Are we in Danger from Earthquakes?
No disastrous earthquake has visited San Francisco within the past hundred
years, and the series of earthquakes which lately occurred in the southeastern corner of the State, four
hundred miles -- on the edge of the great Interior Basin, and in a volcanic
region -- were by no means so disastrous or severe as those which visited
the
Mississippi
Valley in 1811, or those which are of frequent occurrence in New
Zealand, Japan and many other countries. Nevertheless, the people of the
Atlantic States look upon California as one of the most dangerous earthquake
countries in the world. This is due to the infernal habit of exaggeration
which characterizes Eastern newspaper letter-writers and newspaper
editors. The New York papers published such sensational heads as these,
lately: "California Rocking from One End to the Other!" "California's
Fearful Cataclysm!" The Solid Earth Melting!" etc., etc., while a few
correspondents here supplemented and added to the lies and excitement. The
truth, however, is -- judging by an analogy and all the light that science
has placed within our reach -- San Francisco is in very little more danger
of a disastrous earthquake than the Eastern States of being flooded by an
overflow of the Atlantic ocean. Some of the distant southern and
southeastern counties are subject to heavy shocks, but there is little
danger, even there, to those who reside in frame buildings.
The Atlantic papers would most willingly publish any wild earthquake theory
that San Francisco was in momentary danger of being swallowed up; but we
have no hope that they will publish these facts. There would be no
sensation in them, and nothing but sensation agrees with the feverish
newspaper stomach there.
San Francisco Real Estate Circular
For April 1872
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