1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire: What Happened

At 5:12 a.m. on 18 April 1906 the San Andreas Fault ruptured along nearly 300 miles, and the fires that followed burned San Francisco for three days. Half of the city’s roughly 400,000 people lost their homes. This page sets out what the government sources say, and where they disagree.

The 1906 Earthquake and Fire at a Glance

The Earthquake

The USGS says the earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. and ruptured nearly 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault. Its Facing the Great Disaster report gives the magnitude as 7.8; the USGS’s own event page for the quake is titled magnitude 7.9, so the number depends on which USGS publication you read. The National Archives says the shaking lasted under a minute; the USGS says more than 40 seconds.

The Fire

The earthquake broke gas mains, and the USGS says the fires they started raged out of control for three days. The National Archives puts the loss at nearly 500 city blocks; NOAA’s figure, quoted by the USGS, is a burned district of 4.7 square miles. Officials destroyed about $30,000 worth of liquor from saloons and liquor stores to limit the spread of fire and the threat of mob violence, according to the National Archives.

How Many People Died

This is the question the sources answer differently. The Army’s 1906 relief report, by Greely, counted 498 dead in San Francisco, 64 in Santa Rosa and 102 in and near San Jose. A 1972 NOAA report called 700 to 800 a reasonable figure. The researchers Gladys Hansen and Emmet Condon found over 3,000 deaths directly or indirectly, and the USGS’s headline figure is “more than 3,000”. We give the range rather than choose one.

The Aftermath

The USGS counts 225,000 people homeless. The National Archives says survivors slept in tents in city parks and the Presidio, queued for food and cooked in the street to reduce the risk of more fires. The Chinese community was treated differently: the NPS says Chinatown’s roughly 15,000 residents lost nearly everything, most left for Oakland, only about 400 stayed in San Francisco, and the Army moved those who remained into segregated camps, the last near Fort Point in the Presidio. Read the rest in our Chinatown history.

The cable cars were hit too: the Cable Car Museum says electric streetcars became the preferred transit after 1906, though some cable lines were rebuilt. See the cable car history.

Local Legend: The Sourdough Starter That Survived 1906, Fisherman’s Wharf

What is actually true: The rescue is company and family lore, told by Boudin’s museum and by SF Travel; we found no independent record of it. Boudin’s own history says the bakery dates to 1849, that it is “believed” Isidore Boudin got his starter from a Gold Rush miner, and that Louise ran the bakery after his death in 1887. Boudin says it still adds a portion of the original mother dough to every batch. One myth KQED does knock down: the famous sourdough bacteria was first identified here but is not unique to San Francisco.

Local Legend: “Earthquake Weather”

What is actually true: There is no such thing. Asked by KTVU whether earthquake weather exists, USGS research geophysicist Annemarie Baltay answered: “Absolutely not.” Earthquakes happen somewhere in the world every day, she pointed out, in hot places and very cold ones alike.

Still Unconfirmed

• The magnitude. USGS publications give 7.8 and 7.9. We have not found a single agreed figure on the pages we read.
• The death toll. The sources range from 498 in San Francisco to more than 3,000 overall, depending on who counted and what counts.
• Chinatown’s own toll. The USGS casualties page we read does not break out deaths in Chinatown.

Figures are as the sources state them, read on 20 October 2026. Where sources differ, we say so above.