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While reading the chapter “Smoke and Mirrors: The San Francisco Earthquake and Seismic Denial” from American Disaster the theme Steinberg discussed how even though there was an earthquake the most destructive to the city was the fire. This argument can be related to other disasters we have studied such as the Chicago fire. These real estate and businesses were really focused on blaming the fire for the destruction because with a fire they could come up with ways to reduce and avoid it to happen again but with an earthquake, there was no possible way to prevent it from happening (Steinberg, 107). The way they viewed the calamity was similar to the way boosters viewed Chicago in which they could make a profit and rebuild but this time by telling lies about the state not having a seismic problem. It’s interesting how it took until the next big jolt for the first Californian legislation stating that the state had a seismic problem but it didn’t really hinder the migration of people to California. The fact that to this day there is an unclear number of deaths during this disaster illustrates how the earthquake was downplayed in order to bring more capital in order to rebuild the city. Steinburg brings up an excellent point relating the connection between how the calamity was being advertised and the death poll (Steinburg, 119). As ngojoseph’s question of “Are we all earthquake deniers?”, it is clear nowadays we know the risk of living in a state that is so prone to earthquakes but does it stop us from making our lives here and the answer is no. We know the risk but we also like to think we are safe by coming up and inventing state of the art things that would help us stay safe for the next big earthquake. Just like those people that lived right next to an active volcano in Pompeii they never that they would live to see the day that it erupted because it had never erupted in the past. We aren’t as naïve but why would we stop living in the best climate-controlled place.
