Somewhere in a drawer full of brick-o-brack, I have a Chinese coin with an unusual history behind it. It was given to my father by Ira Barnheisal, a San Juan Valley farmer who died back in the 1970s.
As a boy growing up in San Francisco, Mr. Barnheisal experienced one of the world’s most famous seismic events – the great earthquake of 1906, which occurred 100 years ago last Tuesday. While making his way through the wrecked city, for some reason the young Barnheisal took a moment to pick up the coin from out of the rubble.
As I look at the coin a century later, it makes me consider the human story of that day the San Andreas fault snapped at 5:12am.
Perhaps the little coin had been in the possession of some panicked Chinatown merchant rushing frantically through the streets as fire swept the city. Maybe the frightened fellow tripped over some debris and dropped this coin. I wonder, did the coin’s original Asian owner survive the catastrophe? Or was he among the more than 3,000 people who perished in California’s greatest natural disaster?
The quake of 1906 also dramatically impacted the lives of people residing here in the South Valley.
The Gilroy Advocate newspaper published a quake story with the headline “Awful Catastrophe!” The article reported that “Nearly every windmill between Gilroy and San Jose is down.” Then under construction, Gilroy’s downtown City Hall at Fourth and Monterey streets was severely damaged when stone facing and plaster fell.
The San Juan Bautista mission church – which sits right astride the San Andreas – lost its steeple tower. Architecturally speaking, this was probably a blessing. The New England-style tower didn’t match the church’s original Spanish design.
Of all the communities in the South Valley, Hollister was hit hardest. The quake killed a woman named Agnes McAullife Griffith who died trying to flee a collapsing building. Another Hollister woman named Annie died trapped under the remains of the town’s Naderman Building. And in southern San Benito County, a rancher named Ignacio Peroni was crushed by a boulder that tumbled down a steep slope into his Tres Pinos region house.
The Hollister Free Lance published a special supplement describing the local impact. Headlines proclaimed: “Terrific Earthquake. Hollister Main Street in Ruins.”
The 1906 earthquake shows the resiliency of the human spirit in the South Valley. In 10 days, all Hollister stores were open for business again. The 1906 disaster also brought out the human compassion in South Valley residents. Many here helped the quake victims in San Jose and San Francisco by sending food and money to folks desperately needing supplies in those cities.
After the quake, some San Francisco residents seeking a safer place to restart their lives settled in the then tiny village of Morgan Hill. The hamlet’s population boomed so much that by November 1906, the community officially incorporated as a city.
Residents of the South Valley certainly know we live in earthquake country. Every once in a while, we’ll feel a strong jolt – Mother Nature’s reminder that our planet is not as solid as we think. Geology is slowly and continuously changing the surface of the Earth. The mountains that make up the South Valley were created by eons of gradual ground movement. During millions of years, there have been many major earthquakes here.
We all know seismic activity is part of the deal in coastal California. It’s a certainty another trembler with the magnitude of 1906 will strike the state again.
It’s another certainty that when that massive quake does strike, the devastation will be even greater than a century ago.
Back in 1906, about 800,000 people made the Bay Area their home. Now more than 7 million people live here, in one of the planet’s most quake-prone metropolitan regions.
Scientists estimate there’s a 62 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake hitting this area before 2032. As the giant plates of the San Andreas push against each other, slowly building up explosive energy, one day a quake of magnitude 7.8 (the power of 1906’s seismic event) or greater will make us take notice of nature’s awesome power.
As in 1906, there’ll be wide-spread damage and deaths from thousands of buildings and structures collapsing and from the uncontrolled fires sweeping neighborhoods. But perhaps the greatest calamity won’t be from rubble and flames. Maybe it might come from floods.
Geologists at the University of California, Davis, say a massive earthquake could cause the failure of the delta region’s aging levee system. If the foundations of these levees collapse, the raging flood would wipe out nearby communities and thousands of acres of farmland. People would drown in that unstoppable wall of water.
This future disaster’s toll might be compounded throughout the state by a deluge of brackish bay water contaminating the aqueducts that carry freshwater to L.A. As many as 23 million Californians might suddenly be without freshwater.
California – the world’s sixth largest economy – would face a huge hit, and the aftermath would shake the world’s economies and politics.
Last year’s Hurricane Katrina gave us a wake-up call about the human costs to inadequate preparation for natural disasters. No one was really ready for the breakdown of the New Orleans levees. The collapse of California’s delta levees during a major tremor would be even more catastrophic.
Looking at the old Chinese coin Ira Barnheisal saved from 1906 San Francisco, I wonder what he thought about as he wandered through his demolished city. That day, now more than 100 years ago, what did he imagine for the future? Could he have seen that, like the mythical phoenix, the city would rise out of the ashes?
Maybe Ira somehow considered the coin a lucky charm – that if he’d survived this, he’d somehow survive other perils. More likely, he simply wanted a souvenir to remember that day – a day that shook the world.
