Division of Labour: One Week Post-disaster c. 1906

April 25, 2006

One Week Post-disaster c. 1906

On April 18, 1906 a massive earthquake hit San Francisco. The April 25, 1906 NYT has several articles about the aftermath of the quake and the state of the city and its citizens.

A massive exodus of those remaining in the city was underway. Railroads ran free trains for evacuees heading east.

It is reported that three days before (April 21) and three days after the quake, 30,000 people were "camped out" at the Presidio reservation. As of April 24, that number was down to 10,000. It is reported that other camps have similar rates of exodus over the same time period.

It is estimated that one week after the quake there were 125,000 homeless in San Francisco.

It is suspected that looters have infiltrated the city from the East. In response, Chicago lends aid in the form of additional police.

Much of the cleanup of the city underway at the time is directed and financially and logistically supported by E. H. Harriman, the president of the Southern Pacific Railway.

The Southern Pacific offers to build a temporary railway into the burned district of the city to haul away debris. The spur track is anticipated to reduce the cleanup of the city from months to days.

It is estimated there are 50,000 people at work cleaning up the city.

It is estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 evacuees will pass through Ogden, Utah.

The third ship lands in Portland with 400 evacuees.

Six hundred evacuees arrive in Denver. Those without resources are fed and given free transportation eastward by local relief committees.

There is concern in Washington, D.C., that the mail from San Francisco has not been delivered on time. It is somewhat editorially commented that during "the three days that the fire was raging, San Francisco did not write many letters."

The American Fire Insurance Company is in financial straits as its capital is estimated at $800,000 and its outstanding risks in the city exceed $7,000,000.

There is a decidedly different slant towards the aftermath of the disaster relative to the anticipated/expected response by the state and federal governments after Katrina and (to a lesser extent) Rita. Without the DHS and FEMA and the entire welfare/disaster relief apparatus erected in the United States over the past sixty years, individual citizens, politicians, and local associations were left with the task of cleaning up their city and, more importantly, taking care of those who had been displaced. Moreover, there seems to be a similar diaspora from both SF and NO.

Katrina's aftermath was clearly a bit different because the flooding of the city made it nearly impossible for trucks/buses to get into the city. However, the question remains whether the expectation of relief from outside ultimately caused a lack of action on the inside.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:34 PM in Culture · TrackBack (0)