April 12, 2006
At 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the San Andreas fault near San Francisco snapped and slipped some 13 feet. The resulting earthquake destroyed hundreds of buildings and initiated a fire that raged for three days, gutting the commercial and cultural capital of the West Coast. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people lay dead in the ruins of almost 30,000 buildings.
This April 18, San Francisco celebrates, warily, the centennial of the Great Earthquake and Fire — the archetypal American natural disaster.
