William A. Del Monte Gertner, Jon
The New York times magazine,
12/2016
Magazine Article
Amid San Francisco's chaos - broken water and gas mains, shattered windows, twisted telegraph wires, sixfoot chasms in the fissured earth - a horse began hauling the family from their North Beach ...neighborhood to the ferry terminal by the Embarcadero. According to some estimates, San Francisco didn't fully recover from the damage for two decades. On the day of the quake, a fraternal organization known as the South Market Boys Club hung a wreath on Lotta Crabtree Fountain, a landmark that served as a meeting point for displaced San Franciscans. Since 1919, the disaster has been commemorated at this spot, becoming an annual ceremony - always on April 18, always at 5:12 a.m. - with a splash of flamboyance. ...scientists say that a potentially far more dangerous fault line, the Cascadia subduction zone, just offshore Seattle, might erupt at any moment, releasing 30 times the energy that destroyed San Francisco.
