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Clemenceau, the canny politician who guided France through World War I, was equally well
known for his ability to turn a phrase and for his appreciation of what used to be
referred to as a well-turned ankle. One of Clemenceau's best known statements was to the
effect that there was no more wonderful sight on earth than that of a woman's backside as
she ascended the staircase on her way to a man's chambers. Far be it from me to disagree
with such a learned statesman. A close second in the ranking of welcome visions, however,
is that which greets the eye as one heads north on US 101 from San Francisco International
Airport and ultimately sees the skyline of the City by the Bay, gleaming like a jewel,
almost miragelike in its beauty.
San Francisco, notwithstanding its beauty, is the city that waits to die. It sits between
two earth faults --- the relatively piddling Hayward and the more majestic San Andreas,
which has the dubious distinction, at a length of over 600 miles, of being the world's
longest faultline. The San Andreas fault, as author Dan Kurzman notes in DISASTER!: The
Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, moves about an eighth of an inch per
year. This is not much, even when measured against the process of government at work, but
it is a disaster waiting to happen when there is a city nearby. This fact had been
demonstrated on smaller scales before 1906. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, however,
wrote a new definition for the word "disaster."
Kurzman's account, painstakingly acquired from accounts written contemporaneously with the
event, reads like a novel as he shifts points of view among the greatest and least of San
Francisco's citizens at the time of the quake by paraphrasing everyone from the mayor of
the city to a fireman to a young boy to a visiting opera virtuoso. Kurzman's detailing of
exactly what happens in the moments when an earthquake first begins to occur, and, more
specifically, what happened in the moments before the 1906 earthquake struck the city of
San Francisco, are absolutely breathtaking. Readers of DISASTER! will feel as if they are
walking across the cobblestone streets and hills of the city just moments after they have
stopped undulating and before the fires begin their horrible rampage. Along the way, he
inserts interesting factoids, such as the origin of the name of the Tenderloin District or
the military history of the Presidio District --- none of which disrupts the flow of the
story, and all of which will be of interest to non-residents and past and present
residents of the city alike.
The earthquake however, and the immediate damage, devastation, and death that it caused,
was arguably not the worst of what ultimately occurred. The fires that ravaged the city
almost entirely destroyed it, and plagues decimated the population. While the official
death count was close to 500, more realistic estimates concluded that close to 10,000
people died as the result of the quake and its residual and related effects. But the
devastation wrought by this horrible act of nature is only part of the story. What is far
more exciting is Kurzman's account of how, after the visitation of the apocalyptic Four
Horsemen upon the city, the citizens of San Francisco almost immediately began to pull
together in the face of overwhelming odds to rebuild the city that they loved.
DISASTER! is at once both a description of the dark and terrible side of nature and the
indefatigable spirit of human nature to rise above and conquer the worst of calamities.
Kurzman's tale of an event occurring almost 100 years ago makes the San Francisco
Earthquake of 1906 as relevant and pertinent as today's headlines.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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