Surviving Huge Quake, And Century That Followed

The New York Times

April 18, 2006

By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 — When she was 14 months old, Della Vattuone-Bacchini survived the Great Quake of 1906, which ruptured the San Andreas fault, twisted rail lines into pretzels and sparked a three-day inferno that burned much of this city to the ground.

But whether she makes it through this year's centennial, she said, is an entirely different question.

"It's been a mad rush," said Ms. Vattuone-Bacchini, 101, of the anniversary celebrations. "They come up every year and you get caught up with them whether you like it or not. I like it, but it's a pain, both."

Sure enough, over the last two weeks, about a dozen survivors of the quake — a magnitude 7.8 or 7.9 on the modern earthquake scales that struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 — have been made into centennial celebrities, shuttled from opening day celebrations at the ballpark, media-frenzy lunches downtown and Tuesday morning's painfully early breakfast with Mayor Gavin Newsom.

All of which is fun, most survivors say, but also taxing for a group of people whose claim to fame is somewhat dampened by the fact that they do not really remember the event in question.

"Everybody asks the same questions, and to tell the truth, nobody remembers," said Norma Norwood, a 99-year-old who lives on her own. "We were kids. People ask how have things changed, and I say, 'I don't know.' I wasn't paying any attention to that. I was paying attention to minding my father."

Ms. Norwood, as her age suggests, is a special case. She counts herself as a survivor even though she had not been conceived at the time of the earthquake; that blessed event happened days after, when her parents were huddled in a refugee camp in Golden Gate Park.

"My father said it was cold that night," Ms. Norwood said.

Such details, of course, are middling considering the scope of this year's commemoration, which has included package deals at hotels and spas, earthquake cocktails at bars, and exhaustive coverage by the city's news media. All of it has tried to strike a balance between a celebration and a sobering realization that, given the geology of San Francisco, a similar disaster could happen at any time.

Indeed, even as civic leaders gathered Monday night for a lavish ball at the Palace Hotel (complete with period costumes and Enrico Caruso look-alikes), geophysicists were meeting here to begin what was being billed as the biggest earthquake conference ever, concerned with the probability of — and preparation for — another Big One.

A study commissioned by the conference organizers and released Monday suggested that a similar quake to 1906 could prove as terrible, if not worse. According to the study, prepared by Charles Kircher and Associates, a structural engineering firm, a 7.9 temblor today could kill 3,400 people, displace a quarter of a million and cause $150 billion in damage. The 1906 quake, which tore a 300-mile-long fissure in the San Andreas fault, and its subsequent fires killed some 3,000 people, destroyed more than 50,000 buildings and left more than 200,000 homeless.

Finding the right tone for the anniversary has largely fallen to Charlotte Mailliard Shultz, the chief of protocol for the City of San Francisco and the State of California, who also is chairwoman of San Francisco Rising, the official centennial organizer.

Ms. Shultz said the anniversary offered an unusual opportunity both to commemorate the past and educate the current generation. As such, San Francisco Rising has distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets on earthquake safety and emergency response strategies, and has set up a preparedness Web site, www.72hours.org, which refers to how long a person might have to survive without help in a major quake.

But Ms. Shultz also agreed that the centennial had offered San Franciscans, who had largely rebuilt their city by 1909, a chance to party.

"It's a very solemn affair, but we're also proud of what we did, getting ourselves out of the ashes — that's something to celebrate," Ms. Shultz said. "And the survivors are the people who helped set the stage for that and they should be celebrated as well. They epitomize what San Francisco is."

And sure enough, serving as the human face of a natural disaster can have its perks.

Herbert Hamrol, 103, says all he remembers of the 1906 quake is "my mother carrying me down the stairs" from his family's downtown apartment.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hamrol has been soaking up a dose of celebrity since he attended his first quake anniversary three years ago. This year, he, along with seven other survivors, threw out the first pitches at the San Francisco Giants' home opener — "It was low," he said of his throw — and on Tuesday, he will awake in a free room at the Westin St. Francis before heading out, just ahead of dawn, to attend an annual commemoration ceremony.

But Mr. Hamrol, who still works two days a week at Andronico's grocery store (he tends to damaged goods, appropriately enough), said that what he most appreciated was the personal attention that came from being one of the few men to have survived the quake and the century that followed it.

"A lot of little old ladies look for me at the store on Mondays and Thursdays," said Mr. Hamrol, who has been a widower since 1969. "And they're happy and smiling when they leave."

Ms. Norwood, the 99-year-old, has become friendly with Mr. Hamrol, and both were on hand Monday afternoon at John's Grill, which dates to 1908 and has been playing host to an anniversary lunch for survivors for 15 years.

They and a dozen others took questions, including the predictable queries about their longevity.

"I just tell them sex, and that usually ends the questions," Ms. Norwood said.