On this day in San Francisco, Saturday, April 18th...

I have several email domiciles - my pied-e-terre on a budget, and the only way I'll ever afford a second home, or vacation home, anywhere other than this one bedroom flat in the suburbs of good old Long Beach, CA.

As usual I was going through my poetry email - Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac is the first thing I read each morning - with my cup of coffee (the coffee helps me with the European countryside or Italian piazza affect) - when I came across this entry about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Since I'm actually in San Francisco on this very day, at this very moment, I thought I should post it even though it's not Wednesday -- in it's entirety. All credit, of course, to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

Mr. Keillor, please don't sue me. I've no deep pockets, not even my own house, for you to attach - only several virtual pied-e-terres you'd have no use for -- unless you have the imagination, good sense and good coffee to imagine big - in which case the view from my window by the lake can be very nice:

It was on this day in 1906 that one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States occurred: the San Francisco earthquake. The shaking started at 5:12 a.m. on a Wednesday, and lasted just over a minute, with the main shock 42 seconds long. It erupted along the San Andreas fault, which runs the length of California. The epicenter was two miles off the coast of San Francisco. It was probably about a 7.8 on the modern Richter scale.

In 1906, San Francisco had a population of 410,000 people. The earthquake and resulting fires left about two out of every three residents of the city homeless. The earthquake ruined many buildings, but historians estimate that 90 percent of the destruction to the city came from fires that followed the earthquake, rather than the earthquake itself. The initial fires were caused by ruptured gas lines, and then firefighters decided to blow up buildings with dynamite, hoping that they would create firebreaks. It didn't work, and it's estimated that half of the buildings blown up by dynamite would have otherwise survived. On top of that, since insurance covered fire damage but not earthquake damage, people started setting their own homes and businesses on fire. But as it turned out, insurance companies could not cover the massive disaster, so people didn't get their money anyway. About 500 people were shot and killed by police and federal troops who had been called in to keep order. Some of the people who were killed weren't actually looting — they were trying to rescue their own possessions.

The city of San Francisco hurried to rebuild in time for the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. In the rush, many building codes and regulations were ignored, and buildings built after the 1906 earthquake were actually less seismically safe than those built before.

The beauty just outside my window makes it difficult for me to imagine the horrors of this very day, at exactly this hour, 100 years ago. I'm told Noe Valley, where I stay, was essentially unaffected by the earthquake because of the bedrock it's situated on, and the fires never made it up here - but I find it impossible to believe that it was 'unaffected.'

About 3 short blocks from where I sit, at Dolores and 22nd, sits the fire-hydrant used to keep the fires from burning down Noe Valley - it was the last remaining functioning fire-hydrant -- one working fire-hydrant, that stopped the fire. It sits bronzed, and well attended to on the exact spot where it helped folks that day feel some measure of success.

Each year a ceremony is held to commemorate the heroes, and remember the lost. Each year the numbers of those in attendance dwindles; earlier this year the last living survivor of the disaster of 1906 left this world - he was only a child when it happened -taking all living history of that day with him.

But the fire-hydrant remains.