The Great SF Quake: Disaster Preparation I

The World Shook... One hundred years ago today -- at 5:12 a.m. Pacific Time (about three hours before you received this Dispatch) -- the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck.

My grandmother, Edith Simpson, recollected, "About five in the morning, I was awakened by the most terrific shake. The walls of my room seemed to come in and out. I don't remember noise, but there must have been much as every chimney pot [terra-cotta chimney top] in the neighborhood crashed down." At the time Edith was 25 years old, living with her father in his house at Pacific and Buchanan. The fire that consumed much of San Francisco would stop five blocks away.

Her future husband, Roy Pike, then 28, was jolted awake as he slept (along with Enrico Caruso) at the Palace Hotel, soon to be consumed in flames. They would marry four years later, and their son, Peter Pike, would be my father.

Nine blocks from Edith Simpson, Emilia MacGavin, my other grandmother, was awakened by the quake at her parents' house at California and Pearce. She has left dozens of personal photographs showing life after the quake -- troops patrolling, outdoor cooking and the brick-strewn landscape.

Emilia, then 18, would later marry Alan Cline, living at the time in St. Louis, I believe, and their daughter would be my mother, Catherine Cline.

So you would think that our family would be extra vigilant about the dangers of earthquakes in California. But the funny thing is that I can remember almost no discussion of disaster preparation as I was growing up. I wonder why.

As you will read in Thursday's Dispatch, a similar earthquake will certainly occur in the future. It is just a matter of time. So a few months ago, my wife and I prepared an emergency kit. We (finally!) got the message.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, be sure to visit the Legion of Honor's spectacular exhibition, After the Ruins:
Re-photographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire - 1906-2006. By presenting then-and-now, side-by-side photographs of exactly the same scene, it conveys an incredibly vivid image of what could happen in a future disaster.

-- Peter Pike