The parallels are eerie.
The suddenness of the devastation, the lack of planning, the ineptness of early rescue efforts, the political squabbling and the heroic rebuilding are familiar to historian and former Los Angeles Times reporter Philip K. Fradkin.
He is author of “The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906,” a study of what took place before and after that disaster rather than the event.In Fradkin’s view, as planning by the wealthy and powerful followed the quake and fire in San Francisco, the elite of New Orleans will dictate that city’s future.
He predicted in a telephone interview, “I have no doubt that that an elite oligarchy, the landed, commercial interests have already gathered. They already have some kind of an agenda and will be pushing that agenda to rebuild the city as fast as possible in a way that will benefit them the most, and result in the city being vulnerable to these kinds of events.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth but The Wall Street Journal reported that “old-line families,” “the power elite,” were gathering to chart New Orleans’ future.
Fradkin also predicts that there will be massive social upheaval in the coming months. In both cities it was the poor and minorities who bore the brunt of the tragedy. “It was poor white faces in 1906, poor black faces in 2005 who suffered the most in terms of material deprivations.”
What happened almost 100 years ago in San Francisco was a mirror image of what took place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
To begin with, the geographic locations of both cities made death and destruction almost inevitable. San Francisco stands astride the San Andreas fault, guaranteeing a massive earthquake would strike the city. Major quakes took place in 1858 and 1868. Yet, the city eagerly expanded onto landfill in San Francisco Bay, “made land,” that made an unstable base for the city’s financial district.
New Orleans sits in a bowl, below sea level, 80 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, inviting disaster held back only by levees and pumps. Development has covered miles of bayous.
Both cities thrived and did little to formulate widespread plans in the event of a major catastrophe.
“Both were almost totally unprepared,” said Fradkin, who won a Pulitzer Prize as part of the Times’ coverage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965.
Fradkin says readers and television viewers should be wary of the images shown from the hurricane-damaged areas. “I’m very familiar with the words and images projected after the 1906 event. … I was the first reporter in Watts in 1965 and every succeeding night.
“I know how selective those words and images can be. We need to wait to get a further, more rounded, historically contexualized account before coming to any firm conclusions.
“I’ve never believed that reporting is ‘the first draft’ of history. It’s one of the first of many attempts to depict history, but it’s one of the most unreliable. It’s a clue to what certain people think.”
As in Louisiana and Mississippi, financial help and goods poured into San Francisco, including 39 train-car loads of provisions and medicines from Denver. However, comparing damages and deaths in the two cities is impossible, he said. “The dollar amount of damages in the gulf states will never be determined accurately. The body count and the dollar amount are aspects of journalistic and economic agendas.”
Estimates of the death toll in San Francisco range from 1,000 to 5,000, but Fradkin points out that there was no search for the dead after the earthquake and fire. “What happened was they depended on bodies being brought to the coroner.”
Finger-pointing always follows tragedy, but, said Fradkin, “The finger-pointing going on now is disturbingly partisan. I have to emphasize that I am no fan of the (Bush) administration, but you cannot deal with these events for which no country can adequately prepare. There’s no way any organization can get a handle on these things until weeks later.”
Both cities, among the country’s best- loved, remain in the bull’s-eye of a natural disaster. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that a 2001 meeting of the Federal Emergency Management Agency forecast “the three most likely catastrophes” to hit the United States: a terrorist attack on New York City, a huge hurricane striking New Orleans and a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault.
A study from the Southern California Earthquake Center predicted that there is an 80-90 percent chance of an earthquake of 7.0 or greater magnitude striking California before 2024.
But, Fradkin, like many Californians, takes a laissez faire attitude about it. “As I talk I’m looking at the San Andreas fault,” said Fradkin, who lives 40 miles north of San Francisco. Then he added, “It’s going to be beautiful until then.”
