A harrowing chronicle of devastation

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco. For approximately 48 seconds, shockwaves shattered water mains, collapsed buildings, and crushed hundreds of residents to death. Fires blazed through dry wooden ruins. For the next three days, flames killed trapped survivors and destroyed what was then the largest city in the West.

This is a portrait of a city’s resilience in the burning aftermath of greed and folly. Drawing on letters and diaries and unpublished memoirs and previously unearthed archival records as well as interviews with engineers and geologists, Matthew Davenport combines history and science to tell the dramatic true story of one of the greatest disasters in US history.

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