| The destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina brought renewed fear and awe in regard to our tenuous place on Earth. It wasn’t the only natural disaster in recent years, but it adds context to the anniversary of one of the 20th century’s worst: the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
And who better to chronicle the disaster’s history than Simon Winchester, whose previous works, including Krakatoa and The Professor and the Madman, were a history junkie’s delight. His new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, uses the quake (which hit 7.9 on the Richter scale) as a point from which to explore the effects on San Francisco culture and history, and how the tectonic plates still continue to move with unforeseeable consequences for the future.
The Oxford-trained geologist’s interest in the San Francisco quake followed after the completion of Krakatoa. "I think the crudest reason was that it’s the anniversary of the earthquake," he says. "As a journalist, I’m always looking for pegs to hang stories on. When I was packing away books I used for research in writing Krakatoa, two of the titles I saw were lurid American books from the 20s, with titles like The Great Long Disaster and The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. I thought, the anniversary is coming, and called my editor."
Winchester moved to San Francisco for four months while conducting research. Because the event is a recent memory in the public consciousness, he was able to gather a wealth of eyewitness material. "Rather than rely on the archives, I had to make it known in the city that I was conducting research," he says. "All sorts of people came forward with first person accounts, diaries and photographs."
Those accounts make for the harrowing chapter detailing the quake itself, which, as Winchester points out, is the only chapter that deals specifically with it. "A Crack in the Edge uses the San Francisco disaster as its locus, but it isn’t a disaster book," he says. Throughout, Winchester is able to trace its legacy in American policy, earthquake research and even the rise in the Pentecostal faith around San Francisco.
That last point is one, especially in light of the destruction of New
Orleans, that still baffles Winchester. "It’s sort of an atavistic need, I think, to say, ‘this must be the work of God,’ and indeed you’ve seen people who, after Katrina, said New Orleans was a sinful city and was smitten by the hand of God. Extraordinary that people in 2005 believe such nonsense," he says. "What is it that makes this belief disproportionately more prevalent in America? According to a recent Gallup poll, 45 per cent of the American public believes that the world is less than 10,000 years old. But go north of the 49th parallel and, by and large, most people you meet have a rational understanding and belief in science."
Perhaps more intriguing is how San Francisco dealt with the quake immediately after it occurred. The American government took a well-deserved bashing for its incompetence with Hurricane Katrina, but the historical record sees those in 1906 differently. "I don’t think the devastation after Katrina was an intellectual failure, but one where people were terrified to make bold decisions, fearing the legal and bureaucratic implications," says Winchester. "Consider what happened after the San Francisco quake, when people made very bold decisions, like deploying the army and shooting looters, ordering up dynamite – all of which are illegal. There’s no legal precedent for a deputy commander of a federal military force saying soldiers must be deployed and handed over to the mayor. It’s so illegal, and yet it was the right thing to do."
So how does Winchester see the world’s geological future? "It strikes me that old countries, like Europe and Asia, are where they should be – stable places. But these same cities are filled with the ruins of places built where they shouldn’t have, Heilopolis, Petra and Pompeii. America is a country without ruins, but what will a map of it look like in 500 years? I suspect that there will only be ruins in New Orleans. Similarly, I think the big cities in the Arizona desert – Tucson, Phoenix –they will ultimately die.
"As for San Francisco, when you think about it, it’s errant madness to build a major metropolitan city on top of one of the most dangerous plate boundaries on the planet. It will be devastated again."
One learns that despite the millions put into earthquake research, there isn’t a reliable way to predict them. "Let’s say we could," says Winchester. "Do you say to a mayor, ‘evacuate the city,’ only to have nothing happen?" The only thing that remains, he says, is to be prepared. "If you insist on living in such a place, build strong, intelligently designed buildings. And do safety drills. However un-American it may seem, my view of a city, say, like Oakland, which is going to have an earthquake, should have sirens that go once a week, and people should do what the fire department tells them to. |
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