The Great San Francisco Earthquake: One of America's Worst Urban Disasters (review)

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 ranks with Hurricane Katrina's effect on the city of New Orleans in 2005 and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 as one of the worst disasters to befall an American city. This fifty-six minute documentary, produced for WGBH and American Experience, tells the story of the earthquake using still photographs drawn from archives and some rare cinematic footage of San Francisco at this time.

The documentary, narrated by Academy Award winning actor, F. Murray Abraham, opens with an explanation of San Francisco's turn-of-the-century charm. The city dazzled visitors, including Rudyard Kipling and President Theodore Roosevelt, as a city of alluring entertainment and as a symbol of the booming West. Roosevelt referred to it as the "West of the West." The film shows a clip of Roosevelt's visit to the city, complete with one of his signature boisterous speeches.

As the ninth biggest city in the United States, and the biggest city of the West in 1906, San Francisco had a lot to offer visitors and newcomers, and no one felt it was poised for disaster. Immigrants and migrants streamed in; San Francisco was comprised of one-third immigrants and one-third children of immigrants at the time of the quake. Of particular interest were the neighborhoods known as South of Market—made mostly of wood buildings, this immigrant neighborhood was first to burn in the fires following the earthquake—and North of Market, the five block square neighborhood offering a home to the city's 20,000 Chinese.

The earthquake hit the city at 5:12 AM on April 18, 1906. Two hundred miles of the San Andreas Fault rumbled, making eight thousand homeless in San Jose and leveling the city of Santa Rosa. But San Francisco felt the earthquake most keenly. The greatest devastation stemmed from the fires that followed the quake. Gas mains ruptured and chimneys collapsed. Fifty fires broke out around the city. A blaze known as the "ham and eggs" fire began when one family prepared their breakfast relying on a damaged chimney. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were destroyed in the earthquake and resulting fires; San Franciscans filed $170,000,000 in insurance claims. Two hundred thousand people, rendered homeless, took refuge in the city parks. Estimates on death counts vary, yet most likely number in the thousands.

Efforts to stop the looting that followed the quake, as well as attempts to quench the fire, often failed. Seventeen hundred troops moved into San Francisco, yet some of the soldiers themselves looted goods from unattended homes and businesses. Inexperienced with dynamite, overeager men blasted buildings in the path of the fire, and sometimes inadvertently spread the flames over a wider swath of the city.

Yet other disaster-clean up efforts shame our modern-day response to Hurricane Katrina. Mail service revived immediately after the fire; people sent mail without envelopes or even stamps, trying to find loved ones and get out the word of their predicament. Workers rebuilt a portion of San Francisco's streetcar system in just ten days. Trains set up down the street hauled off debris; six and one half million bricks were carted away or reused. Citizens stood in fairly orderly lines to receive food on a daily basis. Even the corrupt city government functioned relatively well in the disaster, although the quake exposed the extent of government graft, as when the toppled columns of city hall turned out to be of fake marble instead of the real substance.

This moving story will capture students in a classroom. One can imagine it used to good effect in a class on American history, urban studies, or even in a discussion of modern debacles. The substance of the movie is compelling, and its execution fine, although viewers will yearn for a bit quicker pace and more music throughout. Because of the early year of the disaster, little relevant film exists. But the film pieces that are used in the documentary are quite moving.

The oral histories relied on during the film make it a...