Oh dear.

Ah yes, poor professor Agassiz. "The headforemost scientist in the US...A fine fellow in the abstract, but no good in the concrete." ;)

Great photo! Never seen this one!

I watched an interesting program on the history channel on this. It covered the destruction involved, the recovery, and what will happen to SF when (not if, mind you, but when) the next one hits. I guess the biggest threat isn't the San Andreas fault, but the Hayward fault.

Currently, and I was unaware of this, SF is spending tons of money to retofit bridges and historical buildings to be more earthquake safe. It was rather impressive seeing what engineers had come up with in strengthening the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge.

there is, however, no way that it is possible to make all existing structures safe. When the next one hits of that magnitude, the number put up for rebuilding was 300 billion dollars. I don't know who made the estimate or how accurate it is, but that's a big number.