A Day the Earth Swallowed San Francisco, 1906
You Are There: A Graphic History Series
You Are There… Graphic History Series.
Historical Backdrop
On the morning of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was a booming, beautiful city of nearly 410,000 people — full of grand hotels, ornate Victorian homes, saloons, and a sprawling Chinatown. At 5:12 AM, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake along the San Andreas Fault shook the city for 45-60 terrifying seconds. Buildings collapsed, gas lines ruptured, and water mains shattered. The fires that followed burned for four days, destroying 28,000 buildings across 500 city blocks. Over 3,000 people died, and 250,000 were left homeless. Our subject is James Hopper, age 30, a reporter for the San Francisco Call who lived at 555 Post Street. A former UC Berkeley football fullback turned newspaperman, he wrote one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of the disaster. He walked the city all day with his notebook observing the apocalypse.
April 18, 1906 — 5:12 AM — 555 Post Street, third-floor boarding-house room, San Francisco
You wake up at 5:12 AM to a sound no one in your generation has ever heard — the earth itself screaming. You are thrown from your iron bedstead onto the rocking floor. The whole building groans like a wooden ship in a storm. Pictures fly from the walls. The marble washstand cracks in half. A chimney brick punches through the ceiling and lands a foot from your head. You hear screaming from neighboring rooms, the smash of glass, the howl of a thousand dogs across the city. You grab your trousers, shirt, and shoes in the dust-thick darkness as the gas lamp swings wildly on its hook.
April 18, 1906 — 5:28 AM — Post Street near Mason, looking east toward Union Square
You stumble into the street in half-buttoned clothes. The cobblestones are heaved up like waves frozen in stone. Cable car tracks twist into ribbons. A horse lies dead in its harness, crushed by a cornice. People in nightgowns and pajamas wander barefoot, dazed, holding babies. The air smells of broken sewer pipes and coal gas. Dust hangs in golden curtains in the rising sun. Nobody is screaming yet — they are too stunned. You pull out your notebook.
April 18, 1906 — 6:15 AM — Third and Market Streets, outside the San Francisco Call Building
