Customer Reviews

The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It seems we are all doomed to repeat history whether we learn from the past or not.

I started reading The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 a few days before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. As a native Northern Californian who has experienced many earthquakes including the Loma Prieta Quake of 1989 (in which a portion of the Bay Bridge and a freeway overpass in Oakland collapsed), I found that the first part of the book made me recall my own experiences and wonder uneasily what I would do when the next catastrophic quake strikes. By the time I finished the book, all I could think about were the similarities to the 2005 hurricane and its aftermath.

Author Philip Fradkin states right away that "San Franciscans, not the inanimate forces of nature, were primarily responsible for the extensive chaos, damage, injuries, and deaths in the great earthquake and firestorms of 1906. Despite ... warnings, they were dismissive of the past and failed to prepare for the future. During the earthquake and fire, military and civilian officials reacted foolishly under great duress."

One aspect of both tragedies that seemed to strike a chord with many people was the reporting of widespread looting. While people were still stranded on their roofs or trapped in flooded hospitals and nursing homes in New Orleans in 2005, and while the fires raged in San Francisco and people were without shelter and water in 1906, many officials could only focus on the theft of personal property. Mayor Schmitz of San Francisco illegally issued military, police, and civilian deputies to shoot looters on sight. In San Jose, the mayor announced looters would be hanged.

Not surprisingly there were tragic consequences, including an account of a grocer who, seeing that his store was in the path of a fire, opened the doors and announced that anyone could take whatever they wanted before the fire destroyed everything. Some grateful people did and were bayoneted by a national guardsman who didn't know what was going on. The only widespread looting that could ever be verified turned out to be that of Chinatown by "respectable" (white) citizens. Law enforcement officials including national guardsmen didn't discourage the Chinatown looters and were even seen to be appropriating items for themselves. Although the Chinese consul-general complained to the governor, nothing was done to stop that looting. On the other hand, price gouging all over the Bay Area was rampant, but it was not considered looting, and no one was punished for it.

Chinatown was destroyed. It was a neighborhood many white San Franciscans resented and they saw an opportunity to move the Chinese population to the outskirts of the city. In scenes reminiscent of thousands of New Orleaneans being moved from the Superdome to the Astrodome to even more distant shelters, the Chinatown refugees were relocated several times immediately after the earthquake because white San Franciscans did not want Chinese neighbors, even temporarily. The Chinatown residents resisted moves to relocate them permanently to a less desirable part of town. They threatened to move away from San Francisco entirely and take their lucrative businesses and tax revenues with them. In the end, Chinatown was rebuilt exactly where it had been before the earthquake.

The story of the heroic efforts of the firefighters to put out the horrific fires has been told before but Fradkin tells it well, with some unexpected details. Water was at a premium with the intense heat of the fires turning streams from hoses into steam. Firefighters used any liquid they could find including vinegar, wine (it was Northern California, after all), and even soda water siphons.

About half of The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 concerns the aftermath of the disasters: the relief effort, the rebuilding, the insurance claims, the political fallout, the blame, the effect on the people of the Bay Area.

Another truism is that history is written by the victors. Of course, there is no victor in a natural disaster, but the corollary is perhaps that history is written by the wealthy and the powerful. There are few first-hand accounts of the events of 1906 written by the poor or by the minorities. But Fradkin has pieced together a history that includes the stories of many who had been forgotten until now.

I have nearly a complete degree in geology and one of my favorite topics was earthquakes and volcanoes. Like most individuals who enjoy studying this subject, the earthquake of 1906 is a must since it is one of the most heavily documented, particularly in photographic history, of any such event. I've read a number of books on the San Francisco quake, but this has got to be the best of its kind.

The author spent some time working though the material evidence that has been kept in libraries since the event in order to recreate a thorough account of the earthquake, as much a human event as a geological one. While many works on the 1906 earthquake cover the impressions of famous people present during the disaster-Barrymore, Caruso and others-and describe the deaths and the firestorms, few cover the details of the political situation before and after the earthquake and the denial mentality that worked to create this disaster and in fact that of the 1980s quake--and will probably pave the way to the disaster of the next one as well. The earthquake was downplayed to the point where the question was "what earthquake? We don't have earthquakes here," while the firestorm which occurred after it as a result of broken gas mains and power lines in the presence of a failed water distribution system was emphasized. After all, everyone has fires, and measures can be taken to prevent them. Nothing can be done about earthquakes, even their prediction remains elusive. Unfortunately the efforts of commercial and financial interests in restoring the areas' reputation as a good investment site competitive with neighboring cities in the area, contributed extensively to the boom that put San Francisco on the map again so soon. Destroying whole forests as far north as Washington state and the lives of thousands of horses, literally worked to death in order to rebuild the city in record time, these politically powerful individuals managed to create another risky city.

Amazing too was the political waltz that occurred both during and after the earthquake and fire storm. Pro- and anti-labor parties had been at one another's throats for some time, and the 1906 quake provided the impetus for a change in government that swept some people from power and others into office. As so often happens after a natural disaster-hurricaine Katrina being a case in point-much finger pointing occurred, an investigation was conducted, and at least one person was sent to jail.

Interesting especially is the author's citation of a number of personal accounts collected years later by a professor interested in the psychological impact of the earthquake on young people's lives. These reveal that what we call post-traumatic stress syndrome was a common event following the earthquake.

The book is a sweeping story of the end of an era for a California boom town. Now as ever, the weather is fantastic, the living leisurely--and the clock is ticking.

I'm halfway through, and it's getting harder to choke down sentences such as:

"Like tufts of hair atop a bald head, two groups of structures would survive within the fire zone because of the actions of residents and employees."

I get it, but seriously, we're not far from "It was a dark and stormy night" territory here.

Time and time again, the author reaches for the cookie jar of bad metaphor without benefit of an editor to slap his hand away. The book, as a result, is bloated. (pardon me for adding my own, but I couldn't resist.)

Such writing, and the inclusion of apparently every anecdote the author could locate make the book a third longer than it needs to be.

Worth reading, but I wish a tough editor had read it before me.

After reading the above reviews, I choose this 1906 book over several others I had been looking at. This book is rather disjointed, nor does it capture the horror of that day in San Francisco. It does deal with the politics of the time, but this too skips about. I got to the end of the book without realizing the book was coming to a close, it just stopped. Overall, a boring overview of a national disaster.

Jamaeca Dedrick
MR. Pointer
History 11/Period 5
08 March 2010
Research Book Critique
In The Great Earthquakes and Firestorms of 1906 , Philip L. Fradkin's purpose was to get readers to be more connected to the fact that this natural catastrophe was the most significant in American History. By comparing this earthquake to the other natural disasters and quakes around the same time, Fradkin emphasized the greater meaning of the 1906 earthquake. He wanted his book to make this huge event unforgettable, making it anything but a cliché in the reader's mind.
There was most definitely a need for this book, it covered all aspects of the quake and aftermath, giving a skin tight insight to what was really going on from real witnesses and survivors. He brushed up on facts that many people are taught in elementary school, and gave them a more lively explanation. He explains how the city council in San Francisco had an emergency water shortage, thus creating the fires, and made them have to run water pipes over the two fault lines to water in other states.
Fradkin went about explaining his thoughts in a direct, fact-filled manner, perhaps maybe too fact filled. As I read on, the sentences came to be so rich with detail with comprehensive adjectives that I found myself having to stop and wonder about the meaning of whole paragraphs on a page. Philip relied on cold hard evidence of countless pages of research in the back of the book. He explains how the law war strictly enforced to kill looters without hesitation and how officers did this with no emotion. He doesn't let the reader know where exactly he got his information inside the text, but it can easily be looked up in the back. Fradkin uses pictures when describing the debris after the earthquake and how full streets were twisted and mangled after the earth had finished its tantrum. One picture shows a "fireproof" house that was made of mostly cherry and oak wood, and was ironically burnt to a crisp. Other pictures showed how the city healed itself after the damage done to buildings, his explanation of architecture was very helpful. The front and the back inside cover is a map of when the fires hit, it provides the reader with a better understanding of how the fires spread so rapidly, and so quickly because of the wind carrying the coals. However some of the pictures had mixed meanings that confused me. It was hard to tell which one was he was talking about with pictures of debris. Those black and white debris pictures came to become boring and they almost looked as though they were not from San Francisco. Toward the end of the boo, they felt just like padding to entertain the reader with his complex sentences.
Overall I feel that Fradkin covered all the necessary elements needed to write a good educational book, and more. He planted his readers right in the very homes and restaurant that were hit, or with the people who had they had done something different from their daily routine, would've been killed. Fradkin persuaded me to believe that all the events were real and happened, but not to the extent that was totally sure what I was believing in. His far-reaching sentences and structure of his writing was difficult to comprehend. I feel as though I may have missed a lot of key explanations resulting from my smaller vocabulary to Fradkin's dictionary of a mind.
It was indeed a book that needed to be written, it gives the world a place to find excellent and precise facts about the earthquake and everything else that was going on at the time that was effected by the catastrophe. Fradkin defined the purpose of the phrase "research book" and executes the concept of the event in the most clean-cut manner. Though his conepts were confusing to me, the rigid and layered structure of his book was very interesting to read.

Much new information, much better insights into how the City fought back when the disaster struck. In our times of repeated natural disasters, be they fires, earthquakes or threatened pandemics, this historical reconstruction of all the things people did to make the toll of the 06 earthquake even worse than it might have been is absolutely necessary reading. Anyone who would take up a hand to prepare for the next great disaster should read and understand all that went wrong back in 06.

The book was one of the most trilling books I have ever read. I was required to read this text for a class and every part of the book describes San Francisco so well you feel as if you were there during the earthquake.

The book is divided into three parts, Before the earthquake, During the earthquake, and After the earthquake. This book will keep you on the edge of your seat wanting to read more.

I bought this book for my California History class. It reads easy, and I thought it was very good.

This is just plain old great. It's interesting reading, and it takes a stand, exposes political corruption, and does not glamorize something that is often overlooked. This is basic reading, but it's interesting, and reads almost like a thriller. You will enjoy this book, but you will also get mad, and spend time reflecting on things that are preventable, not preventable, or even corruption induced.

I have no idea what the folks who highly rated this book were reading/thinking. This is not a good book about the 1906 SF earthquake. All over the map with useless info, particularly the post-earthquake SF government graft trials. This last info was pointless, long, boring and was never tied in by the author to either the 1906 earthquake or the direction of SF government since then. Stilted writing. Not an enjoyable read.