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Disasters

San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Photograph depicting the St. Francis Hotel following the 1906 earthquake in San Franciso.  Online courtesy the U.S. Archives and Records Administration.
No one
can comprehend the calamity to San Francisco
in its entirety.

Emma Burke
Eyewitness

While the people of San Francisco slept, the ground below them was moving.

At first, during the early hours of April 18, 1906, no one knew that something was awry. But then the rolling motions came, causing streets to rise, and fall, and rise again. It seemed, to one observer, as though the earth itself was breathing.

What happened next devastated one of America’s most popular cities and traumatized her citizens.

 

 

Author: Carole D. Bos, J.D.

 

Key to Color-Coded Links

Original Release Date:  April, 2006
Updated Quarterly, or as Needed

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