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Starting with the abstract at the beginning of Ted Steinberg’s “Smoke and Mirrors: The San Francisco Earthquake and Seismic Denial” in American Disasters, I was immediately taken back by how at the time local and state officials, along with powerful business interests had tried to downplay the damage that was caused by the earthquake itself, shifting the damage done by claiming it was the fire that did the most damage. No one can dispute how San Francisco was damaged quite heavily, but the attempt to downplay the earthquake itself to me is baffling. It would be easy to downplay the earthquake itself had it impacted a remote, sparsely populated area but the earthquake was as Steinberg described, “felt as far south as Los Angeles, as far north as southern Oregon and as far east as central Nevada”, it was large enough at a M 7.7 that trying to claim that the destruction was merely caused by a fire could not work. The reasons that these officials and businessmen tried to pass it off as a fire was mainly for financial reasons. San Francisco had been growing to be a major financial center in the western United States and it was this that lured capitalists to invest in San Francisco and being made aware of the city as a seismic hotspot would make these capitalists stop investing in the city’s financial health. To willfully be ignorant of the potential dangers of living in an earthquake-prone area is one thing, but for these businessmen they knew the risks and yet they continued to lure investors to their city in spite of the potential dangers. It’s one thing to argue that these businessmen were only trying to bring these investment opportunities to elevate the city to newer heights but I believe their intentions were not at all noble.
I challenge ngojoseph’s question of “Are we all earthquake deniers?”, while it can be said that virtually anyone who lives in an earthquake area would know about the potential dangers, as the constant reminders to participate in the “Great Shakeout Drill” each year show, it isn’t easy to simply just pick up your things and move to somewhere that isn’t an earthquake hotspot. Recent earthquakes in remote areas like Nebraska and Oklahoma show that these earthquakes could happen in places you’d least expect it to. How would we move a state that ngojoseph even admits to having “a massive population”? Does the state and/or federal government help with relocation? What about those who are on Section 8 housing, do they lose Section 8 status by relocating? How do other states cope with large percentages of Californians moving into their state, all at once? I agree with slee72897’s comment: “I think we are justified in choosing to live here because there have been many regulations and precautions taken to prevent damage”, we have drills, building code standards are better than the virtually non-existent ones in 1906 and with the rise of social media, people now know just how devastating earthquakes can be and are thus more motivated in preventative measures. I will close by saying that yes people understand the risks but people today are more aware than ever before in the destruction earthquakes can cause and we are more prepared to deal with them.