An amazing letter to the editor in the August 29, 1906 NYT:

We had an earthquake that scared us all up to our full capacity to be frightened, followed by a conflagration which devoured all the business section and about one half the resident section, reckoning in point of population, (not area.) The loss of life will never be known, I might say three thousand, or again five thousand. Each would be simply a guess. The property loss likewise may have been $500,000,000 or again $700,000,000. I don't know, nor does any one else. Discomforts were plenty; actual suffering not at all. My family and I dined off a can of corn, eaten cold out of the can, this being our sole dish the evening after the earthquake...I carried wood and water, cooked in the streets, stood in the bread line for four hours, and with thankful heart received, in the shape of two hard-boiled eggs, my share of the millions the country at large had contributed.

But all this is forgotten, the fact being that we are all too busy to think of it...All the weakkneed gleaners have fled; leaving the ever-springing crop of those who remained. Everybody here is busy. Personally, I hear no one discussing the safety of the city or its advantages or disadvantages as a place of investment...I have found nobody who is worrying himself over the question as to the opinions of outsiders...

I am doing all the business I can take care of...Whether there are 70,000 people here of 350,000 I don't know, but I do know the business is here, which is the thing of interest. And it must not be forgotten that the good-will of thousands of firms went up in the fire, and the business of to-day is anybody's who goes after it. I don't believe in the history of the country there has been such an opportunity for a new house as exists to-day in San Francisco...

That is the great advantage of this city to-day. The population has been winnowed and the chaff is scattered to the four winds of heaven. The present population of San Francisco is not worrying about its future. We haven't time at present to take much interest in daily chronicled facts that this one or that will erect a class A building. We are not worrying over the fact that the rehabilitated Palace Hotel will have five or seven gilt angels at it pinnacles. We are occupied in making money in one-storied shacks at present, and will turn our thoughts to putting our surplus into class A buildings later on.

Wow. And this not five months after the SF earthquake. Something to think about amidst the carping sure to fill the airwaves today and the rest of the week.