Disaster! the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 by Dan Kurtzman. 296 p.
The second book I've read on this topic this month. This one is a little facile, but a much better popular history overview than the previous one. Kurtzman's book is better organized than Dennis Smith's (the other author), so it's much easier to follow what's going on.
Because most people with insurance were covered for fire but not earthquake, and because the city powers feared that no one would invest and rebuild if they were worried about earthquakes (uncontrollable) versus fire (preventable), people afterwards almost always talked about the fire rather than the earthquake. Yet nowadays it's almost always referred to as just an earthquake--I knew there was massive devastation in its wake, but until I started reading about it I had no idea about the scope of the fires.
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