Compare And Contrast San Francisco Earthquake And Fire Of 1906

San Francisco Earthquake and Fire or 1906

Introduction:

The San Francisco earthquake and fire was a huge catastrophic event that affected the city people, the city as a whole, and the Chinese people and culture. Within the 40 seconds of terror, everything San Francisco was known for was leveled to the ground.

How it affected the City

This 8.3 magnitude earthquake ruined the whole city and broke the hearts of the people inside of it. The two plates that moved were the North American tectonic plate and the Pacific tectonic plate. The plates moved about 15 feet, this is huge because the average movement of tectonic plates during an earthquake is only 2 inches. The earthquake only lasted a minute but it quickly destroyed the city. The earthquake

When this happened, the congress responded in many different ways. The white house and senate made the city pay for food, tents, blankets, water, and medical supply. They also gave money to rebuild many of the buildings that were damaged. The house also had to handle claims from store owners, many people wanted money for their destroyed property. A good example was that several saloons and liquor stores wanted money paid back to them because their alcoholic beverages were destroyed by law enforcement to prevent the fire from getting worse and spreading. There was $30,000 worth of liquor destroyed. These fires lasted 3 full days and it also burned almost 500 city blocks before being

The gold rush was in 1848 and by 1870 over 30,000 Chinese laborers had settled down in San Francisco. They had made their own community inside the city of Sn Francisco, this community was called Chinatown. Even though they had their own little community inside the city, the Chinese people were not welcomed by others. A Chinatown historian, Chingwah Lee, put it best, "At the time there was no work for white men, never mind the Chinese. But the Chinese would take any work at any pay. This just increased their unpopularity." Since they were not welcome by the city officials and the people in general, the earthquake and fire gave the city officials a good excuse to get rid of the Chinese people. There was about 15,000 Chinese people in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake, and they all lost almost everything they had in the earthquake and fire. Although Chinatown was destroyed it wasn’t a good thing. The City Hall was also destroyed. This is where all the immigration records were and also vital statistics. Since these were destroyed with the city hall many Chinese were able to claim their citizenship in America. After