The last Big One

One hundred and two years ago on this date the San Francisco Earthquake struck.




It was remarkable for a number of reasons: the damage done, , the constitutionally questionable but undoubtedly effective intervention of the US Army in recovery operations, and the immediate decision by several of the Powers That Be to publicly cover up the "earthquake" side of things and insist that the "fire" had done the damage (earthquakes being bad for business, you know).




I won't go into all the details of what happened. Wikipedia has a good article about it, and Simon Winchester's superb book "A Crack In The Edge Of The World" is a magnificent portrayal of both the earthquake and its geological causes and effects. Highly recommended.




One of the most remarkable panoramic photographs I've ever seen is shown below. It was taken from an airship 2,000 feet over the Bay, overlooking the waterfront, and gives an insight into the scope of the damage. It's far bigger than your screen (7,000 x 2,748 pixels, 4.5 megabytes) and takes a while to download, but it's worth it. To view, click it once, then, when it displays, click it again for the full version. You'll need to use horizontal and vertical scrolling to see it all.




Finally, early movie cameras were able to record the aftermath of the quake. The video below intersperses movie taken from a tramcar in 1905 with footage shot on the same line after the quake in 1906, giving a "before-and-after" impression of what one part of San Francisco looked like. Very interesting.





Peter