1906 San Francisco Earthquake

1. Introduction

At the turn of the century, San Francisco

was the wealthiest and most important city on
the Pacific Coast. With a population of 400,000,
it was the eighth largest city in the country and
the economic center of the West, largely the
result of mining and railroad wealth. Then, in
the early dawn of 18 April 1906, the city was
rocked awake by a violent earthquake, which,
together with the subsequent firestorm, reduced
much of the city to ashes and ruins. The 1906
earthquake and subsequent fire remains one of
the most devastating natural disasters this nation
has known. At least 3000 people were killed,
and in San Francisco alone, 225,000 out of the
city’s ~400,000 residents were left homeless.
While the 1906 earthquake marked a seminal event in the history of California, it can also be
remembered as the birth of modern earthquake science in the United States. It was the first time that
an earthquake was recognized and documented as the result of a recurring tectonic process of strain
accumulation and release. Under the leadership of Professor Andrew Lawson, of the University of
California (UC)–Berkeley, teams of scientists and engineers spread across the state, carefully
collecting and documenting physical phenomena related to the quake. Their exhaustive data and
thoughtful conclusions, published in landmark volumes two and four years after the earthquake,
together with a complementary report published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 1907, led
to a number of new discoveries about the cause and effects of earthquakes. These discoveries
underlie much of modern seismic hazard analysis.

Date: April 18, 1906 at 13:12 UTC (or 05:12 AM local time)
Location: 37.7 (N) latitude, -122.5 (W) longitude
7.9 Mw, 7.7 Ms (The "traditional" magnitude of 8.3 for this earthquake was based on
Magnitude: work by Richter [1958]. More recent research indicates that estimates in the range from
7.7 to 7.9 are more reliable.); XI (Extreme) on Mercalli scale
The San Andreas fault ruptured 430 km from San Juan Bautista to the Cape Mendocino
Faulting: triple junction. The motion was predominately right-lateral strike-slip, with a peak
displacement of 6 meters near Olema.
Deaths: > 3,000
Injuries: ~225,000
Property
$400,000,000 in 1906 dollars; $9.5 billion (in 2009 dollars)
Damage:

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 2. Tectonic setting
The San Andreas Fault is the boundary where two tectonic plates - the Pacific Plate and the
North American Plate, meet. The fault runs across the state of California from Mendocino to the
Mexican border, splitting it into two parts. San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur lies on the Pacific
Plate, while San Francisco, Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada are on the North American Plate. The
fault is roughly 1300 km long and extends to depths of at least 16 km within the Earth.

The San Andreas Fault is a transform fault which means that the plates are sliding along the
fault. The Pacific Plate is moving north-west relative to the North American Plate, and it’s this
movement that causes earthquakes.

3. The earthquake
Earthquakes seemed to be accepted as a nuisance but part of daily life in the region. On 12
December 1904, Andrew Lawson wrote in The Daily Californian, the UC–Berkeley newspaper,
“History and records show that earthquakes in this locality have never been of a violent nature, as so
far as I can judge from the nature of recent disturbances and from accounts of past occurrences there
is not occasion for alarm at present”

At 5:12 a.m. on 18 April 1906, San Francisco residents were awakened variously by a strong
jolt or a large roar. Stumbling from their beds, many were unable to stand as the floor and their
buildings began to shake violently. Originating from an epicenter offshore from San Francisco, the
earthquake ruptured the San Andreas fault in two directions, to the NW and SE, and strongly shook
all of coastal northern California. Careful observers reported strong shaking lasting for 45–60 s.
Many reliable observers also reported two strong pulses of shaking separated by 25–30 s (probably

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subevents of the large rupture). The earthquake was recorded on six local seismometers and on 90
stations around the world, part of a growing global seismic network. The next day, the New York
Times featured on its front page a seismogram of the 1906 earthquake as recorded at the State
Museum in Albany, New York. The earthquake struck without warning. There was no unusual
seismic activity noted in the days, weeks, and months preceding the 1906 earthquake. However,
astute local observers did report shaking believed to be related to a foreshock occurring ~30 s before
the main shock. Within minutes of the end of shaking, fires broke out around the city of San
Francisco. As is reported in a number of recent books, ruptured water lines, unseasonably warm
temperatures, and the use of explosives helped create and fuel a firestorm that raged for four days;
intense winds were generated as air rushed in to feed the inferno, which burned with temperatures in
excess of 2000 °F (more than 1000°C) . When the fires were finally out, more than 28,000 buildings
had been destroyed, with some estimates attributing 80%–85% of the damage in San Francisco to
the fire.

The earthquake and fire left long-standing and significant pressures on the development of
California. At the time of the disaster, San Francisco had been the ninth-largest city in the United
States and the largest on the West Coast, with a population of about 410,000. Over a period of 60
years, the city had become the financial, trade and cultural center of the West; operated the busiest
port on the West Coast; and was the "gateway to the Pacific", through which growing U.S.
economic and military power was projected into the Pacific and Asia.Though San Francisco would
rebuild quickly, the disaster would divert trade, industry and population growth south to Los
Angeles, which during the 20th century would become the largest and most important urban area in
the West.

San Francisco fire, 1906. Fire line over 5 km

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 San Francisco in ruins, after the fire – 660m altitude

The 1908 Lawson Report, a study of the 1906 quake led and edited by Professor Andrew
Lawson of the University of California, showed that the same San Andreas Fault which had caused
the disaster in San Francisco ran close to Los Angeles as well. The earthquake was the first natural
disaster of its magnitude to be documented by photography and motion picture footage and occurred
at a time when the science of seismology was blossoming.

The most important characteristic of the shaking intensity noted in Andrew Lawson's (1908)
report was the clear correlation of intensity with underlying geologic conditions. Areas situated
in sediment-filled valleys sustained stronger shaking than nearby bedrock sites, and the strongest
shaking occurred in areas of former bay where earthquake liquefaction had occurred. Modern
seismic-zonation practice accounts for the differences in seismic hazard posed by varying geologic
conditions. The shaking intensity as described on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale reached XI
(Extreme) in San Francisco and areas to the north like Santa Rosa where destruction was
devastating. Although the impact of the earthquake on San Francisco was the most famous, the
earthquake also inflicted considerable damage on several other cities. These include San
Jose and Santa Rosa, the entire downtown of which was essentially destroyed.

4. The epicenter of the earthquake

For years, the epicenter of the quake was assumed to be near the town of Olema, in the Point
Reyes area of Marin County, because of evidence of the degree of local earth displacement. In the
1960s, a seismologist at UC Berkeley proposed that the epicenter was more likely offshore of San
Francisco, to the northwest of the Golden Gate. The most recent analysis by the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) shows that the most likely epicenter was very near Mussel Rock on the
coast of Daly City, an adjacent suburb just south of San Francisco. An offshore epicenter is
supported by the occurrence of a local tsunami recorded by a tide gauge at the San Francisco
Presidio; the wave had an amplitude of approximately 3 in (8 cm) and an approximate period of 40–
45 minutes

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 5. The focus of the earthquake
In 2005, Anthony Lomax determined a probabilistic hypocentral location for the mainshock
of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake through reanalysis of arrival-time observations in conjuction
with modern wave-speed models and event location techniques.

Lomax constrained a likely focal volume (right picture above), including depth, by assuming
that the 1906 mainshock hypocenter is within or at the bottom of the seismogenic zone defined by
recent micro-earthquakes, as has been found for a number of recent, large earthquakes on the San
Andreas Fault system, e.g. Morgan Hill, 1984 (Cockerham and Eaton, 1984), Loma Prieta, 1989
(Dietz and Ellsworth, 1990), and Parkfield, 2004 (Langbein, et al., 2005). With this assumption, the
depth range of recent micro-earthquakes in the likely focal area implies a 1906 focal depth between
a few kilometers and about 13 km

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6. Recorded data of 1906 San Francisco earthquake

Seismograms from Kobe, Japan, Göttingen, Germany and Bridston, England.

Source: http://ds.iris.edu/seismo-archives/quakes/1906sf/seismograms.htm

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 7. The fires

As damaging as the earthquake and

its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control
afterward were even more destructive. It has been
estimated that up to 90% of the total destruction was
the result of the subsequent fires. Within three
days, over 30 fires, caused by ruptured gas mains,
destroyed approximately 25,000 buildings on 490 city
blocks. One of the largest of these fires was
accidentally started in a house on Hayes Street by a
woman making breakfast for her family. This came to
be known as the "Ham and Eggs Fire". Some were started when firefighters, untrained in the use
of dynamite, attempted to demolish buildings to create firebreaks. The dynamited buildings
themselves often caught fire. The city's fire chief, Dennis T. Sullivan, who would have been
responsible, had died from injuries sustained in the initial quake. In all, the fires burned for three
days and nights.

Due to a widespread practice by insurers to indemnify San Francisco properties from fire,
but not earthquake damage, most of the destruction in the city was blamed on the fires. Some
property owners deliberately set fire to damaged properties, in order to claim them on their
insurance. Capt. Leonard D. Wildman of the U.S. Army Signal Corps reported that he "was stopped
by a fireman who told me that people in that neighborhood were firing their houses…they were told
that they would not get their insurance on buildings damaged by the earthquake unless they were
damaged by fire".

8. Damages to constructions
Three days after the earthquake, California Governor George C. Pardee appointed an eight-
person Earthquake Investigation Commission in response to a request by Andrew Lawson. As
requested by Lawson, the commission would work without pay, requiring only field expenses that
were ultimately raised from the Carnegie Institution (who also published the final report). Lawson
led the commission and oversaw the work of more than 25 geologists, seismologists, geodesists,
biologists, and engineers, as well as some 300 others who contributed to the effort.

The engineers on the commission, as well as those writing for the complementary USGS
Bulletin quickly recognized several principles. The first was that well constructed, tall steel frame
buildings (generally commercial buildings built by private companies) performed quite well during
the earthquake, particularly those with steel work that was well braced in the lower floors. A second

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principle was the “value of deep piling as a foundation structure in made land.” Despite the stronger
shaking intensity in soft soils, they noted that cable car tracks (underpinned by deep pilings) were
often all that remained passable (and served as sidewalks) on many streets destroyed by
liquefaction. Similarly, they reported that “first-class modern buildings” on made land “built upon
deep piling and grillage formations were not imperiled by injuries to their walls or framework”.
Those positive outcomes were tempered by the recognition that much of the building damage could
be related to poor construction practices. The Mining and Scientific Press, in its 28 April 1906
edition noted that “the amount of dishonest construction that escapes undetected in a big city is
appalling and it is this that the earthquake, like a relentless inspector, exposes.” Humphrey (1907)
documented a number of faulty construction practices such as “collapse due to lack of tie between
wall and frame” and “light wooden framing, insufficient bracing and poor mortar.” Both reports
noted numerous examples of the peril of unreinforced masonry as well as brick or stone building
façades. Sadly, this same story of poor construction practices—resulting in catastrophic damage and
collapse—has oft been repeated in a number of recent large urban earthquakes, even in countries
with supposedly modern building codes.

Buildings and roads damages

9. Conclusion
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake took everybody by surprise, because people were not aware of
what a major earthquake can cause within a big city.

In my opinion, even that a lot of people died and a lot of buildings collapsed, from that point
humanity started to wake up and realise the power of natural phenomana by analyzing them, making
comparisons, probabilities of occurance etc. Since then, engineers managed to create techonologies
which can save buildings from earthquakes.

It is very sad that a lot of people had to die in order to realise the importance of earthquakes.

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