100 years later, quake's dead still being counted

Mike Mosher Producer

SAN FRANCISCO — Gladys Hansen retired in 1992 from the San Francisco Main Library — but that didn't mean she stopped her work as a librarian.

That's because she has made it her goal in life to account fully for the number of people killed by the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and ensuing firestorm. To accomplish this Hansen goes to work several days a week — at her own office in a Mission district warehouse — to research, catalog and respond to questions.

That may sound like a routine task, but for 40 years, it has been anything but that. A combination of a lack of identification because of the timing of the disaster, poor record keeping, and an unofficial cover-up of the extent of the disaster, have all conspired against an accurate accounting of the dead.

"I'm a librarian at heart,” she says from her own storage rooms, where her collection of index cards of names continues to grow and grow.

100 years later, and still counting
"For forty years I've watched it grow like a thermometer," said Hansen, explaining how the official casualty number from the quake has grown over the years.

"It reached 826, 910, 1000, 2000, you know, I kept counting [but] counting the numbers is not what I'm really after," explained Hansen. "I'm really after the people to recognize their names. To let them be a San Franciscan [who] was forgotten in 1906."

Typed on three-by-five cards are the names of individuals Hansen believes died in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.   

"These are some of the dead," she whispered while thumbing through the cards.

The card reads "ANNIE BAUMEISTER, confirmed dead by the U.S. Army."

On the next card "ANDREW BOTZBACH" is recognized.  Botzbach was a bookkeeper at the Valencia Hotel, where it is believed at least 80 people were initially trapped by the quake, and later killed by the firestorm that swept through the city. Some are also believed to have drowned by burst water mains which flooded the collapsed hotel.

How big was the 1906 earthquake? Levels of magnitude quoted for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake vary from the low sevens to the high eights. Which is correct? That's difficult to pin down, in part because data for the 1906 earthquake are often poor because of the relatively unsophisticated technology of the period and also because most of the few stations in existence back then were not in optimum locations. Two recent studies — one consolidating measurements taken at almost 100 observatories around the world and the other examining ground deformation caused by the quake — have put the disaster at magnitude 7.7 to 7.9. SOURCE: U.S. Geological Survey

"PAULINE BUCK" lived and died at 424 Twenty Ninth Street.

Hansen has a card for "WILLIAM BURNIP" and one for "ALBERT JOHN BUSH."

For forty years Hansen has catalogued 120 drawers full of cards with names and information.

'Official' death count
The official death count released by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1907 claimed 478 people died in the disaster.

Plaques on display at exhibits throughout the city marking the centennial anniversary of the earthquake this month say that 3,000 people died in the quake and fires. But Hansen doesn't agree with either of those numbers.

"Today we're, I would say closer to 6,000 [dead]; five to six thousand," she estimated.

According to Hansen, there was a deliberate effort to minimize the scale of the disaster. Army brass and insurance executives, Southern Pacific Railroad tycoons and civic boosters all with interests in the booming city played down the damage and the death, she believes, to keep the money and investments coming in.

'Extraordinary service'
James Dalessandro, historian and author of "1906, a novel," said San Francisco owes a lot to Gladys Hansen.

"She's done an extraordinary service by uncovering a lot of lies and cover-ups in the disaster and in saying that the dead should be counted," said Dalessandro. "It gives us a more accurate portrayal of just how significant, just how enormous this disaster really was.”

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