San Francisco 1906 Earthquake

In San Francisco California a major Earthquake had occurred on 1906 which result to fires that had cause an estimated of 3,000 deaths and $524 millions of property loss. The damaging cost in the city of San Francisco were $20 million and outside the city was $4million.The Earthquake vibration lasted for about 1 minute. The quake ruptured a total of 290 miles of the earth's surface along the San Andreas Fault, from northwest of San Juan Bautista to the triple junction at Cape Mendocino. Though most of the damage was focused in San Francisco the quake was felt all the way from Oregon to Los Angeles. Many building were destructed and several hundred of people got killed. The earthquake happened on the San Andreas Fault, which is the major fracture of the Earth's crust. It is trending northwestward through southern and northern California, US for 650 miles
(1,050 km) and passing seaward in the vicinity of San Francisco. Movement along this transform fault is of the strike-slip type and is characterized by occasional large earthquakes originating near the surface along the path of the fault. The disastrous San Francisco quake of 1906 and the less serious earthquake of 1989 were both caused by movement along the fault. According to the theory of plate tectonics, the San Andreas results from the abutment of two major plates of the Earth's crust, the Northern Pacific and the North American. Along the fault, the Northern Pacific plate is sliding past the North American plate in a northerly direction, at a relative movement of about 1 cm per year over geologic time, though the rate of movement has been 4 to 6 cm per year over the past century. Parts of the fault line moved as much as 6.4 m during the 1906 earthquake. At almost precisely 5:12 a.m., local time, a foreshock occurred with