"A future police commissioner Jesse Cook reported that: "The whole street was undulating, it was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me, and billowing as they came."
San Francisco was leveled by the earth tremors which broke gas mains and started fires that destroyed the central business district and surroundings.
Geologically formed by the tectonic movement of two plates along the San Andreas fault, The San Francisco side of the bay is on the Pacific plate moving south and to the east, while the opposite shore (East Bay, Contra Costa and Alameda counties) is moving to the north and west along the edge of the North American plate.
The earthquake occurred at 5:30 AM, April 18, 1906.
48 seconds tremor lasted
500 dead, according to the paper the following day.
“The water supply was entirely cut off,”
