After almost every major disaster (the Mississippi flood of 1927 that killed over 1,000 people, the dust bowl of the 30s, world wars, the World Trade Center collapse, and the 2005 hurricanes), the government and media proclaimed that these were the "worst disasters America has ever suffered." Certainly many were, in terms of loss of lives or monetary costs, the most expensive. But these were not necessarily the only "worst" American disasters. Another occurred 100 years ago in April of 1906. Responses to that disaster paralleled what happened after Katrina — some in a much superior way, and in other ways, a bit more frighteningly.

It was, to quote Charles Dickens, "the best of times; it was the worst of times." Republicans held both the White House and Congress. The Army occupied a foreign nation it had acquired in war, but military efficiency was not necessarily evident in the officers who had become heroes in that war. Industrial moguls lobbied for the laws that would make their corporations richer, and illegal immigrants swamped the city. There were the very rich and the very poor, with not many in between. The nation's economy was becoming quite global, especially with a new open-door policy toward China.

At 5:04 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, just off Mussel Rock west of the entrance to San Francisco Bay and along an ancient crack in the earth's surface known as the San Andreas Fault, the North American Plate shifted upward while the Pacific Plate shifted downward, sending shock waves for hundreds of miles in all directions. It registered a 7.8 on the Richter Scale, which was the strongest ever recorded in the U.S. outside of Alaska. Ships on the Pacific were lifted by the uprising, causing their captains to think they had run aground, and roadways to the north were shifted sideways by as much as 20 feet. Wooden structures built on landfill within the city of San Francisco sank into the liquefied soil on which they stood, as other wood and brick structures collapsed into each other along the hilly streets, crushing victims to death as they lay in their beds.