Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906

by Dan Kurzman

Just after 5 AM on 4/18/1906, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale ripped thru San Francisco, toppling buildings, exploding gas mains & trapping thousands beneath tons of stone, broken wood & twisted metal. Herds of cattle stampeded thru the streets. The air reverberated with the panicked screams of the doomed & dying. Then came the fires: hellish, gas-fueled conflagrations so hot that molten glass ran down gutters. A mother crushed the skull of her trapped son with a rock so he wouldn't burn alive. A couple defiantly went ahead with their wedding even as the flames closed in. Rats from boats that smuggled prostitute slaves into Chinatown began to spread bubonic plague thru the city. With water mains destroyed, firemen could only stand & watch for three terrifying days as the fires consumed the remains left by the earthquake. Adding to the terror were soldiers, some drunk, who shot, bayoneted or hanged in the street over 500 suspected looters & other often innocent victims. As many as 10,000 died in the catastrophe.
Drawing on meticulously researched & eye-witness accounts, Kurzman recreates one of the most horrific events of the 20th century. It's a magnificently composed pastiche of personal tragedies. It captures the fear & madness that raged thru a hell unequaled in American peace-time history. Yet, amid the rubble & death, the author also uncovers courage & honorable acts. More riveting than fiction, but true, Disaster! is a masterful account of the calamitous demise & astonishing resurrection of an American city & the triumph of a rough-&-tumble populace that refused to succumb to merciless nature.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Nature, The United States Of America

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Dan Halperin Kurzman was an American journalist and writer of military history books. He studied at the University of California in Berkeley, served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946, and completed his studies at Berkeley with a Bachelor degree in political science. In the early 1950s, he worked in Europe and in Israel for American newspapers and news agencies and was then correspondent of the NBC News in Jerusalem.

Reviews

[Geevee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had the promise to be a very good book, especially with the author's record of having books with high ratings. I bought is a few years ago when in the city having enjoyed a delightful and history packed stay and so had some knowledge of the area.

However, for me it was okay but nothing more. There were personal accounts but these along with the wider story seemed to be provided to drive a narrative designed to read and sound like a novel. I wanted more detail on the actual earthquake and its course through the city but this gets scant mention as did the work of agencies and charities such as the Salvation Army. I felt there was too much focus on rivalries and the crimes or aspirations of some of the main characters in city life - sure they played a part in the aftermath but it over shadows the main story of the earthquake and fire.

I also had an underlying feeling that Mr Kurzman had a dislike for the Chinese in his descriptions mainly seeming to centre on them as criminals and prostitutes. So much so that he details the outbreak of Bubonic plaque that befell San Francisco in the years before and around the Earthquake stating the plaque was brought in by the Chinese on a ship (yep you could have guessed eh) and that this was by a Chinese who was a prostitute smuggled in - as indeed people smuggling did happen - under other cargo. The problem I have here is that it has never been proven that the carrier was Chinese nor a Chinese prostitute, although the Chinese area suffered the outbreak as documented by US investigations at the time owing to the filth, poverty and close proximity of people

There are some interesting first person accounts or descriptions of events (one assumes there is no literary licence here) but sources are hardly exhaustive or well detailed although the bibliography is sizeable but as for a real solid account of the Earthquake and San Francisco I am left wanting.

[Amanda Borys · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish reading this book. I was having some issues with it from early on. As someone who does historical research as an amateur, I understand the elation historians get when they find a good story or event. However, when writing and presenting that tale, you have to keep in mind that it was someone's life and treat it with due respect. I did not get this from this book, rather it seemed to me that the more horrific the story, the more the author reveled in writing about it.

But I finally gave up when the discussion turned to what happened when the fire reached Chinatown. Early Chinese history in Canada and the United States is a sad tale of over the top and unrepenting racism and cruelty. Telling those stories requires a very compassionate hand, coupled with a strict focus of telling the historic truth. This author basically repeats almost verbatim the racist, elitist, and sexist comments of the time period, while trying to hide it as history. According to this book, Chinatown, and apparently only Chinatown, was full of rats. Rats that came to San Francisco on Chinese ships and resided only in Chinatown (an odd thing for an animal know for deserting sinking ships for better prospects to do). And these rats are all infected with the bubonic plague. The author even goes so far to show his own biases by including a racist term for Chinese people in his book as a historic quote.

There was an outbreak of the plague in early San Francisco, but it was in no way limited to Chinatown. The incident was used by politicians and the community leaders as a way of controlling and trying to destroy the Chinese community. I highly recommend The Barbary Plague by Marilyn Chase to anyone interested in this event. This is a very well balanced and honest account of the events.

For anyone interested in the history of the earthquake and fire, I recommend finding another book on the subject. This one is little more than a nasty gossip rag disguised to look like history.

[Beth Cato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I continue my research on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. I read Simon Winchester's book before this, and I can't help but compare the two. Winchester delves into the how and why of earthquakes in the greater context of the world, and how San Francisco and the San Andreas Fault play into that; Kurzman focuses on the events of April 1906 and the immediate aftermath. It's really the more solid book on the year 1906, and has another advantage: it's highly readable. Kurzman tells it like a true storyteller. He evokes intimate details about specific people and families and the reader follows along to see if they survive.

Winchester is about the science, and wanders off on various tangents along the way. Kurzman is about the people. Both useful books for my purposes, but if anyone wanted to know about the earthquake of 1906, Kurzman's would be the one I'd recommend by far.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This trend of personal-oral/first person histories seems to have started much more in the past than I first realized...and if this is one of the first, then it's a keeper. If anything, this book reveals the city of SF in 1906 to be a paradise of criminality, greed & graft...that the city was rebuilt at all under these circumstances was a miracle.

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title tells it all..........the killer quake and the inferno that followed is described through personal stories of and by survivors and historic documentation. It is hard to visualize the resultant devastation of this cataclysm which virtually destroyed San Francisco and killed untold residents.......the number of dead and missing has never been documented. The city and military personnel who were charged with fighting the fire and controlling the mayhem were a mix of heroes and outlaws. Men fought the fire until they dropped while others stole everything they could get their hands on.
The author's style is very readable and brought the story to life with vivid and sometimes heart-breaking detail. Well done.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detailed description of the disaster following quake and fire of April 18, 1906 in San Francisco. There were a lot of blowing up of buildings during the fire and shooting of civilians, but it did bring people together for a while no matter the differences of class or race.

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dan Kurzman is a safe bet if one is looking for easy-to-read histories. Not having read much about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake but being long familiar with and fond of the city, picking this out was a no brainer. Sadly, however, I found this to be inferior to the other books I'd read by Kurzman, it being not much more than a whole bunch of anecdotes about and reminiscences of a variety of persons who were there.

[Richard Goth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of great stories but poor research, the most annoying of which is the oft repeated rumour of the "350 [badly wounded] in the [Mechanics]Pavilion were chloroformed by doctors and nurses and shot by soldiers'' . This wild urban legend, contradicted at the time by many first hand witnesses -the patients were successfully evacuated before the flames reached the pavilion- is accepted verbatim. Notes and references are scant and some of the fascinating characters (the Mayor, General Funston) treated superficially.

[Magen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's December 31st, and I'm thinking this will be my final book of 2024, for real. I was predicting four more books for the year about three weeks ago, and I feel like I've gotten through at least eight.

Anyway, I don't have much to say other than I liked it. It wasn't Erik Larson in terms of details, but the narrative was well constructed and engaging. I got through this in less than a day because I didn't really want to put it down.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good look at the experience of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire through the stories of individuals and families. Not my favorite of the books written on this subject; I wasn't particularly impressed by the writing.

[Katy M · Rating 3 out of 5]

2025 pop sugar reading challenge-a book where nature is the antagonist.

Very informative and heart-wrenching. What I learned was that basically disaster will either bring out the best or worst in people. Probably whatever the really are deep down.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engrossing, well written book about the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Short chapters, each one about a different person and what they experienced during this time. Highly recommend.

[Lizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great history

[James Christensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite well written. 10,000 people died and about 2/3 of city burned from resulting fires. The damage from the e/q was incredible (8.7 on the Richter scale), but the greatest devestation was from the fire.

Besides sharing a lot of anecdotal accounts of the suffering, the good and the bad that came of the experience, the book highlights and spends considerable time on the greed, corruption and graft which existed amongst elected officials, public servants and the police, all of which made the resulting fire and how it was dealt with all the worse. Sad part, apparently, was that San Franciscans took a perverse delight in or resigned acceptance of the corruption, being of the opinion that it was that spirit of "rough justice or injustice" which made the city unique.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

In deciding whether to invest in a Bay Area home with a brick foundation, I thought I'd subject myself to the horrors of crumbling. This book is terribly written. I cannot say enough how TERRIBLE a writer this guy is (sorry, author), but I am learning that bricks crumble. The pictures and stories of the SF that was Before are interesting. We'll see if I make it through the whole thing.

PS: I made it! And enjoyed knowing more about this place I live. Seems like the corrupt and hedonistic politics is in the geography. And it's good we didn't buy that house.

[Dkeslin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed account of the earthquake and fire that took down the great city of San Francisco at its cultural height. Includes many wonderful pictures. Interesting profiles of the major politicians and leaders of the time including the great Caruso who sang at the opera the night before. Particularly interesting for me as my grandmother camped out in Golden Gate Park for three weeks after the quake.

[Rosemary Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 has been told many times in books and films, but I especially like Dan Kurzman's style of writing and his attention to detail. The narrative provides not only a minute-by-minute account of the quake, fire, and aftermath but also follows several characters as they are confronted by the horror and chaos surrounding them. I wish the map of the city had been a bit bigger, but overall a very exact telling of a catastrophic and heartbreaking event.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kurzman has written an easy to read account of the 1906 earthquake and fire, told pretty much entirely in snippets of what happened to a handful of San Franciscans. He focuses largely on the days of the disaster itself. The stories of what these people went through was fascinating; how did individuals deal with this? I did, however, feel like I was missing some of the larger picture.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this take on history through the perspective of individuals' experiences. It was informative while being entertaining, which is a lot more than I can say for most historical reference books.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The who's and where's behind the events of April 1906

[Nicole Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great! I love history, and man, this is written from the publics perspective. Good Social History.

[Lori Johnstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing personal stories as well as factually accurate. Would recommend if you wanted the stories of the people most affected by this horrific tragedy.

[Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is good, no chapter but interesting.

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

6-word review: A little over-flowery, but good account.

[Kevin Storm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written with some great secrets!