San Francisco’s greatest disaster shook the city to its core, but ultimately it made our foundation stronger.
The front page from April 19, 1906, is a combined edition of The Call-Chronicle-Examiner printed on Oakland Tribune
San Francisco’s greatest disaster shook the city to its core, but ultimately it made our foundation stronger.
The front page from April 19, 1906, is a combined edition of The Call-Chronicle-Examiner printed on Oakland Tribune presses. It was an alliance of the Bay Area’s leading newspapers, whose journalists covered the magnitude 7.8 earthquake as buildings crumbled and flames tore through the city.
Like thousands of San Francisco residents, many of the papers’ reporters and editors had their lives torn apart at 5:12 a.m. April 18, 1906. The shaking lasted less than a minute, but it took years to recover.
The pages of The Call-Chronicle-Examiner were filled with stories of terror. At the time, details were hazy and the disaster was still unfolding. Days later, more than 3,000 people would be dead and 80 percent of the city would lie in ruins.
This is The Call-Chronicle-Examiner’s main front-page story in its entirety:
“Death and destruction have been the fate of San Francisco. Shaken by a temblor at 5:13 o’clock yesterday morning, the shock lasting 48 seconds, and scourged by flames that raged diametrically in all directions, the city is a mass of smoldering ruins. At six o’clock last evening the flames, seemingly playing with increased vigor, threatened to destroy such sections as their fury had spared during the earlier portion of the day. Building their path in a triangular circuit from the start in the early morning, they jockeyed as the day waned, left the business section, which they had entirely devastated, and skipped in a dozen directions to the residence portions. As night fell they had made their way over into the North Beach section and springing anew to the south they reached out along the shipping section down the bay shore, over the hills and across toward Third and Townsend streets. Warehouses, wholesale houses and manufacturing concerns fell in their path. This completed the destruction of the entire district known as the ‘South of Market Street.’ How far they are rea