“The Earth shook, the sky burnt” by Bronson
Excellent book, spared no effort in finding the best pictures of all aspects of the disaster.
I read it mainly to teach myself how one copes with a disaster of this magnitude. But there was a lighter side. After all the bodies were recovered from an insane asylum, a live person was found. This was considered a miracle until it was discovered that he’d buried himself in the rubble just half an hour earlier in an attempt to escape from the insane asylum.
In every case, the earthquake was followed by fire. This highlights what I’d learnt from the Fukushima tsunami – natural gas is by far the most dangerous source of power.
At the time, there was no such thing as a perfect building material. Brick is the worst possible building material in an earthquake, but it is the only building material to survive a fire.
There are some brilliant wide-angle aerial photographs of the disaster, made by a 45 pound camera suspended beneath 15 box kites.
Let’s peel the disaster and relief efforts off in time slices.
1. Pre-earthquake. Not the first disaster to hit San Francisco. There were fires 20 years earlier. Other US cities had also had great fires, eg. Chicago.
2. Earthquake. This caused the greatest loss of life, particularly in places with lots of people – cheap hotels being the worst. Worst damage in San Francisco city centre and Santa Rosa to the north. Damage was capricious, Santa Rosa is nowhere near the fault line, whereas nearby Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda, all near the fault line, were practically undamaged. Five people died in Oakland. Lessons to be learned:
- All but one of the water supply lines was cut – which made almost all subsequent fires uncontrollable. In future, make all water supplies earthquake proof.
- Make cheap hotels as earthquake-proof as possible.
3. Fire. 16 main fire start locations, only two of which were contained. Material damage and homelessness from fires massively exceeds that from the earthquake. Second most important cause of death. Major fires last four days. Attempts to extinguish fires and construct firebreaks using dynamite were completely ineffective. Lessons to be learned:
- Don’t even think about constructing firebreaks by dynamite in a city – it doesn’t work.
- Hoses and pumps must reach to top of the tallest buildings.
- Buildings burn from the top down. The easiest way to extinguish a building fire is to stop it going down a floor.
- Concrete and steel are much less effective against fire than brick.
- Uninterruptable salt water supplies from the bay would be a huge help.
- Fighting fires is really helped if fire stations don’t burn to the ground.
4. Immediate response. Army, police and firefighters of course. Accept help from all volunteers. Encourage passers by to help in firefighting and clearing rubble. Lessons to be learned:
- Keep sufficient emergency equipment on hand not just for official emergency workers, but also for volunteers.
- Instant response doesn’t have to be coordinated, just managed in local groups that grow with time.
- Babies keep being born.
5. Stopping looting. Centralise response. Organise and deputise vigilante militias to stop looting. Valuable goods in the rubble will be commandeered by official agencies. In the San Francisco earthquake 1906, the relief efforts were all centralised under the Red Cross. The fourth most common cause of death was killing of looters and others by vigilant militias, 9 dead. Lessons to be learned:
- Centralise response.
- Disband militias as soon as possible.
- Repair transport routes into and out of the area (trains, ferries etc.) asap.
6. Food. Food came into the area by train from all over the USA. Lessons:
- Initially, give incoming goods to whoever wants it with no accounting, in as many places as possible.
- Import water asap.
7. Accommodation. After the San Francisco fires, emergency accommodation went through five quite separate stages. a) Sleeping in halls, b) Army small tents, c) Semi-permanent tents high enough to stand up and walk around in, d) mass-produced one room cottages with water, plumbing, toilet and cooking facilities, and barrack accommodation, e) Cottage relocation onto the owner’s block of land. While this is in progress, eating places with very long trestle tables were set up near the tent cities, at first open to the sky but with walls. Free clothing handouts for anyone to sort through. Lessons:
- Have plenty of small tents on hand before the disaster.
- The five stages of accommodation is an excellent system for any disaster with massive levels of homelessness, in this case approaching half a million people.
- Sell spare food donations for money – in the case of San Francisco this was potatoes.
- Army personnel are good sources of amusement.
8. Insurance. It turns out that there was a huge difference between good insurers and bad insurers. All the German and part German insurers turned out to be bad insurers – did everything they could to stop and delay payments. For example, if your insurance certificate was lost in the fire then a bad insurer wouldn’t pay a cent. A lot of insurers went under, as would be expected. But lack of funds turned out not to be a guide to good and bad insurers. The cleverest good insurer only had funds to pay 45% of claims, so they wound up the company, created a new insurance company, and paid out the insured in 45% cash and 55% shares in the new company. Lesson:
- Before the disaster give every insurance company a rating, and close down the bad ones by making it illegal for them to sell insurance until they have upped their rating.
9. Relief funding. By far the largest relief funding for San Francisco from overseas came from Japan, more than 50% of the sum total of all relief funding from outside the USA. No lesson, but interesting. It’s claimed that no-one in need of relief was ever turned away by the Red Cross, unless there was a different organisation better equipped to provide that relief. Lesson:
- The Red Cross used to be a fantastic organisation. Perhaps it still is.
10. Money. Banks, burnt to the ground, immediately opened in temporary offices. Although all records were lost, every depositor recognised by staff was paid out in gold coin from the mint. Lesson:
- That’s a great strategy.
11. Rebuilding. A centralised reconstruction committee with special subcommittees for assessment, water and sewerage, street widening, hospitals, demolition. A rapid accumulation of plans to rebuild. Funding from private enterprise, even from those who has lost enormous amounts of money in the fire. Plans for the first new skyscraper was approved just 5 days after the earthquake, as soon as the main fires were extinguished. By monday after the fire, 300 plumbers were at work on water supply and sewerage. Boom in businesses of souvenirs, blacksmithing, safecracking, newspapers. A new improved city plan was approved a month after the fire, then totally ignored. Lessons:
- Repair in turn: water, sewerage, glass, gas & electricity.
- Do not crack any safes until two weeks after the fire. Any sooner and the onrush of air will burn everything inside to a crisp.
- Don’t be racist – rebuild Chinatown and similar ethnic enclaves.
- Move the CBD.
- Any new city plan has to be approved before the disaster.
12. Rent. With the massive numbers of homeless, rent prices shot up everywhere. New flats were all sold before the foundation was laid. Lessons:
- Must figure out something better.
13. Cleanup. “clearing away the debris was judged a greater effort than building the Panama Canal”. The city’s debris was carted away in railway cars on newly built tracks to be dumped in the bay and, when the bay was full, out to sea. Lessons:
- Give thought to where to dump debris and how to transport it before the disaster.
- Now I know where to site my next archaeology dig.
- Thousands of horses were worked to death in the cleanup – don’t do this.
14. The third most common death came later. Bubonic plague broke out in the city one year later, and killed 77. Lesson:
- Rebuilding does not stop pre-existing causes of death.
15. Timescale. Rebuilding was largely complete in three years. By that time, 28,000 buildings had gone up to replace the 20,000 destroyed in the fire.
Lesson:
- A good timescale to aim for.