The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 is one of the most devastating that humanity has suffered. With 28,000 buildings destroyed and a range of fatalities ranging between 3,000 and 14,000, the wide displacement of the San Andreas fault between San Juan Bautista and Cabo Mendocino (some 477 kilometers) caused enormous destruction on the Californian coast, affecting especially to the cities of San Francisco and Santa Rosa, whose destruction was almost absolute.
The quake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, with a first tremor that was widely felt throughout the San Francisco Bay area. The great earthquake broke out about 20 to 25 seconds later, with an epicenter near the city, with a duration of 45 to 60 seconds. The quake was felt from southern Oregon to south Los Angeles and inland to central Nevada.
With an estimated magnitude of 7.9 points on the current seismological scale of moment magnitude, the enormous destructive power of the earthquake was added to the fires that devastated San Francisco especially on the same day and after the earthquake. Some of them caused by the rapid spread of the word that insurance companies would only cover damage caused by fire, as reflected in most policies.
The destruction was followed by widespread looting and riots, with thousands of people having managed to survive on the streets. In the case of San Francisco, fleeing the city, at the end of a narrow peninsula, became an obsession for many to reach San José or cross the bay to Oakland.
The situation led the authorities to declare a state of siege and the mayor, Eugene Schmitz, to decree an edict warning that he had authorized the local police and federal troops deployed in the city to shoot to kill those who were involved in a crime or altercation. .
Those first days of destruction and chaos were witnessed by the renowned Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who was in San Francisco as headliner of the opera Carmen playing Don José, a production of the New York Metropolitan that had just arrived at the city. In fact, the premiere had taken place the night before at the Grand Opera House, destroyed by the earthquake.
Caruso was lucky that the Palace Hotel in which he was staying was one of the few large buildings still standing. And although he tried to be the object of the robbery that was rampant through the city in those first hours of chaos, he managed to leave the city across the bay with all his luggage, including all the trunks in which he transported his clothing.
This is how he explained it, out loud and to silence some rumors that placed him, like Nero, singing an aria from the hotel window while the city burned. He accompanied his story with some drawings made by himself, already safe and sound, in a story that was collected by the British publication The Sketch on July 1 of that same 1906, which we reproduce in its entirety.
What did I see and what did I do during the terrible days that witnessed the destruction of San Francisco? Well, there have been many accounts of my so-called adventures published in American newspapers, and most of them have not been entirely correct. Some newspapers said that I was terribly frightened, that I went half mad with fear, that I dragged my suitcase out of the hotel into the square and sat on it and cried; but all this is false.
I was scared, like many others, but I didn't lose my mind. I stayed at the Palace Hotel, along with many of my fellow artists, which was very comfortable. I had a room on the fifth floor, and on Tuesday night, the night before the great catastrophe, I went to sleep feeling very happy. I had sung in Carmen that night, and it was a brilliant performance. We were all happy and I went to bed satisfied.
But what to wake up! I'm not a very heavy sleeper, I always wake up early and when I feel restless I get up and go for a walk. So that Wednesday I woke up around five and started to feel my bed rocking like I'm on a ship in the ocean.
For a moment I thought I was dreaming that I was already sailing the sea towards my country. So I didn't realize what was really going on until I got up, went to the window, pulled up the shade, and looked outside. And I saw it made me tremble with fear. I saw buildings collapsing and large pieces of masonry falling everywhere.
I was speechless, thinking I was in the middle of some awful nightmare, and for something like forty seconds I just stood there, as the buildings collapse and my room still rocks like a boat on the sea. During those forty seconds I thought of forty thousand different things.
Everything I have done in my life suddenly flashed before me, I remembered trivial things and important things. I thought of my first appearance at the grand opera, of my nervousness at the reception, and again I thought I was back in Carmen from the night before.
I gathered my faculties and called my valet. He came running quite fresh and, without any tremor in his voice, he told me: 'It's nothing'. But all the same he advised me to get dressed quickly and get out into the fresh air, lest the hotel collapse and destroy us.
By then, the plaster from the ceiling had fallen like a great rain, covering the bed, the carpet and the furniture. So we had better wake up. My valet gave me some clothes, I didn't even notice what I wore, some pants, a coat, some socks and my shoes. And the room shook again, so that I jumped very nervously.
So I thought the building would collapse and crush us. In all that time we heard the sound of collapsing masonry and the screams of frightened people. We ran down the stairs and out into the street. My valet, in a show of bravery, again collected all my things in the trunks and dragged them six flights of stairs down into the open air.
As he brings them closer one by one, I observe that someone came and tried to take the trunks from me, saying that they are his. 'No, they're mine!' I blurted out. But he was not leaving. Then a soldier approached me. I told him that this man wanted to take away my trunks, and that I was Caruso, the artist who had sung Carmen the night before. He recognized me and made the man who wanted to rob me run away.
I headed to Union Square, where I met up with some of my colleagues. One of them told me that he had lost everything except his voice, but that he was grateful to have at least kept it. They told me that he should go to a house that was still standing, but I told them that the houses were not safe, that nothing was safe but the open squares. So I preferred to stay in a place where I wouldn't risk being buried by the collapsing buildings.
I lay down in that square to rest a bit, while my valet was still taking care of the luggage, and soon I began to see the flames and the whole city suddenly seemed to be on fire. I wandered around all day and told my valet that we should try to get out of there by any means possible, but the soldiers prevented us.
We could not find any vehicle to carry our luggage, and tonight we were forced to sleep in the open. My body still aches from spending the night in such a rough bed.
The next day my valet managed to find a man with a cart, who said he would take us to the Oakland Ferry for a certain sum: we agreed to his terms. We piled the luggage on the cart and climbed in behind. The man whipped his horse and we finally set off.
We saw terrible scenes on the way: buildings in ruins and everywhere smoke and dust. The driver seemed in no hurry, which sometimes made me impatient, because I couldn't wait to get back to New York, where I know I would find a ship to take me to my beautiful Italy, my wife, and my small children.
When we got to Oakland we found a train about to leave and the officials were very kind and took care of my luggage and told me to get on board which made me very happy. The trip to New York seemed very long and tedious, I slept very little, because I still felt the terrible swing that had upset me. Even now I can only sleep for an hour at a time, because the experience was terrible.
