April 18, 1906. The city of San Francisco is quiet since it’s early in the morning. At first, nothing seemed wrong. According to USGS, “At almost precisely 5:12 a.m., local time, a foreshock occurred with sufficient force to be felt widely throughout the San Francisco Bay area.” This was just the very beginning of what was yet to come.
About a minute later, a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the city. It caused violent shaking throughout the region. Earthquakes normally happen because of built-up tension between tectonic plates. In this case, it happened on a 296-mile rupture along the San Andreas Fault, the biggest and most notorious fault line in the world.
According to EBSCO, “ This catastrophic quake lasted approximately 45 seconds and was felt as far away as Tokyo.” After the shaking stopped, people came out of their houses to see the destruction that happened. The people of San Fransico were devastated by the damage. The entire city was full of collapsed buildings that used to stand in the city skyline.
To make it worse, multiple fires started all throughout the city. These fires burned for around 3 days and further charred the already destroyed city. After they were put out, the city was finally able to start rebuilding again.
In total, approximately 3-6,000 people lost their lives both to the earthquake and the fires that followed. It destroyed around 200,000 homes and caused around 400 million dollars in damage, which is equivalent to 10-120 billion dollars in today’s money. This tragedy took around 9 years to recover from, which, according to experts, was fairly quick compared to the damage it caused. This earthquake led to changes in the way we prepare for them and the way we build, so that this never happens again.