After
the anguish had seemed to subside, the powers
that were in San Francisco at the time wanted
to let the word know that San Francisco had recovered
... so ...in 1910, they decided to have a great
"Fair" and call it "The Panama-Pacific International
Exposition, " as the Panama Canal was finally
finished also. In 1912,they started to fill in
some 70 acres along the San Francisco shoreline
in the Marina district, also known as Harbor View,
plus 114 acres of marshland in the Presidio. They
built a retaining wall and, for fill, they dredged
sand and mud from the bay as well as some earthquake
rubble from other areas of the city.
The Fair was a resounding
success with visitors arriving from all parts
of the world. There were more than twenty-five
magnificent structures erected for this event.
Only the "Palace of Fine Arts" remains. It is
ready rather sad, as they were truly extravagant
works of architecture.
However, after
these fantastic buildings were removed, there
sat all this beautiful real estate looking over
the bay. Then, in the 1920s, as today, developers
seemingly could not tolerate vacant land of
any kind. Even though it was not deemed wise
to build on filled land, especially as it was
mostly sand, naturally,they did!
Both residences
and commercial buildings were built on land
fill, in the Marina and in many other parts
of the city. Most of the buildings did stand,
elegant, ornate, and historical, for nearly
seventy-five years, even through the 1957 earthquake.
On October 17, 1989, at 5.04 p.m., as the World
Series of baseball was preparing to start at
Candlestick Park between the Oakland A's and
the San Francisco Giants, along came the awesome
7.1 quake with the Big One yet to come. Sixty
thousand fans were in the stands and off the
freeways, protected from possible calamity outside
the stadium.
There often seems to be comedy
in the midst of great tragedy. As the fans were
calmy filing out of the ball park, a couple
of fans held up a sign: "If you think that was
something ... wait until the Giants get up to
bat!"
We know our Army is to protect us from
outside enemy forces. We know that our laws
are to protect us from one another. We know
that the local police force is expected to protect
us from all of the above plus anything unexpected
that disrupts our lives. During the aftermath
of the October quake, the San Francisco Police
department and their diligent, dedicated hard
work, often times criticized and unappreciated,
kept comparatively calm what could have been
a an unbelievable chaotic disaster.
Also de'ja
vu, without the enterprising, fearless San Francisco
fire department the ensuing fire could have
made the 1906 conflagration seem like a Sunday
afternoon cookout.
Yes, San Francisco will continue
to survive and to keep us humble, Mother Nature
will regularly let us know who really is the
boss.
