HISTORY 142A Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Shaky Ground, Epicenter, Natural Disaster
Document Summary
Day 17: san francisco earthquake and the 1906. We usually think about the earthquake as tremendously important historical event. Usually neglected that massive firestorm follows it not just an urban fire. La population skyrockets while sf"s declines and eventually recovers. Earthquake wasn"t that bad didn"t cause that much damage but the fire did. Important thing to remember: earthquakes had previously hit sf and ca many, many times. Sf built on assumption that "yeah earthquakes happen but who really cares?" Invocation of god is common for any natural disaster because they all think that they are acts of god. Quickly scuttled by ca officials who didn"t want to advertise ca"s shaky ground. They all wanted to talk about the urban fire instead because those happen all the time while earthquakes don"t. It registered like above 6. 0 and it depends on where it is to see how serious it is for human beings.
