Fissures Erupt Over S.F. Earthquake Observances

The year was 1906. The city was demolished by an earthquake. Then ravaged by fire.

San Francisco quickly rebuilt and trumpeted itself as a world-class city gracefully risen from the ashes. What would be remembered through the years were the positives: the heroism, the generosity of neighboring cities, the gorgeous architecture that replaced what was lost.

Hidden in the city’s rewritten history were darker realities.

In the chaos, San Franciscans lashed out at the underclass -- beating and shooting Chinese immigrants, in part to keep them from rebuilding Chinatown.

Officials covered up the death count -- now thought to have surpassed 3,000 -- doctored photographs to minimize the appearance of damage and removed earthquake faults from maps.

And the upper class illegally took over city government.

A century later, civic leaders are struggling to commemorate one of San Francisco’s defining stories, but one saddled with much loss of life and conflicting interpretations. Complicating the tribute even more is the certainty that another catastrophic earthquake looms in the future.

“I feel sorry for the organizers,” said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento. “How do you decide to commemorate a human tragedy that could repeat itself any time?”

Fault lines emerged early.

One historian has insisted that the events should be marked with solemnity, in honor of the thousands of dead the city only recently officially acknowledged. San Francisco’s Chinese community is emphasizing the era’s historical atrocities.

As in 1906, business interests are stressing a debatable, feel-good story line that highlights the city’s continuing comeback as a global competitor.

And with memories of Hurricane Katrina still raw, donors are focusing on seismic preparedness, shunning ideas based on celebrations.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, 38, offered his own idea: a party with local rock hero Carlos Santana. It was scuttled when donors worried that a concert would be in poor taste.

A smattering of events has taken shape around a judiciously balanced theme -- “Commemorate, Educate and Celebrate” -- including an earthquake expo and the city’s belated embrace of a memorial gathering held annually at a downtown fountain.

Newsom acknowledged that the 1906 earthquake was an “awkward” event to mark.

“Do you sit there with a candlelight vigil and say, ‘My God, how dare the city do what it did back then, with the corruption of city officials or the mistreatment of its Chinese American residents?’ ” he said.

“Do you sit there and tell people, ‘Why are we all here? The next earthquake is going to come, and most of us are not going to make it.’ Or do you focus on the city’s comeback and rebuilding?”

Striking just after 5 a.m., the April 18 quake and the ensuing three-day firestorm leveled most of San Francisco: 29,000 buildings, including 37 banks, two opera houses and rooming houses packed with immigrants.

What followed were scenes of heroism and cruelty.

Rescuers risked their lives to pull victims from collapsed buildings, and residents patiently endured months in shabby tent cities. But city officials also tried unsuccessfully to move Chinatown from its central location to a remote outpost.

An immediate campaign began to sanitize events: City officials called the disaster “The Great Fire,” excising the word “earthquake.” Headlines boasted of the recovery, and for years the official number of disaster dead was set at 478 -- a figure widely accepted even though no list was ever compiled.

The rebuilding was rapid and extravagant, including a gilded City Hall, and a reinvented San Francisco unveiled the result in 1915 with its Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

Reality was lost in the retelling. Philip Fradkin, author of “The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906,” said predisaster San Francisco was a gritty, industrial city. Officials used the catastrophe to cultivate a more precious identity as a “fun-loving” cultural and economic mecca.

“It was never true, and certainly is not true today,” Fradkin said. “It’s a very provincial, inward-looking city. It lost its position after the 1906 earthquake, and since that time has promoted the image of what it has never been. It’s become a tourist city. It’s no longer a real city.”

In fairness, historians say, California by nature prefers the future to the past.

“It’s part of the mythology, which is: The place didn’t exist before I got here,” Hodson, of the Center for California Studies, said. “Back home, you were Norma Jean. In California, it’s Marilyn Monroe.”

Hodson said many California cities ignore disasters in their past. Others reinvent: Santa Barbara used its 1925 quake, which flattened much of downtown, to remake itself -- hiring Hollywood set directors to come up with a colonial style that bore no relationship to the destroyed architecture.

Cities that do commemorate disasters often do so gingerly.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 has been remembered mostly through the uninspiring National Fire Prevention Week.

In Galveston, Texas, civic leaders worried about how to mark the hurricane and flood in 1900 that killed more than 6,000.

Business interests “said that to be so identified with hurricanes was awful. We shouldn’t even mention it,” said Linda Macdonald, who helped organize the centennial.

Until the earthquake’s 100th anniversary approached, San Francisco had done little to commemorate the historic event.

For decades, a small gathering of survivors has observed the day at Lotta’s Fountain, an ornate downtown landmark that in 1906 served as a message board for the dispossessed.

Historian Gladys Hansen was even turned down by the city when she wanted to erect a memorial to victims; she had to turn to a cemetery in nearby Colma. (At Hansen’s urging, supervisors recently passed a resolution acknowledging that the death toll exceeded 3,000.)

But the centennial was a marker the city could not ignore. Newsom created a committee two years ago to organize what he promised would be a world-class observance. But only in the last few months did any plans begin to take form.

“In September or October, I put my ear to the railroad track and didn’t hear any trains coming,” said city Fire Capt. James Lee, who is active in the department’s historical society. The group is sponsoring an expo featuring 1906 memorabilia, as well as earthquake and fire safety information.

As the main event, the city has now officially embraced the Lotta’s Fountain gathering, and tens of thousands are expected, along with 18 survivors. A moment of silence will mark the quake and will be shattered at 5:13 a.m. when fire stations sound their sirens and churches ring their bells.

Also planned are a parade, firefighters costume ball and a $500-a-plate dinner to benefit the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society and the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Current and planned independent events are plentiful. Among them are photo exhibits, a massive gelatin model of the city, a specially commissioned symphony and a ballet set to the sound of seismic movement from the Hayward fault.

Despite the initial criticism, the city’s centennial organization, called San Francisco Rising, is not shying away from all negative imagery. It supports the Chinese historical society, which will remind residents of some of San Francisco’s darkest moments through a oneman theater production and exhibit.

“We’re not going to tell a happy story,” said historical society Executive Director Sue Lee. “It’s a very complicated story.”

The city also will be the site of three conferences for seismic professionals. Safety and preparedness education will occur in schools throughout the year.

And Wells Fargo -- the city’s largest private employer and one rooted here since before the quake -- has taken a lesson from Hurricane Katrina and is sponsoring a program to photograph children for identification purposes in the event of a disaster.

The city has officially acknowledged the eventual reality of the Big One, but many residents still prefer to ignore it.

“I hope it happens while I’m in the office; we’re prepared,” said San Francisco native Tami Espino, 48, who has neglected to assemble her own earthquake preparedness kit.

“If it happens at home, I’m a dead duck.”