1994 near los angeles an unnaturally large gap in time between shakes according to seismologists scientists and engineers are in agreement that a major rupture of the san andreas fault or any of the other fault lines running up and down the state situated near a large city such as la or san francisco will be catastrophic doing untold billions in damage and claiming hundreds of lives there is only so much you can do to protect people from a large earthquake after all recovery will most likely be slow and expensive compounded by the fact that despite the danger 90 of buildings in the state of california are not insured against earthquake damage earthquakes are a fact of life in california they've been happening for billions of years and will keep happening for billions more but nobody knows exactly when the next big one is going to happen or where it could be tomorrow or it might not be for decades but one thing's for sure in the case of san francisco if it gets hit again no matter how bad they will rebuild after all they've done it before so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Geographics

Views: 233,659

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Id: DN25V1Q05Os

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021