Are you prepared for the next Big One?

Disaster comes knocking on the door of the Fritsch family as they see what happens to their home in a demonstration of a catastrophic quake.

But a few blocks away, this man needs no demonstration from us.

His name is Herbert Hamrol. 

He still works three days a week at Andronico’s market in San Francisco. He’s 103 years old.

San Francisco, Calif.
Mr. Hamrol was just 3 back in 1906. It’s when the earth moved, and history changed course.

In the early  morning hours of April 18^th, 1906, San Francisco was the biggest, richest, and possibly the  most wide-open city in the western United States. 

Simon Winchester, author, “A Crack in the Edge of the World”: Suddenly, at 12 minutes past 5, everything changed.  It was if the streets themselves had turned into great waves, great tsunamis of cement and they were rising up and down. And the buildings themselves were rocking to and fro and to and fro and pieces started falling off them.

All hell broke loose. It’s estimated the quake was a magnitude 8.0.

Within minutes, buildings collapsed all over town.  More than 3,000 people died. And even more damage was yet to come.

For Mr. Hamrol, one image remains burned in his mind.

Herbert Hamrol, survivor:  All I remember about the earthquake is my mother carrying me down the stairs. 

The Hamrol family escaped.  But soon, at least 50 separate fires were raging all over town, set off by broken gas lines and upended stoves. 

The fires roared for days. 20,000 buildings were destroyed. Nearly five hundred city blocks were leveled.

Hamrol: That was the greatest part of everything pertaining to the earthquake was the damage done by the fire more so than by the shaking.

250 people, more than half the city’s population at that time, were homeless—left to live in the city’s parks.  

Herbert Hamrol and his family were among them. But you don’t have to be over a hundred to remember a bad quake in San Francisco.

In 1989, a magnitude 7.1 quake hit near San Francisco during the World Series.  

The quake killed more than 60 people, flattened the main superhighway in the East bay—the 880 freeway—leading to desperate rescue efforts.

The quake partially collapsed the main artery between San Francisco and Oakland:  the bay bridge.  

Fires raged in the city’s high-priced marina district, an eerie reminder of 1906.  Modern day construction is considered much safer.  Still, some experts say the city needs to do a lot more to prepare.

Mary Lou Zoback, USGS: I’m concerned because a lot of people haven’t taken any steps to prepare.

Mary Lou Zoback’s concern is very real. She’s the senior research scientist with the bay area office of the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors the nation’s seismic hazards.  She says when, not if there’s a repeat of the big quake of 1906, it will be catastrophic.  

Part of the reason is there are 10 times as many people living in the region now.

Zoback: And when it repeats, there’ll be a 300-mile-long, 50-mile-wide swath of devastation.  And it won’t just be San Francisco. It won’t just be the Bay Area.   It will be most of Northern California. Because of the scale, the number of people we expect to be homeless will be a true catastrophe.

Software programs show that the Golden Gate bridge, and San Francisco international airport would shake severely in a giant quake, but are expected to survive.  

But Mary Lou Zoback thinks some structures will collapse.

Zoback: We know the Bay Bridge would fail if it was at least as large as in 1989.

And it gets even scarier—The BART, the rapid transit tube running underneath San Francisco Bay will fail.  And by failing, it means it’ll crack.  Water will rush in.  Several of the stations on both sides are below sea level.  The roads will liquefy. We know that much of the freeways are built on Bay fill.  That ground’s going to liquefy and literally just rip the freeways apart.

Voters in the Bay Area recently approved a bond issue to strengthen the region’s water and mass transit systems.  But the work may not be moving fast enough—a recent report criticized San Francisco’s disaster preparedness plan. 

Still San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says the city is taking important steps to get prepared.

(In newsroom) Mayor Gavin Newsom: I don’t think there should be hysteria of being afraid.

Newsom says that as we all saw in Katrina, it’s not just the disaster, but the aftermath that can be devastating.

Newsom: We put together a website called 72-hours-dot-org, making the case that most likely in a catastrophic event, you’re most likely going to be on your own for at least 72 hours. And what we’re offering on this site, is that we want people to be prepared not just with cans of tuna and bottles of water. But to have disaster plans for their family.

There are seven major faults that cut right through the bay area.  You’ve heard of the San Andreas fault, which set off the massive 1906 quake and runs for more than 800 miles through California.   

But there’s a lesser-known fault that scientists are more worried about right now. 

It’s the Hayward fault --- which is believed to be the more likely epicenter of the next big quake. It cuts right through many of the densely populated cities on the east side of the bay.

The old Hayward city hall has been abandoned because it sits right on the fault.  But businesses like the Dream Girls hair salon are staying put. For the most part. Lydia Simpson is the owner:

Lydia Simpson, salon owner: You can tell the building is shifting, cause it’s going this way. Yeah, and we got a little crack in the back, that since I’ve been here,  the floor is cracking.

For now, at least,  it seems many people here are trying to have a sense of humor about the risk.

Simpson: Yeah, cause I’m gonna run anyway. (laughing) The time I feel something shaking, I’m gonna run, I’m gonna hit the door.

She’s joking, because as you’ll see, taking off and running might not get you anywhere.

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