The Great San Francisco Earthquake of April 18, 1906 is estimated to have killed more than 3,000 people and left 225,000 homeless along California’s San Andreas Fault. While these numbers pale in comparison to this past weekend’s earthquake disaster in Pakistan (more than 30,000 estimated dead), it was ranked as the worst natural disaster in the United States until Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last August.
To commemorate the centennial of the historic temblor, the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University have scheduled a series of lectures focused on the 1906 earthquake and strategies for coping with major seismic events in the future.
The Quake ‘06 Centennial Lecture Series, free and open to the public, is one of several events planned by the 1906 Earthquake Centennial Alliance - a Bay Area consortium that includes Stanford, UC Berkeley and more than 100 other institutions, agencies and businesses, whose objective is to use the 100th anniversary of the quake to raise public awareness about current earthquake risks.
All lectures are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on both campuses. All programs on the Stanford campus will be held in Kresge Auditorium.
Among the programs at Stanford:
• Malcolm E. Barker, author of “Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire,” will present “Through the Eyes of the Survivors,” Oct. 25 at Stanford.
• Stephen Tobriner, author of “Saving San Francisco” and UC Berkeley professor of architecture, will discuss “Bracing for Disaster: Engineers, Architects and the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906,” Nov. 15 at Stanford.
• Chris D. Poland, president of Degenkolb Engineers, will address “Restrain, Respect and Rehabilitate: A Tale of Three Seismic Projects at Stanford,” the story of Memorial Church, the art museum and the Mitchell Building, a special lecture focusing on the unique structural repairs and retrofits on the Stanford campus, Jan. 17 at Stanford.
• Mary Lou Zoback, senior research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, “The 1906 Earthquake: Lessons Learned, Lessons Forgotten and Future Directions” Jan. 31 at Stanford. Eric Elsesser, founding principal Forell/Elsesser Engineers Inc., “Improving Seismic Safety and Performance of Buildings through Innovative Structural Engineering” Feb. 16 at Stanford.
• Kathleen Tierney, co-author “Facing the Unexpected Disaster: Preparedness and Response in the United States” and professor of sociology, University of Colorado, will discuss “Social Dimensions of Catastrophic Disasters: From the 1906 Earthquake to Hurricane Katrina” Feb. 28 at Stanford.
For more information, call Racquel Hagen at the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at 723-4150, e-mail racquelh@stanford.edu or visit quake06.stanford.edu. For more information about the events at Berkeley, call Peggy Hellweg of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at (510) 643-9449 or e-mail peggy@seismo.berkeley.edu.
