SAN FRANCISCO - Sirens wailed through the city at 5:12 a.m. Tuesday as residents marked the moment 100 years earlier when the Great Quake struck, shattering the city and touching off fires that burned for days.
A handful of centenarians who survived that devastation were joined by thousands of residents for a moment of silence and a memorial ceremony to remember one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
Most of the city’s 400,000 residents were still in bed when the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906.
The foreshock sent people scrambling, and the main shock arrived with such fury that it flattened crowded rooming houses. The epicenter was a few miles offshore of the city, but it was felt as far away as Oregon and Nevada. In 28 seconds, it brought down the City Hall.
From cracked chimneys, broken gas lines and toppled chemical tanks, fires broke out and swept across the city, burning for days. Ruptured water pipes left firefighters helpless, while families carrying what they could fled to parks that had become makeshift morgues.
...
Historians generally agree on one point: that San Francisco will fall again in a future quake. But they disagree over whether people should love the city or leave it.



Comment