At 5:12 on the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, San Francisco was struck by a severe earthquake estimated at 7.8 on the Richter scale. The San Francisco quake devastated a great many of the city's buildings and generated fires that burned for four days.

By the time the fires were out, more than 80 percent of the city's built-up area had been destroyed, more than 3,000 people lay dead and half of the city's 400,000 residents were homeless. It was a catastrophe equal (in relative terms) to the five B-29 fire raids in 1945 that destroyed Tokyo, which had been the world's third largest city.

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Source: http://www.patriotledger.com