A side by side look at both Miles Brothers films several days either side of the 1906 SF Earthquake. It is a building-by-building comparison of the two films, with some commentary.
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F.A.Q.s (please excuse the long explanations)
HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED?
First, this tragedy killed more than 3,000 people. That’s more than the number that died in 911. But we really do not know the number. If there was any sort of conspiracy, it may be that the death count was UNDERESTIMATED by the powers that be, for PR reasons. Bad for business. Terrible capitalist stuff, but plausable.
WHY DO WE NOT SEE BROKEN ROADS OR CABLE CAR RAILS?
There are a few in the aftermath video, but not on Market Street. Shen doing thr aftermath vid it never occued to me to select those segments.
But more to the point…. How earthquakes behave: I have been in many many many over the last 40 years) and what most people do not realize is that they come in many forms. The action and feelings are different in each one. Some roll and feel like being on an ocean swell… some slam, some rock back and forth like a crib. They are each very different, and most folks who do not live here do not understand this.
Some are close to the surface, others are deep. But here is the thing… they SHAKE everything… that is a constant. AND THAT IS WHY MANY OF THE UNREINFORCED BUILDINGS CAME DOWN. And that is why buildings built on soft sand tilt.
But why not broken roads? Why do we not see them in the SF films?
The ‘post’ films seem to have been taken up and down Market Street (SFs very wide main drag). No breakage or buckling.
And the aftermath footage was also shot there and on Van Ness (similarly wide) and in a few places where tent cities were put up. Three roads, in total as far as I can tell.
The fact is that road breaks are not all that common and when they do occur THEY OFTEN OCCUR ALONG THE FAULTS themselves. The San Andreas Fault (that was at issue in this quake) runs out in the ocean to the west of SF, and not on the land. So to my novice POV it makes it not unusual that in the three roads featured in these different films there are no road breaks. Make sense?
WHY DOES IT LOOK MORE LIKE HIROSHIMA?
Yes, to be sire the devastation in downtown SF is horrible. And it looks to the casual observer like bomb went off, rather than an earthquake. And fact is that much more property was lost in the fire (80% of the city burnedin that fire) than in the quake. And it was not one fire, but several. A few happened when people lit fires to warm themselves (it was cold) and inadvertently caused gas explosions. Some fires started when people were burning debris. You can find lots of photos on the web that show people everywhere, scared to re enter their homes, helplessly watching the city burn.
It was a mess. When a fire gets to that intensity it changes everything. Look at similar fire storms and similar conflagrations that occurred in populated areas to see what that does. Dresden is a very good example. Paradise CA, although rural, is another. The Drrsden bombing caused a firestorm. And it developed its own fire cloud system. Similar look and feel… from the firestorm.
In this terrible event, over 400,000 people witnessed it. Lived it. Suffered through it. There are piles and piles of photos. There were many survivors. There is a lot of information out there. From survivors, from peoples’ grandparents… not stories, real peoples’ families.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER IDIOTIC THEORIES?
Listen… SF has had many quakes. Some fairly good sized ones in my own lifetime. In the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, for example, in both SF and Oakland, entire sections of double-decker freeway pancaked onto each other, and then two levels fell with all the cars, collapsing into the streets below… including the freeway right outside my office. It crushed many people between the levels, right in their cars. Rescuers reported seeing a lot of brake lights… people hit the breaks as the freeway collapsed around them. And they reported little else… little sound of survivors. Few people escaped death in those collapsing sections of the freeways. Thing is, this shit is quite real. Cataclysmic. Final, for some people and families.
For people who do not live here, have never visited, or proclaim to be smarter than everyone and have discovered some false idiot eho in turn purports to have ‘found evidence’ of some really outlandish magical thinking conspiracies on the web… those will not not find a place on my channel…
I hope this helps you understand why most San Franciscans get QUITE UPSET at people who deny these things happened to us.
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NOTE: the music in this video Drone in D by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1200044
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
33 Comments
Malgré la tristesse du sujet,
un document exceptionnel merci infiniment.
Can you imagine what it would be like if this occurred in 2023?? Would you even know if how many were left homeless??
It's sad to see what SF has become!!
Excellent job on the video, btw.
Thank you whoever you are for this priceless piece of history!
incredible!!!
Such a real piece of history. Thank you for sharing!
Why does the later film look like crap?
Looks like most everyone was forced to return to horse-drawn vehicles.
Seems odd the quality difference. Newer one looks way older?
Thank you loved the comparison but sad. San Francisco is my hometown🌻
RH film is slightly ahead.
Nicely done.The pre-earthquake film is fascinating. It appears to show traffic and pedestrian chaos; but far from it…before rules set in, this was normal street behavior; everyone being spatially aware and mindful of other movements around them. There's an intriguing, logical symmetry about this which maybe we could learn from, encapsulated as we are today by rules, restrictions,regulations and road and street signs..
They used the same equipment, yet the second film is degraded 20 times worse. The 1st one must have been sponsored by the government or something.
Amazing thank you
This is awesome. Lived in San Fran in 2015.
Great video's!!!! Can you tell me the name of the song music you are playing please?! It is very peaceful!! 😊😊😊😊🙏🙏🙏🙏
Jay-walking was prevalent in those days because traffic lights, stop signs, lane markings and pedestrian crosswalks hadn't yet been invented. Also, all the vehicles were slow enough to allow pedestrians to get out of the way.
When I was a social worker in San Francisco in the 1960s, I had a client — a 90-year-old woman who had been a child during the 1906 quake. She told me she remembered that her family put all their remaining belongings in a cart and walked several miles south to Daly City to a survivor encampment.
This is fascinating! I was outside of San Francisco when a small earthquake rumbled through my friend's house. I had never been through an earthquake, and I was so frightened I asked if I could sleep in her bed that night.
I can't imagine what it must have been like to live through a major quake like 1906. My grandma lived through the 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua, and she told me stories about it if asked.
Earthquake……. really?
It amazes me that some people are actually uneducated enough to somehow believe that this did not happen. People point to odd things which generally reveal their ignorance of the area, how earthquakes work or even the West. If you deniers or skeptics are interested in actually educating yourself before coming to outlandish conclusions based on ignorance, here is one of many ways to do that:
https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24206
That was awesome, thanks! “The grip truck”! That totally makes sense, looked staged at points but now I know why. It was probably a big deal that hadn’t been done/seen before.
All I can say is W-O-W too !
Just fascinating, and moving one back to that day for the time of viewing sure. Thanks very much for making this treat available to us.
San Francisco — as unique and captivating as Paris or New York.
Was born in the Bay Area living there until 1951. It was not so entrancing to me then but now it's just nostalgia for it 'on steroids'.
I am subscribed of course, and belled for notifications.
The primary destructive factor was not the quake or the fire. It was almost all caused by the purposeful planned dynamiting and pulling buildings down . They don’t like to talk about that part , but there are plenty of sources that talk about it happening in mass. It was done as a way to stop the fire from spreading , however there are many reports of lots of buildings being destroyed that were not in any way in need of being destroyed to stop a fire.
Why do you think the newer or the film taken after is in such low quality? You would think they would be closer to the same.
Possibly the way it each film was stored?
What a shame the 2nd movie is in such poor condition.
I'd imagine there was so much airborne debris,dust-smoke etc after the quake it must've been difficult for it not to contaminate the film.
The earlier movie has been up-scaled to 4k and colorized and the clarity is truly remarkable. It's available on here.
I'd imagine the 2nd movie is too badly damaged to improve it that much.
Looking at the sequence shot before the quake you realize that a lot of the people captured by the camera have only days to live. Very sad
Now what Rod?
Amazing juxtaposition! The Miles Brothers were dedicated film makers, and your ability to pull this together is phenomenal! I’m currently reading The Nature of Fragile Things and it takes place during this time in history! Well done! 👏👏👏
After watching this film I went to S.F. almost four weeks ago and went to the spot were the trolly stopped and turned around and stood against that old stone erected etching on the wall. It's amazing how many buildings are still standing from the earthquake.
It was sad to see 'self driving' cars all over the city. The Techs are taking over the city destroying the last of its cultural character.
Nice video! All That damage was not caused by an earthquake or fire. If you look into it you will realize this type of destruction happened in countless cities all over America around the same time period.
Wow…..just hate that this beautiful city could one day be destroyed again.
Wow my Grandfather was there when it happened .I remember him telling me about it when I was a boy .I'm 79 now Thank you for this video.of the after math .
A considerable amount of damage was also caused by the U.S. Army who, under advice of Mayor Schmitz, dynamited and back burned large sections of town primarily along Van Ness.
On October 17, 1989, I was in a glass atrium / staircase of a computer hard drive manufacturer (SCO) in Santa Cruz, rather closer to the epicenter at Loma Prieta than is San Francisco.
It started as a 'slow roller', people joking that they should grab a handrail, then the abrupt and violent actions occurred. All bets were off as the priority became getting everyone out of the building. "Is it safe?" called secretaries huddled under their desks at the ground floor. "Hell no, get out now!" said I as I ran behind them and pulled / pushed them out.
Once on the street outside, waves could be seen going through concrete sidewalks as each phone pole kicked as the waves went by, leaving few cracks in their wake. There was a pall of brick dust rising from the Pacific Garden Mall and hearts sank as the meaning of such was clear.
There was damage, there was death. The beloved Cooper House was soon to be a memory. Highway overpasses had dropped through their pilings onto the roadway below. Hollister and Watsonville were severely beaten.
A stand of eighty year old redwoods on the hillside at Loma Prieta had broken at mid height like toothpicks. They were 80 year old 'second growth' as their parents had been harvested to rebuild SF after the 1906 earthquake and fire along with many other carloads of Santa Cruz area Sequoia Sempervirens.
In the immediate aftermath people of divergent backgrounds, ideologies, attitudes were neighbors working together for a common cause. The spirit of gadugi prevailed for a period of weeks / months before humans settled into their former petty differences.
On one of those buildings the corner stone reads 1896 however the colorized version is much clearer and the 1 does not match the rest of the digits. It's off center and not equally sized like it was added later in fact it appears to be the letter I, so this could be the 1000 year deception caught in plain sight. Just my non professional 2 cents.