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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast More what you Hear weekday

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Afternoons on the Drive. Matthew Davenport
is a contributing writer for The Wall Street

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Journal book review on Salon dot com. His first book, First Over There,

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was a finalist in the Guggenheim Lehrmann
Prize of Military History. His newest

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chronicles The Longest Minute, and It
All happened at five twelve Pacific time,

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April eighteenth, nineteen o six.
Matthew Davenport, what did happen on that

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fateful day in time? Well,
thank you for having me On that day.

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San Francisco was the ninth largest city
in the United States, the largest

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west of Saint Louis and Chicago,
and it was almost totally destroyed, not

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just by the earthquake, but by
the three day firestorm that followed. More

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than twenty eight thousand buildings and approximately
three thousand more people were killed. This

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was not the strongest earthquake to ever
hit the continental US, but it was

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the strongest to ever hit that area. And I imagine unlike anything, who

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were, unlike anything the people living
in San Francisco had ever seen. Ever,

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it was they had experienced strong earthquakes
before, but it was the strongest

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at least in the recorded history of
the state, and still the strongest to

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this day, although another one is
inevitable given the two faults that run alongside

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of both sides of San Francisco.
At the time, did they know anything

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about plate tectonics. They did not. They had not even developed connil drift

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theory. Yet they just knew that
they were prone to earthquakes. They had

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dealt with a major one in eighteen
sixty eight, which before this one was

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called the Big One, so they
knew that they were coming, and they

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knew they were prone to it.
The problem is city planners just were more

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beholden to the profit of developers and
a private water company than to the safety

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of their residents, and they left
a lot of them on soft fill land

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in very shaky structures. But they
didn't realize that that was going to cause

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a problem down the road. Well, I think they had plenty of warnings

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and they ignored them and put them
off the longest minute, Matthew Davenport the

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Great San Francisco earthquake and fire of
nineteen o six, What were people doing

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this about this time? Were they
sitting down to dinner, Were they going

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out to the saloons? Were they
packing up to go hunt for gold.

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No. At this time, most
of the city of just more than four

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hundred and twenty five thousand people were
asleep. Most people were caught in their

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beds. There were a few people
working out on the on fishermen's work with

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the fish market, and a few
produce merchants up and police officers, but

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other than that, most of the
city was asleep. The earthquakes I've experienced,

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my first reaction is, why is
there a helicopter landing in my backyard?

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It makes that kind of choppy sound, and then you start feeling the

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vibration, and the vibration gets more
and more intense, and then it kind

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of subsides and you can almost feel
it Doppler effect away from you. Did

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you have any diaries of how people
heard or felt this earthquake? Absolutely,

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letters, diaries, journals. I
tried to each of them, addressed all

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five senses, and people did talk
about the sound. One person described it

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as a thousand violins playing off key, and the sound, they said,

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was something that you would never forget. That's the first thing that struck me

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about an earthquake. It never occurred
to me that it made a sound.

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That's right, As the shockwaves moved
through the ground and hit surface waves and

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start destroying structures, it makes an
awful sound, and just about everyone who

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talked about it later would recall the
sound above anything else. The Longest Minute

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Matthew Davenport the Great San Francisco earthquake
and fire of nineteen oh six. I

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have read that an earthquake can be
intense enough where there are actual you actually

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see waves in the ground. Was
that present in this particular quake. It

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was a police officer that was walking
a bead at five twelve a m.

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Felt it coming. He turned around
and looked up the steep hill, and

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there's plenty of those in San Francisco
up the steep street, and said that

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the waves of the earthquake were coming
down the street at him, the pavement

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of the street like waves of an
ocean, popping paving stones out. I

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imagine that added to the terror of
it. We're talking about the seven point

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nine intensity earthquake San Francisco, April
eighteen, nineteen six, and the longest

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minute from Matthew Davenport and I guess
it was about a minute, or maybe

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a little longer. It was about
a minute. At the time, there

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were estimates as low as forty eight
seconds, and now the USGS is estimated

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it's probably between sixty and eighty eighty
five seconds. Has the USGS been able

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to go back because they didn't have
Richter scales back then, but have they

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been able to go and find geological
evidence of this quake, Absolutely, because

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it broke to the surface. So
actually you could see the break along the

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Sana and Drea's fault nearly three hundred
miles from north and all the way down

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south of the city, and they
have been able to pinpoint it around a

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seven point nine and moment magnitude,
And the length of the fault break.

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Wasn't just the earthquake that did so
much to destruction the fire afterward. This

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wasn't at a time when there were
a lot of gas lines or were there.

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There were gas lines, and there
was also electricity in homes that had

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been retrofitted in the homes that were
not built with conduits, so there were

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a lot of fire hazards, especially
in commercial spaces, and the firestorm is

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what destroyed the city. It wasn't
the earthquake. Most of the deaths and

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most of the destruction was the result
of the firestorm. And that's the whole

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point of this, that this was
a natural disaster, but it led to

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unnatural devastation. And how long did
the fire last? Three days and three

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nights the firefighters had to fight it. It destroyed five hundred city blocks,

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and how many perished in the flames. The estimates of the time were downgraded

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around five hundred, and since then
city archivists and librarians and have worked to

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uncover all of the depths, and
we'll never know the number. It's probably

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above three thousand, that's the current
estimate. And because there were so many

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immigrants and transient laborers and widows and
people that didn't have anyone to notice or

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more in their loss, we'll never
know the exact number. Matthew Davenport the

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longest minute. Some good things came
out of this, as I understand.

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Legend holds that's where Salvation Army got
together with a big kettle in the middle

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of a community and asked anybody who
had anything to bring to the kettle,

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and they made a big community dinner
out of it. And thus the Red

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Kettle campaign was born, if history
is serving my memory correctly. But there

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were some other good things that did
come out of this. Yes, the

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American Red Cross was set was deployed
by President Roosevelt, private organization, but

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he gave it national import by sending
them out there. And they assist to

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the soldiers of the presidio that were
out there helping with the recovery and the

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rebuilding. And it taught a lot
about the science and the need for strength

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and buildings and foundations and fireproofing and
thankfully, learning from this disaster, emergency

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management personnel and first responders have worked
for more than a century to make sure

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that while another big earthquake will hit
the area, it won't be another nineteen

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oh six. And you read all
about it in his new book, The

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Longest Minute, Matthew Davenport. It's
available everywhere you get books. Thank you

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for joining us, and thank you
for bringing us the story. Thank you

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so much for having me. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

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from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation