The Ground Shook, a City Fell, and the Lessons Still Resound (San Francisco)

One hundred years ago next Tuesday, the San Andreas fault off San Francisco broke, setting off the earthquake that made clear the seismic perils facing West Coast cities.

The scientific repercussions continue, as researchers still look to data from the 1906 earthquake — which released 30 times as much energy as the 1989 Loma Prieta quake — to prepare for the next great one.

Last month, results of two years of computer simulations recreating the ground shaking experienced in 1906 were presented by scientists from the United States Geological Survey; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the URS Corporation, an engineering company. That could help indicate areas where the reinforcement of buildings should be a priority.

Next week, at a scientific conference commemorating the anniversary, another study is to take the new shaking findings and estimate what the 1906 quake would wreak on the San Francisco Bay area in 2006. The toll, the researchers conclude, would include several thousand dead, several hundred thousand homeless and more than $100 billion in damage.