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t
was, of course, an earthquake,
THE
earthquake, one of the largest
ever to hit North America, and the first of 27 separate quakes that
day. The first shock—at 5:12:05 a.m.—lasted more than 40 seconds.
It was by far the largest, estimated to have been 8.3 on the Richter
scale; its epicenter was just off the coast, around Pacifica.
How big was it? This huge quake produced about 300 miles of surface rupture along the fault, with the land on the western side moving north west relative to the eastern side.
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Click
here
for a larger image of the church.
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In the city of San Francisco,
it toppled chimneys and smokestacks, crumpled wood-frame houses into
kindling, threw walls into the streets, and twisted steel rails and
cast-iron ducts as if they were pipe cleaners. All the churchbells in
the city were set to clanging, as if signaling doomsday, the end of
the world.
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in
1906. Seismologists used the Rossi-Forel scale, which measured earthquakes
on a scale of 1 to 10. The 1906 quake was classified as a No. 9,
an earthquake that knocks down badly built buildings and leaves the
streets of the city strewn with debris. It is as
severe an earthquake as can be experienced without total destruction,
without complete destruction of life and
property."
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