Not a hurricane at all. The tectonic plates slipped 20 feet. San Francisco shook and then burned. More than 3,000 people perished, 28,000 buildings were destroyed, 225,000 people were left homeless and $400 million ($4.9 billion) evaporated. Arial photos (from kites) show the area looked like Hiroshima.

This exceeded anything ever experienced in America and rivals Katrina as our greatest natural / engineering disaster.


Wikipedia does a nice job of outlining the civic and federal response to the disaster. Of course nothing like FEMA existed in 1906 and issues of posse comitatus were never raised. From all accounts people pitched in and did what they had to do to live. By 1915 the city had risen from the ashes. Efforts to improve building standards and comprehensive urban planning were junked in favor of getting on with the job of rebuilding.

In a curious parallel, the insurance companies of the day refused to pay for "shake" damage, but were forced to pay for fire. I wonder how many fire claims were rejected or reduced because the insurance companies had evidence that the property was demolished by shaking before it burned.

In another parallel the Army hastily built "relief houses" out of local materials for 20,000 of the homeless. Some of these early versions of today's FEMA trailers are still standing. You can rest assured that the paperwork to be housed was easier then and that there weren't any lucrative "no bid" contracts involved.

Is San Francisco prepared should another earthquake of the same magnitude strike? National Geographic posed this question and came to a resounding conclusion (click to read more).