San Francisco, California, USA
(George R. Lawrence / Library of Congress)
At 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, San Francisco was hit by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. By the end of the week, the city was in ruins. Eighty percent of the buildings were destroyed not only by the earthquake but by the devastating fires that followed in its wake. Three thousand lives were lost and more than 200,000 people (from a total population of 410,000) were left without homes.
This incredible image was taken by George R. Lawrence using a kite flying at 2,000 feet (600 meters). Lawrence, whose Chicago studio used the tagline ‘The hitherto impossible in photography is our specialty’, sold prints of the image at $125 each. He generated at least $15,000 in sales.
‘Dear Mother,
The hills rolled like great billows and cracked open, houses sank between seven and eight feet in places. All the big cheap lodging houses collapsed with all the people in them. Then the fire which started in one hundred places – at once quickly burnt-up the dead and injured.
The flames spread like fury, jumping six and seven blocks at once, 450 blocks were burnt to the ground in all. The water mains were all broken, by the quake, so that the firemen had no water to fight the fire with. All they could was to blow up the buildings with dynamite, in spite of this the rapidly moving flames sped on their way . . . The fire was a beautiful sight – at night miles of skyscrapers being gutted or burnt to the ground.
The number of dead will never be known. Some big places fell with 400 to 500 people in them. Then the fire done the rest. Not an ash is left to tell the tale.
With love and best wishes to all, Percy’
Percy H. Gregory, immigrant carpenter, May 29, 1906, nearly six weeks after the quake