A Century Ago Today.

It only took a cow to burn Chicago.

I'd make the "it takes more than that to get San Francisco to go down" joke, but the double-entendre seems a little too obvious.

San Francisco: keeping history alive!

[Edited on Apr 19, 2006 by Jeff_Fries]

Hey-O!

Zing!!

The cover up? I'm not sure what you mean. This article mentions the federal response controversy, but it doesn't really get into a cover-up.



The mayor knew that investors would be less likely to return to the city if they knew the truth about the quake. He had photos doctored to focus on fire damage rather than quake damage, and all newspapers refered to "The Great Fire" rather than the quake that had caused the fire. This was done because at that time it wasn't uncommon for cities to burn down, but catastrophic earthquakes were another matter. Also, they gave the final death toll as less than 500 people, rather than the thousands that had actually died.

In the rebuilding of the city they ignored building codes (everything that they had learned from the quake). Electric and gas lines were laid right next to each other (again) and buildings were slapped together just for the sake of getting them up. The reclaimed land along the bay was filled in with rubble and built on top of. This land had liquified during the quake because it was just a landfill with buildings on top, and it still is.

Bump! 103rd anniversary tomorrow morning, 5:12 am!

When I think about San Francisco of that period I recall Frank Norris' book McTeague, which was later made into a movie in the twenties, retitled Greed.

What a strange and morbid way to show civic pride...

Yes, but so is rooting for the Giants, and we like doing that too.

Zito might burn SF to the ground again the way he's been getting lit up as of late.

It's funny 'cause it's true. There goes another one into the bay.

you baseball fans are weird.

also, thanks for the awesome article, subrosa. you always make me smarter.

I live in a place that celebrates our freshwater river catching fire, or not catching fire for a while.

Burning RiverFest

civic pride comes in many ways.....