Property losses from the disaster have been estimated to be more than $400 million in 1906 dollars. This is equivalent to $ in dollars. An insurance industry source tallies insured losses at $235 million, the equivalent to $ in dollars. Political and business leaders strongly downplayed the effects of the earthquake, fearing loss of outside investment in the city which was badly needed to rebuild. In his first public statement, California Governor
George Pardee emphasized the need to rebuild quickly: "This is not the first time that San Francisco has been destroyed by fire, I have not the slightest doubt that the City by the Golden Gate will be speedily rebuilt, and will, almost before we know it, resume her former great activity". The earthquake is not even mentioned in the statement. Fatality and monetary damage estimates were manipulated. Almost immediately after the quake (and even during the disaster), planning and reconstruction plans were hatched to quickly rebuild the city. Rebuilding funds were immediately tied up by the fact that virtually all the major banks had been sites of the conflagration, requiring a lengthy wait of seven to ten days before their fire-proof vaults could cool sufficiently to be safely opened. The
Bank of Italy (now
Bank of America) had evacuated its funds and was able to provide liquidity in the immediate aftermath. Its president also immediately chartered and financed the sending of two ships to return with shiploads of lumber from Washington and Oregon mills which provided the initial reconstruction materials and surge. In an article written in 1913, John C. Branner, who was the first to begin study of the San Andreas fault in 1891 complained that the Federal Government of the United States had not conducted the serious studies that were needed to gather data about earthquakes on the west coast. He said public discussion was being stifled by fears that acknowledgement of earthquakes would drive away business and investors, and that geologists were told not to gather information about the 1906 earthquake, and certainly to not publish it. Some people went as far as to deny that an earthquake had happened. Branner argued that preparation for earthquakes was possible and necessary: The only way we know of to deal successfully with any natural phenomenon is to get acquainted with it, to find out all we can about it, and thus to meet it on its own grounds. That is the way mankind has succeeded thus far, and it is safe to conclude that it is the only way it will ever succeed. Eleven days after the earthquake a rare Sunday baseball game was played in New York City (which would not allow regular Sunday baseball until 1919) between the Highlanders (soon to be the Yankees) and the Philadelphia Athletics to raise money for quake survivors.
William James, the pioneering American psychologist, was teaching at
Stanford at the time of the earthquake and traveled into San Francisco to observe first-hand its aftermath. He was most impressed by the positive attitude of the survivors and the speed with which they improvised services and created order out of chaos. This formed the basis of the chapter "On some Mental Effects of the Earthquake" in his book
Memories and Studies.
H. G. Wells had just arrived in New York on his first visit to America when he learned of the San Francisco earthquake. What struck him about the reaction of those around him was that "it does not seem to have affected any one with a sense of final destruction, with any foreboding of irreparable disaster. Every one is talking of it this afternoon, and no one is in the least degree dismayed. I have talked and listened in two clubs, watched people in cars and in the street, and one man is glad that
Chinatown will be cleared out for good; another's chief solicitude is for
Millet's
Man with a Hoe. 'They'll cut it out of the frame,' he says, a little anxiously. 'Sure.' But there is no doubt anywhere that San Francisco can be rebuilt, larger, better, and soon. Just as there would be none at all if all this New York that has so obsessed me with its limitless bigness was itself a blazing ruin. I believe these people would more than half like the situation." tower, southwest down on Market Street
statue in front of the Zoology building, now building 420,
Stanford University Reconstruction The earthquake was crucial in the development of the
University of California, San Francisco and its medical facilities. Until 1906, the school faculty had provided care at the City-County Hospital (now the
San Francisco General Hospital), but did not have a hospital of its own. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, more than 40,000 people were relocated to a makeshift tent city in Golden Gate Park and were treated by the faculty of the Affiliated Colleges. This brought the school, which until then was located on the western outskirts of the city, in contact with significant population and fueled the commitment of the school towards civic responsibility and health care, increasing the momentum towards the construction of its own health facilities. In April 1907, one of the buildings was renovated for outpatient care with 75 beds. This created the need to train nursing students, and the
UC Training School for Nurses was established, adding a fourth professional school to the Affiliated Colleges. The grandeur of citywide reconstruction schemes required investment from Eastern monetary sources, hence the spin and de-emphasis of the earthquake, the promulgation of the tough new building codes, and subsequent reputation sensitive actions such as the official low death toll. One of the more famous and ambitious plans came from famed urban planner
Daniel Burnham. His bold plan called for, among other proposals,
Haussmann-style avenues, boulevards,
arterial thoroughfares that radiated across the city, a massive civic center complex with classical structures, and what would have been the largest urban park in the world, stretching from
Twin Peaks to
Lake Merced with a large
atheneum at its peak. But this plan was dismissed during the aftermath of the earthquake. For example, real estate investors and other land owners were against the idea because of the large amount of land the city would have to purchase to realize such proposals. While the original street grid was restored, many of Burnham's proposals inadvertently saw the light of day, such as a
neoclassical civic center complex, wider streets, a preference of arterial thoroughfares, a
subway under Market Street, a more people-friendly
Fisherman's Wharf, and a monument to the city on
Telegraph Hill,
Coit Tower. Limestone used to reconstruct city buildings was quarried at the nearby
Rockaway Quarry. City fathers likewise attempted at the time to eliminate the Chinese population and export Chinatown (and other poor populations) to the edge of the county where the Chinese could still contribute to the local taxbase. The Chinese occupants had other ideas and prevailed instead. Chinatown was rebuilt in the newer, modern, Western form that exists today. The destruction of
City Hall and the Hall of Records enabled thousands of Chinese immigrants to claim residency and citizenship, creating a backdoor to the
Chinese Exclusion Act, and
bring in their relatives from China. The earthquake was also responsible for the development of the
Pacific Heights neighborhood. The immense power of the earthquake had destroyed almost all of the mansions on
Nob Hill except for the
James C. Flood Mansion. Others that had not been destroyed were dynamited by the Army forces aiding the firefighting efforts in attempts to create firebreaks. As one indirect result, the wealthy looked westward where the land was cheap and relatively undeveloped, and where there were better views. Constructing new mansions without reclaiming and clearing rubble simply sped attaining new homes in the tent city during the reconstruction. Reconstruction was swift, and largely completed by 1915, in time for the
1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition which celebrated the reconstruction of the city and its "rise from the ashes". Since 1915, the city has officially commemorated the disaster each year by gathering the remaining survivors at
Lotta's Fountain, a fountain in the city's
financial district that served as a meeting point during the disaster for people to look for loved ones and exchange information.
Housing The Army built 5,610
redwood and
fir "relief houses" to accommodate 20,000 displaced people. The houses were designed by
John McLaren, and were grouped in 11 camps, packed close to each other and rented to people for two dollars per month until rebuilding was completed. They were painted navy blue, partly to blend in with the site and partly because the military had large quantities of navy blue paint on hand. The camps had a peak population of 16,448 people, but by 1907 most people had moved out. The camps were then re-used as garages, storage spaces or shops. The cottages cost on average $100 to build. The $2 monthly rents went towards the full purchase price of $50. The last official refugee camp was closed on June 30, 1908. Most of the cottages have been destroyed, but at least 30 survived. Of the remaining structures, there is a historically restored pair in the Presidio. Others have been built on as part of private homes, with a high concentration around the Bernal Heights neighborhood. One of the modest homes was purchased in 2006 for more than $600,000. A 2017 study found that the fire had the effect of increasing the share of land used for nonresidential purposes: "Overall, relative to unburned blocks, residential land shares on burned blocks fell while nonresidential land shares rose by 1931. The study also provides insight into what held the city back from making these changes before 1906: the presence of old residential buildings. In reconstruction, developers built relatively fewer of these buildings, and the majority of the reduction came through single-family houses. Aside from merely expanding nonresidential uses in many neighborhoods, the fire created economic opportunities in new areas, resulting in clusters of business activity that emerged only in the wake of the disaster. These effects of the fire still remain today, and thus large shocks can be sufficient catalysts for permanently reshaping urban settings."
Relief locomotive During the first few days after news of the disaster reached the rest of the world, relief efforts reached over $5,000,000, . London raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Individual citizens and businesses donated large sums of money for the relief effort:
Standard Oil and
Andrew Carnegie each gave $100,000; the
Parliament of Canada made a special appropriation of $100,000; and even the
Bank of Canada in Ottawa gave $25,000. These relief efforts were not enough to get families on their feet again, and consequently the burden was placed on wealthier members of the city, who were reluctant to assist in the rebuilding of homes they were not responsible for. All residents were eligible for daily meals served from a number of communal soup kitchens, and citizens as far away as Idaho and Utah were known to send daily loaves of bread to San Francisco as relief supplies were coordinated by the railroads.
Insurance payments Insurance companies, faced with staggering claims of $250 million, paid out between $235 million and $265 million on policyholders' claims, often for fire damage only, since shake damage from earthquakes was excluded from coverage under most policies. At least 137 insurance companies were directly involved and another 17 as reinsurers. Twenty companies went bankrupt. thanks to the leadership of
Cuthbert Heath. Insurance companies in
Hartford, Connecticut, report paying every claim in full, with the
Hartford Fire Insurance Company paying over $11 million and
Aetna Insurance Company almost $3 million. After the 1906 earthquake, global discussion arose concerning a legally flawless exclusion of the earthquake hazard from fire insurance contracts. It was pressed ahead mainly by re-insurers. Their aim: a uniform solution to insurance payouts resulting from fires caused by earthquakes. Until 1910, a few countries, especially in Europe, followed the call for an exclusion of the earthquake hazard from all fire insurance contracts. In the U.S., the question was discussed differently. But the traumatized public reacted with fierce opposition. In the second half of 1909, the
California State Legislature enacted the California Standard Form of Fire Insurance Policy, which did not contain any earthquake clause. Thus the state decided that insurers would have to pay again if another earthquake was followed by fires. Other earthquake-endangered countries followed the California example. ==Centennial commemorations==