Celebrating Disaster

This month, in San Francisco, there's lots of celebratory activity in acknowledgment of the centennial of the greatest earthquake to hit an American City, the famous San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

On Wednesday, April 18th at 5:12 AM, an 8.3 (Richter scale) quake hit with the force greater than an atomic bomb and totally devastated the city.

This, is an image of the area around Union Square after the quake and is one of the many photographs, (along with links and articles), featured at The Virtual Museum of San Francisco, in its section relating to the "The Great Fire and Earthquake".

The Richter scale (Charles Francis Richter) is one of the ways of measuring earthquakes and runs from 1 to 9; a magnitude 7 quake is 10 times more powerful than a magnitude 6, 100 times more powerful than a 5, etc. Theoretically, this scale is open-ended, but improvements in seismic measuring techniques have enabled seismologists to refine the scale, and 9.5 is now considered the practical limit. On that basis, the magnitude of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake has been revised from 8.3 to 7.9.

Whenever there's a tremor of any kind, (and there are many), a lot of attention gets paid to earthquake preparedness ...or the lack thereof. According to seismologists, we're way overdue for the next big one, which could strike at any moment, and generally people are totally unprepared for such a disaster. People insist on building houses on hillsides and in areas subject to liquefaction.

Liquefaction is the condition when, as a result of earthquake, sand doesn't actually liquefy but takes on a fluid characteristic. Anything built upon it becomes unstable. The Marina District, which is built on landfill, suffered the greatest damage from the Loma Prieta quake ...due to liquefaction.

The last major earthquake to hit the San Francisco Bay area was the 1989 Loma Prieta 7.1 earthquake. It's been nicknamed the "little big one" since, despite the damage caused, it was not "the" big one that is predicted to eventually hit.

I've lived in S.F. for over thirty years and I've never become comfortable with quakes. Whenever the building starts to shake, and I notice the chandelier swinging, I get that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach and my heart starts to pound. Sure, you chuckle after it's over, but during those few seconds, when you don't' know just how intense it's gonna get, it's quite unnerving. Even worse are those nocturnal quakes that cause you to sit bolt upright in the bed, still half asleep, totally discombobulated, and utterly terrified.

On 17 October 1989, the day of the Loma Prieta quake, I was sitting at the computer. Suddenly, at 5:04 PM (PDT), everything started to shake and sway. After I realized that this was not going to be the usual little tremor, my first reaction was whether to try and save my rather large TV, (which was swaying violently and about to topple off its foundation), or try and save the work on my computer, (the multiple open documents I had been working on over the past couple of hours). Then, I didn't have my battery-powered notebook, so a loss of power would mean a loss of all my unsaved files. I opted to save the TV. It didn't occur to me 'til after the fact that I should've been thinking about placing myself in a doorframe to avoid bodily injury.

Curious thing about that quake -- for all the devastation it caused, (including loss of life), it had no direct effect on me ...other than a few broken dishes, and those documents I had to reconstruct. My area of the city was totally unaffected, other than the loss of power, which was restored by the following morning. During the night before, I and other residents in my building, watch the fires and other activity from the roof of the building, while listening to news reports on a portable radio. So I really can't stay that I've actually experienced [the devastation of] a major quake.

FYI: The largest earthquake ever recorded was 9.5 in Chile (1960)

Quote of the Week: "...a foolish man which built his house upon the sand." (Matt. 7:26)