The 1906 California Earthquake
Apr 28, 2009 I Earthquakes.
On April 18, 1906, soon after 5:00 a.m., a great earthquake strike San Francisco and a long narrow band of towns, villages, and countryside to the north-northwest and south-southeast. Many buildings were ruined; hundreds of people were killed; electric power lines and gas mains were broken. Fires bust out and burned wildly for days, utterly out of control because of severed water mains.
The land had broken down open for more than 270 miles along a great fault - the San Andreas rift. The country on the east side of the rift had moved southward relative to the country on the west side of the rift. The supreme displacement had been 21 feet about 30 miles northwest of San Francisco