The greatest destruction ever experienced by an American city was the earthquake and subsequent fire in San Francisco in 1906. One of the most powerful earthquakes ever experienced on the North American continent, the greatest amount of damage was preventable. A fire was started in a home with a damaged chimney and with the water supply unavailable, there was no way to stop it from spreading. The fire that destroyed the city was the first instance of the urban phenomena known as a firestorm. In it, the fire becomes so powerful that it feeds itself and people literally burst into flames.
At the turn of the century, San Francisco was the major city on the western coast of the United States. It is interesting to hear about the political and social structure of the city, where corruption was the norm and there were rigid ethnic guidelines. It is also a triumph of the human will that the city that emerged from the ashes was better, not only structurally, but socially and politically.
Like all tragedies, the only possible good is that people learn from it and use it as a set of guidelines to make the replacement better than the original. That clearly happened in 1906 and this interesting tape will show you how it all took place.
