MATTHEW DAVENPORT-THE LONGEST MINUTE

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Episode Transcript

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This is Later with Lee Matthews TheLee Matthews Podcast More what you Hear weekday
Afternoons on the Drive. Matthew Davenportis a contributing writer for The Wall Street
Journal book review on Salon dot com. His first book, First Over There,
was a finalist in the Guggenheim LehrmannPrize of Military History. His newest
chronicles The Longest Minute, and ItAll happened at five twelve Pacific time,

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April eighteenth, nineteen o six.Matthew Davenport, what did happen on that
fateful day in time? Well,thank you for having me On that day.
San Francisco was the ninth largest cityin the United States, the largest
west of Saint Louis and Chicago,and it was almost totally destroyed, not

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just by the earthquake, but bythe three day firestorm that followed. More
than twenty eight thousand buildings and approximatelythree thousand more people were killed. This
was not the strongest earthquake to everhit the continental US, but it was
the strongest to ever hit that area. And I imagine unlike anything, who

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were, unlike anything the people livingin San Francisco had ever seen. Ever,
it was they had experienced strong earthquakesbefore, but it was the strongest
at least in the recorded history ofthe state, and still the strongest to
this day, although another one isinevitable given the two faults that run alongside

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of both sides of San Francisco.At the time, did they know anything
about plate tectonics. They did not. They had not even developed connil drift
theory. Yet they just knew thatthey were prone to earthquakes. They had
dealt with a major one in eighteensixty eight, which before this one was
called the Big One, so theyknew that they were coming, and they

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knew they were prone to it.The problem is city planners just were more
beholden to the profit of developers anda private water company than to the safety
of their residents, and they lefta lot of them on soft fill land
in very shaky structures. But theydidn't realize that that was going to cause
a problem down the road. Well, I think they had plenty of warnings

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and they ignored them and put themoff the longest minute, Matthew Davenport the
Great San Francisco earthquake and fire ofnineteen o six, What were people doing
this about this time? Were theysitting down to dinner, Were they going
out to the saloons? Were theypacking up to go hunt for gold.

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No. At this time, mostof the city of just more than four
hundred and twenty five thousand people wereasleep. Most people were caught in their
beds. There were a few peopleworking out on the on fishermen's work with
the fish market, and a fewproduce merchants up and police officers, but
other than that, most of thecity was asleep. The earthquakes I've experienced,

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my first reaction is, why isthere a helicopter landing in my backyard?
It makes that kind of choppy sound, and then you start feeling the
vibration, and the vibration gets moreand more intense, and then it kind
of subsides and you can almost feelit Doppler effect away from you. Did
you have any diaries of how peopleheard or felt this earthquake? Absolutely,

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letters, diaries, journals. Itried to each of them, addressed all
five senses, and people did talkabout the sound. One person described it
as a thousand violins playing off key, and the sound, they said,
was something that you would never forget. That's the first thing that struck me
about an earthquake. It never occurredto me that it made a sound.

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That's right, As the shockwaves movedthrough the ground and hit surface waves and
start destroying structures, it makes anawful sound, and just about everyone who
talked about it later would recall thesound above anything else. The Longest Minute
Matthew Davenport the Great San Francisco earthquakeand fire of nineteen oh six. I

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have read that an earthquake can beintense enough where there are actual you actually
see waves in the ground. Wasthat present in this particular quake. It
was a police officer that was walkinga bead at five twelve a m.
Felt it coming. He turned aroundand looked up the steep hill, and

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there's plenty of those in San Franciscoup the steep street, and said that
the waves of the earthquake were comingdown the street at him, the pavement
of the street like waves of anocean, popping paving stones out. I
imagine that added to the terror ofit. We're talking about the seven point
nine intensity earthquake San Francisco, Aprileighteen, nineteen six, and the longest

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minute from Matthew Davenport and I guessit was about a minute, or maybe
a little longer. It was abouta minute. At the time, there
were estimates as low as forty eightseconds, and now the USGS is estimated
it's probably between sixty and eighty eightyfive seconds. Has the USGS been able
to go back because they didn't haveRichter scales back then, but have they

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been able to go and find geologicalevidence of this quake, Absolutely, because
it broke to the surface. Soactually you could see the break along the
Sana and Drea's fault nearly three hundredmiles from north and all the way down
south of the city, and theyhave been able to pinpoint it around a

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seven point nine and moment magnitude,And the length of the fault break.
Wasn't just the earthquake that did somuch to destruction the fire afterward. This
wasn't at a time when there werea lot of gas lines or were there.
There were gas lines, and therewas also electricity in homes that had
been retrofitted in the homes that werenot built with conduits, so there were

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a lot of fire hazards, especiallyin commercial spaces, and the firestorm is
what destroyed the city. It wasn'tthe earthquake. Most of the deaths and
most of the destruction was the resultof the firestorm. And that's the whole
point of this, that this wasa natural disaster, but it led to
unnatural devastation. And how long didthe fire last? Three days and three

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nights the firefighters had to fight it. It destroyed five hundred city blocks,
and how many perished in the flames. The estimates of the time were downgraded
around five hundred, and since thencity archivists and librarians and have worked to

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uncover all of the depths, andwe'll never know the number. It's probably
above three thousand, that's the currentestimate. And because there were so many
immigrants and transient laborers and widows andpeople that didn't have anyone to notice or
more in their loss, we'll neverknow the exact number. Matthew Davenport the

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longest minute. Some good things cameout of this, as I understand.
Legend holds that's where Salvation Army gottogether with a big kettle in the middle
of a community and asked anybody whohad anything to bring to the kettle,
and they made a big community dinnerout of it. And thus the Red
Kettle campaign was born, if historyis serving my memory correctly. But there

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were some other good things that didcome out of this. Yes, the
American Red Cross was set was deployedby President Roosevelt, private organization, but
he gave it national import by sendingthem out there. And they assist to
the soldiers of the presidio that wereout there helping with the recovery and the
rebuilding. And it taught a lotabout the science and the need for strength

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and buildings and foundations and fireproofing andthankfully, learning from this disaster, emergency
management personnel and first responders have workedfor more than a century to make sure
that while another big earthquake will hitthe area, it won't be another nineteen
oh six. And you read allabout it in his new book, The
Longest Minute, Matthew Davenport. It'savailable everywhere you get books. Thank you

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for joining us, and thank youfor bringing us the story. Thank you
so much for having me. Thanksfor listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and rememberto listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation