Today, it is part one of the Great San Francisco disasters of 1906. We talk about the history of San Francisco, how California became a state, immigration and birthright with the United States v Wong Kim Ark, and finally, the 42 seconds of terror as a 7.9 magnitude earthquake jolted the city awake at 5:12 am on April 18, 1906. That was bad, but the fires started almost immediately - we'll cover those next week!
Today, it is part one of the Great San Francisco disasters of 1906. We talk about the history of San Francisco, how California became a state, immigration and birthright with the United States v Wong Kim Ark, and finally, the 42 seconds of terror as a 7.9 magnitude earthquake jolted the city awake at 5:12 am on April 18, 1906.
That was bad, but the fires started almost immediately - we'll cover those next week!
An Oral History of "We Built This City," the Worst Song of All Time | GQ
Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts
Haunted by Houses: On the California Victorian in Fiction | Los Angeles Review of Books
https://encyclopedia.densho.org/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark/
The Longest Minute -
https://www.amazon.com/Longest-Minute-Great-Francisco-Earthquake-ebook/dp/B09Y465G8X
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your country and we are off to a relatively
late recording Taylor's yawning I'm in the dark 7 o'clock and I'm yawning we
are mixing it up uh this time but we're here and we are doomed to fail yet again
the podcast would tailor and fars myself I call myself fars and a third person covering random topics that we find
interesting and sometimes there's a common theme and most of the time there isn't is that a fair enough summarization that's perfect tell your
friends tell your friends uh and I think given the fact that we
kind of went off script with who goes first two times ago or last time I think
it's you this time right Taylor yes I go first sweet do you wantan to am I gonna be able to guess or what how you GNA do
this Oh I hav't thought of well okay I have a this is going to be in two parts
okay I'm gonna have you guess I will have you guess this is in two parts um because it's two disasters right after
each other Hiroshima and Nagasaki no but we should do that sometime um no it's in
the same place and one thing is because of tectonic
plates shifting and the other thing is just like the aftermath San Francisco yes thank you I guess that was I gave up
that was easy okay um so because this is such a long story and
so much happened in the um you know with the the earthquake and then the fire I
um I'm going to do it in two parts I'm going to start with the earthquake a little bit of the history of San Francisco and California um but you know
what this reminded me of that I I just think is like so freaking funny you know that song the song We Built This City
yeah on rock and roll so there's a GQ article um called an oral history of we
built this city the worst song of all time and it's so funny I will link to it but it's like the people who made it are
like everyone shut up I can't believe it's it's still on the radio like we're really excited because we made a lot of
money but like oh my God we're so embarrassed and then like one guy's like that was the best song on that album how can I be the worst song ever and like
it's just everyone's mad like everyone was like fighting when they're making it the guy who does the DJ part
you know where he's like the city that never sleeps the city that rocks he is so embarrassed he like he's like he did
one take and then threw his headphones and he was like [ __ ] you guys like everyone was just so mad and it's a really hilarious read so I will link to
that because I love I love when bands like hate each other like the Oasis Brothers the fact that they like
literally get into like fist fights every time they record is like the funniest thing to me totally um that's
like I like that's the only San Francisco song I know but that was just so funny um so and
lest anyone think that I think California is perfect and has no blemishes upon her history I'm going to
talk a little bit about how California became a state um and how it grew and then address the historical precedent of
the Supreme Court case the United States States versus Wong King Kim Arc and then
we'll talk about what was happening right up into the earthquake in 1906 cool wait so is this a two-part Series
yeah oh okay cool all right yeah and then we'll do the fire next week sweet when when you said it's in two parts I
thought you're I thought you meant the way I do with like act one act two l two okay I meant literally two times
miniseries yeah it's a miniseries um so have you been to San
Francisco uh yeah I've been a few times yeah I've never really been I went to Oakland the other like a month ago but I
never I've never I don't think I've ever like stepped foot in San Francisco I've been to like the airport you know the
the only time no I've only had my car broken in twice once was in college and the other time was when we were working
at our last company together and I they told me I had to go to San Francisco for some conference and I parked across in
like the major Park what it's called but my car got broken into it was awful oh
I'm sorry you drove there long D well it was from La yeah no I know but still
yeah it's it's yeah right okay yeah because California is huge I know you didn't drive from Texas Jesus it take you like seven days that' be terrible um
no don't do that um so before the arrival of the Europeans San Francisco
area was a home of the olone tribe um they lived there for thousands of years
they had you know many different languages different little um groups and
they were mostly hunter gatherers but they did have some um a little bit of
like gu like small gardens they didn't have like huge Fields but they had like a little bit of Agriculture so they
lived there you know for thousands of years until Europeans came um in and the
people that came to that part of California were the Spanish because that was part of um of the Spanish colonies
on the United States and in 1776 the Spanish explorers established a mission
called I apologize right now to my in-laws and every Hispanic person um when I say this it's the Presidio of San
Francisco wait and the mission of San Francisco de AIS known as Mission Dolores so maybe that wasn't that too
bad Mission Dolores is what it was called so it was like a local Mission and it was meant to um convert the
alones into Christians of course that's that was their goal um yeah let's make
every question v um so Mexico gained control of California the state like our
area in 1821 um once after it won independence from Spain which we've talked about so Mexico becomes its own
country California is part of that country of Mexico um and what they would
wait hold on California was part of Mexico yeah it was like all like California was part of Mexico and like
that part of Texas like then then enter the Mexican-American war in 1846 to 1848
where um the United States like took over Canada and then like later got
Texas after Canada not Canada I'm so sorry California
Jes people we're not historians see how pink my face is I feel like I got sunburnt doing our cookie you're flush
and I felt like it was like you might be drinking something I'm not I'm drinking tea but I think I got a little sunburn today um selling
cookies outside the Walmart so I just feel a little pink cute it's cute and have I have the zoom glow on it's like
you have blush on I think that's what women call it yeah it is great job um so
okay I Ed to California so now California is now part of the United States um and they we became part of the
United States because of the Mexican American War um and then there was a ceasefire agreed in January
1847 so the Mexican American War ended
with the Treaty of Guadalupe hiago in 1848 and the treaty had Mexico
seated President Day California Arizona New Mexico Texas and parts of Nevada Utah Colorado and Wyoming so it was a
huge land big yet after that one yeah big yet after that it's like when you do like double War playing war with cards
and you get like a king and an ace
um and so that's happening in and they're trying to figure out what um
like how to do it like you can't just like it doesn't happen overnight they're trying to figure out the different treaties and in the meantime um so that
treaty was signed in 1848 so possibly right before it was signed or possibly
right after it was signed um there was gold found in a place called suter's Mill in the Sierra Nevada Foothills near
um Coloma California that that are where it is it is now and and when they found the gold and then people rushed that's
the Gold Rush which I feel like we should talk about I'm sure it has like fun stories in it but essentially that's when the population of California really
started to Boom because of a prospect of gold um and the people who were digging
for gold do you remember what they're called gold diggers well no uh 49ers oh
that's a person digging gold and I didn't I was like why is that like why are they call that um and it's just because they mostly came in 1849 oh well
there you go make sense like when did you come here 49 you know for the gold so um by this time you know so it's 1849
tons of people are moving to California from the other parts of the US for gold for opportunity for all the things um
and then California officially became a state in 1850 so on September 9th 1850
president Millard Filmore um signed resolution to get uh California in it
was the 31st state in the United States so so that was also part of the 1850
Compromise because there was still um this is pre- Civil War and they were trying to figure out how they can add
new states and which states will allow enslave people which states won't so California was admitted as a free state
but there was still a pretty terrible and strict fugitive slave law that if you ran away from being enslaved to
California they would send you back which California would send you back yeah like it wasn't a safe place like I
think I think and then who was it free for um you couldn't like start
new you know you couldn't like have slaves there but you also like it also
wasn't a safe place for them like I think like New York might have been or like some of the other like Northern places were like a safe place that you
could essentially like run away to but you couldn't run away to California you could back um
so that's where we are we are in California and um there's like tension
over over that but we are our own State um and there is going to be like some
pretty big like racial tension things happening in California in the United States then and now and always um but in
California there was specifically a ton of racism towards Chinese people um
obviously like this sounds really stupid when I say it out loud but I feel like it's much easier to get to
this is not dumb like it's easy to get to the West Coast from China like it's harder to get to New York you know like
so people were coming from China right like if if you have a boat I feel like that's why there's more
people you have a boat you think that it's easier to get across the Pacific
Ocean yeah then get to New York because you'd have to go down the cape the bottom okay okay okay fine in in that
context it is easier to get there than it is yeah okay yeah I'm not saying like now
but I'm saying like then like that's why there was like imation from Asia and more on the west coast I don't know if
that's true I'm sorry okay but but there's a huge increase of um of Chinese
immigration in the 1850s and 1860s so there is a guy who was the mayor of San
Francisco until 1902 he was also a US senator named J named James D faen and
um he campaigned under the slogan keep California White because he wanted to stop immigration he
has some real bad posters that show like a hand from the East trying to grab
California so it's not great um so that there's a lot of tension kind of happening there um meanwhile literally
like all technology was invented like right there in San Francisco so um the Chinese immigrants
were were you know a ton of them worked on like the Transcontinental Railroad um
they did a bunch of um a lot of manual labor they had their own like community in San Francisco and in other places
like now they're a Chinatown in like most big cities you know um and a lot of that was because they were like isolated they were the other it's an easy to see
other you know like you can people would you know um you know obviously treat
them differently and it got real bad in 1882 was the first Chinese Exclusion Act
so you could no longer immigrate to the United States from China they blocked um people coming from China at all and and
um then there was an act that there a couple more acts that kept renewing the exclusion act so that it was actually um
law until like the 19 until 1943 you couldn't immigrate to the United States from China um without like special
circumstances or whatever um and oh my gosh did you take a citizenship law
class when you were in law school no I took I mean I I'm naturalized I was naturalized so I have done the process
it's confusing as [ __ ] reading this Wikipedia page about it so please wait which what what's confusing about it the
well like there's like a lot no no no not the test but like the law around citizenship is like very complicated um
but one of the things that came up especially specifically in San Francisco during this time is the 14th Amendment
do you know what that one is also amendments aren't just like a sentence they're like very long complicated but
the the 13th amendment was um for to to repeal slavery and then the 14th was
about citizenship because this is simplifying it but like all of a sudden
you have freed a huge huge population of people and before they had no rights and
they like were not even considered American so you have to be like they are now US citizens and they had to figure
out like why and how they would be able to like do that you know so that's what
thought that but yeah makes sense so um one of the things in the 14th Amendment
is that if you are born on American soil you are u a US citizen so I think we've
heard that like a bunch always so um there is a man named Wong Kim Ark and he
is um born around 1873 in San Francisco
his his parents are Wong C ping and Lee way they immigrated from China but they weren't US citizens but they lived in in
San Francisco they had a business um and they were like it was before the Chinese Exclusion Act they were able to live in
California and and have their business and like you know contribute to the community all the things like they lived there um but then they decided to move
back to China so his parents moved back to China and Wong would visit them and he visited them a couple times he
actually got married to a woman in China and they had a couple kids but he couldn't bring them to the United States
because of the Chinese Exclusion Act so he would like visit like visit them and
and was trying to figure out how to get them into the United States um so November 1894 Wong goes to um to China
to visit his family and he stays there for a body year and he comes back in August 1895 and he's a US citizen he has
a US passport um he's you know was born here all the things um and they were like nah they decided that they didn't
want to let him back in uh and they kept him this is like sounds [ __ ] terrible on a boat in like the San Francisco port
for 5 months like while they were trying to figure out what to do with him was that that would have been Federal
for federal right like I think so well it ended up it was like a state thing first and ended up going to the Supreme
Court the US Supreme Court um to to figure out like what to do and he was
ended up being allowed um to stay and it is the law of X so J SS o l i which
means right of the soil which is like the what had what they ended up putting in the um ended up clarifying in the
14th am Amendment meant if you're born on us soil you are a US citizen um they
were asked to the question that the the Supreme Court was essentially asked is
this is a quote kind of long but whether a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese desent who at time of
his birth are subjects to the Emperor of China but have a permanent domicile and residents the United States and are
there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China becomes at the time of his birth a
citizen of the United States um and so they voted that that was yes and he was allowed to stay and eventually he did
get his family um involved his son um fought in World War II um so they ended
up you know staying in America but that was like a big case to kind of clarify um one of the points of the 14th
Amendment you know what's interesting is um when I took my American citizenship they told me to like renounce quote
unquote my Iranian citizenship but it had no Ron like there was no legal document to that because in Iran it's um
it's not like that concept you just articulated which is like you're born here CU I wasn't born in Iran because to
them like my blood is Iranians my parents are Iranians like they don't give a [ __ ] what what citizenship paper
I have it's like you are blood Iranian so like they don't Ian that's that's literally why I don't go back and why
I'll never go back is because they could like oh this is your American passport go [ __ ] yourself like doesn't really
matter totally and I think I was trying to understand it like very quickly but
there are like other things that I like that like you know some countries are like you are the citizenship of like
your parents blood you know like you're not it's not because you're here that kind yeah America's actually like weirdly lacked about that compared to
like other places yeah I never I didn't never thought about it like what it means other places the only thing I ever
thought about is like if you're born somewhere else you can't be president I don't yeah yeah that was drilled to me
when I was young I was like I'm gonna be president one day I was just like a bushy tailed little little fars and yeah
it's not going to happen well when one of my kids becomes president either one I think could do it um I'm going to give
ghost tours of the White House so you're welcome to join me if you like um they're going to be at night and it's gonna be really fun and the Secret
Service is gonna hate hate it they they they they have my vote whichever one runs thank you thank you they'll be
great um so um but yeah so that's so that's what's happening there's like a lot of racial tension in in California
um in San Francisco the city is very divided on like different like class um areas but let's talk a little bit about
San Francisco which is where we know the earthquakes are obviously of course
everyone knows that um what I didn't know is that a lot of San Francisco at least um like the mission area and like
some other areas are built like on piles of trash because people would like
literally get so excited to come to California for gold that they would like Drive their boat into the beach and just
leave it you know and then they go and then they were so there was like trash and like buildings and stuff and they
were just kind of like piled up over you know many years and then they built a lot of the city on top of that trash
pile which like they do like there's like fill land and like New York City like where they extend the the shoreline
to be able to build on top of it but like a lot of San Francisco like wasn't even built on Bedrock so it was
definitely like not a super safe thing to do in a place has earthquakes when we were living in La didn't they have was
there a story in San Francisco about the this like luxury condo highrise like multi-million do condos and it was like
leaning and so like everybody had to like evacuate or something you remember this I don't remember but I believe that
yeah yeah it was it was something about how like it was it was not built on Bedrock because of that and it went okay
anyways it was yeah all sounds familiar yeah so like that's not safe you should you should get a stick and put it in
your yard and make sure that you hit Bedrock before you go to sleep tonight just so you know that you're safe yes
listeners in San Francisco just get out of your condo the
stor um but San Francisco because of the gold rush because of all these things it is now 1906 it is the biggest city west
of St Louis there are 400,000 people living in San Francisco in 1906 um it is
April specifically 1906 and it has been very dry of course like that's kind of
what you need to to have a disaster like a fire um and a lot of the buildings are made of wood San Francisco really hadn't
had like a huge devastating fire so places like Chicago when that was in the 1870s like they've already rebuilt U and
rebuilt better but San Francisco didn't really have that and when they did have things like there were many earthquakes
and like fires and all the things that happened but when those things happened um they would pass new laws that were
like now we have to build buildings better but they never retroactively went back and changed the older buildings
yeah you know um I mean cuz it I mean that's fair it sounds like a lot of work like no one wants to do it but um it
made it you know the Tinder Box that it ended up being during this time it's also and this is also another thing that
I feel is stupid that I didn't think about but like duh San Francisco has a bunch of
Hills because of the tonic plates like I get it now like that I don't know I
never thought like the hilliness of it is because of like the earthquakes have been in San Francisco for is it what is
it what is it the fact that there's several that converge there like what it's just the biggest one so the San Andrea's fault is the one that like goes
up California as we know and it is the Pacific and the North American plates
and the way that they are next to each other so like we learned this in the volcano series that like this is a
visual portion so I have two plates if I go um down with one and up with the
other then I can create like a a volcano and like mountain ranges like the Himalayas right you know cuz then I'm
going like making these huge cracks in the earth and like that that's huge or I can have two Tech kind plates that rub
against each other like I think I saw this before but this is the example that stuck with me in a book that I read
about volcanoes is um it's like when you are parallel parking and you're and you
hit the curb and you're like next to the curb and it kind of squeaks you know yeah that's what that's what the San Andreas fault is so it is just those two
kind of push against each other so it's kind of like it kind of like rumbles it's not going to make Himalayas anytime
soon but it is going to make like little Hills cuz it does all the rumbling and like kind of smushing as each other
makes sense I think I'm sorry well no the reason I bring it up is because it's like obvious like San Francisco is the
scariest part of the world I think when it comes to earthquakes or the Assumption of what's going to happen in San Francisco but it's like why is it so
because there's they're everywhere but it sounds like it's because it's like you said it's the biggest one and
probably one thing I heard is that the pressure there has been building up for a lot longer than anywhere else and
hasn't been actually really released yet and so that's probably one of the other reasons why it's the scariest because
when it does release it's going to release a [ __ ] ton of energy totally absolutely yeah that totally makes sense
um so but because of the hills and again like I always think about people who
live on like a hill in San Francisco and I'm like that sounds terrible like I live on a hill and it's exhausting like I when I when I walk to the bottom after
walk back up I'm like it's not even that big of a hell you drive up you drive up the hill in s Francisco no you no I know
I go for walks okay okay fine fine okay um but I saying you're not walking down
to the the bottom of the hill for the market I know that sounds terrible yeah what I'm saying that sounds awful yeah
um so it's also then hard to get water to
those places because of the pressure and like going like up pressure going up a hill and like all of this so just like
keep that in mind it's hard to get water to different places in San Francisco everything's made of wood and it has been very dry um but nevertheless the
fire department is really [ __ ] great it is as good as it can be for this time
in history so it is they have over 500 full-time firefighters so it's not
volunteers it's like people who it's their job they have um like stations all
over the city they don't it's all hor drawn carriages right now but you know they are you know they're
ready for for everything the fire chief his name was Dennis T Sullivan he was 53
years old and he was very proud of what he had done which totally is absolutely makes sense because like they they work
really really hard um the fire chief from Denver Colorado happened to be in town on this night so this is the night
of April 17th 1906 and he was like the buildings here are all wood this place
is going to like unbelievably catch on fire but then he met with Chief Sullivan and he was like no actually everything's
gonna be fine because you guys are hnch firefighters like this is the best it can possibly be so
um they the fire department had of course like been at a fire the night before um and they had there's it's the
same thing that we heard in like Chicago like you know a building full of paper is going to catch on fire you know
there's just there's so much Reliance on fire there's actually um parts of San Francisco had been fitted with
electricity so um there were like some like electric street lamps and a lot of businesses had electricity but most
residential houses still had just like gas for their lighting if they did like convert a gas powered home to
electricity they would like this sound so unbelievably unsafe but they would just like instead of putting the wires
in the walls they would just like hang the wires along the top of the a top of the wall you know so like plenty of
opportunity for [ __ ] to catch on fire you know I kind of get it yeah so okay it's April
17th the night before and this is like when you think the night before a
disaster you just remember everything from it you know like you would never remember that night until the disaster
happens the next day and then you'll like never forget what happened during that night does that make sense like yeah like I remember like September 10th
so the day before September 11th it rained a ton I remember what I was wearing I remember I went to yeah I was
it was pouring rain and like I was super poor cuz I was in college I didn't have any money and I was wearing these like bell bottom jeans and these like huge
shoes that I got in Germany and like but they were like soaked to my knees and I had um bought a bunch of bagels at our
Bagels store had a 25 cent Bagels Monday nights so I bought a bunch of them I had them in my backpack it was raining so
hard I usually walked like a mile and a half to my apartment but I couldn't do it because it was so raining so hard so I took the train I remember sitting on
the train and like a little girl told me she like she liked my backpack I remember all that happening I went to my
house I cut all the bagels in half put them all in the freezer and wrote September 10th on all of them and then
you know then I remember hanging my jeans in the back of my chair because they were wet I went on like a and was
mad because of boy didn't message me like everything um because the next day was September 11th and then then I
remember that you know what I mean you're like that's the that's the last time that I felt that's the last time I
was before this event in my life you know right amount of details in intense
like you remembered a lot of details well I have a good memory but
also like I just feel like it just it's just like that's that was like the last time I was the person who hadn't been
through that you know yeah and makes someone else so there's a lot of stories um of the night before the earthquake of
people being like you know I did this and it felt normal or like kids being like Oh I went to my friend's house and
I came home and I went to sleep and you just like remember those things um it was a big Opera night in San Francisco
there there were um there was a show uh Opera of Carmen and everybody loved it
and so there were a lot of people like out doing like fancy things the night before San Francisco also has a I'm sure
it's probably this like a all big cities but there's a ton of hotels and people who would like live in like rented rooms
and just kind of like you know uh stay in place for a short amount of time and then go somewhere else so there's a ton
of that happening and so it was a very very nice night actually a couple I
think a couple days before this Mount vus had erupted um and people in the Italian section of San Francisco were
raising money to send back to Italy to help people um and so everything was normal
except some horses started to act weird because they always know yeah so people
were like especially in the middle of the night people were like I don't know my horse is like kind of going crazy and I don't really know why um and I have a
bunch of like anecdotal stories about the earthquake from the book that I'm reading it's called the longest minute so I'll put that in in the notes as well
but the earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18th 1906 the epicenter was
actually in the water so like they couldn't they didn't know where it was for a while but like it happened in in
the water and there's a story of a dude who was swimming and he like he was like things are weird like he was like going
for his like morning swim and he tried to go to the beach and like put his shoes on and he couldn't he kept like falling over because he was like what is
happening you know like it was just like it's confusing have you you felt earthquakes when you were here right oh
yeah yeah and it's just confusing it's very confusing your equilibrium is off in a way that you your brain cannot
comprehend also what a [ __ ] psychopath like can you imagine waking up in the morning at 5 o'l in the
morning going to an empty Beach and swimming into the middle of the what a lunatic that guy is 100% we were just
talking last night like my husband wants like an ice plunge and I'm like you're insane person um but yes those fun ju ju
I I do support this so I did it consecutively for 3 days and then I realized I'm like I'm not strong enough
to keep doing this but I really it really did feel amazing it really felt like a new thing in her body was like
unlocking and a new endorphin rush was happening so I support what I think that that's what I think that guy was trying to do that guy was nuts 5 am Taylor 5 a
what a scary time to go to to go to San Francisco Bay I think I think maybe in general
sling go B it sounds terrifying so it's a bad idea but he was like but anyway
that's that's what he remembered so the earthquake lasted 42 seconds which is really long you know some people were
like if felt like you know a day like just 42 seconds it was a 7.9 on the RoR scale um which is I mean I it's like
there another scale on the other scale it's just like extreme you know like crazy director Cale actually wasn't
invented until a couple decades later but in retrospect it was a 7.9 yeah it
just use huge um it was felt all the way down in Los Angeles over in Nevada which makes sense it's right next door um the
Winchester Mystery House lost some of its floors as we talked about before um
and they were never rebuilt which is why they have staircases that go to Nowhere um we talked about that before um so a
few earthquake reminders for myself and you in case there's ever an earthquake in Texas um and everyone else so these
are the ones I have so far I'll probably have more one of them is always put put shoes under your bed because the glass
in your house is going to fall and break so you need to be able to like leave your home and not cut your feet so you
should have shoes under your bed to be able to do that you also need a crowbar to get out of your room potentially and
out of your house because like the whole house can shift and you can't open doors anymore so get a crowbar and then also
as soon as the earthquake is done as much as you can just like fill every like fill your bath up with water fill
every every pot with water cuz you just like don't know when what might happen with the water it definitely be cut off like ASAP so those my three things so
far um do you have a crowbar under your bed I don't but I should get one yeah
you really really should I don't have shes under my bed either but I I know that I need to do that so earthquakes
again they're super loud it's the buildings it's the Earth it's like confusing and crazy I'll talk about the
death toll from this from both disasters next week but um a lot of people died in
their beds from their chimneys falling on them um like a lot of people died that way um because a lot most houses
had like a brick chimney and those were like the first things to fall so a lot of people died that way a lot of people
died and you don't know like we'll never know what happened to them you know like there's like people heard screaming and
rubble and then screaming stopped so you don't know what happened to that person you know so so many people who just like
probably woke up and were like everything shaking what's going on and then they were dead or they were trapped for days and like we'll never know like
it's like really like horrible things and a lot of the people that were in like hotels some of them were like just
in town for something and they no one knew who they were you know so there
were just like a lot of like unaccounted for like dead bodies and and things like that the people were just like you didn't have like identification all of
that happened too so a lot of people a ton of people died in the initial earthquake itself um one of the things
that one of the stories that I heard is just so [ __ ] terrible so a couple people got caught in Murphy Beds you
know those beds that like go down God and so like some of them died and some of them were you know the friend like
they would be visiting someone be in the Murphy bed and then be like the the the friends would be like oh my God we have to go check on our guests you know and
like they would get them out and they were like nearly suffocating um the one the one story that I heard that's absolutely the worst is a man and his
wife they're both in their 60s and as soon as the um earthquake started the
man sat up and then the Murphy bed closed and broke his neck oh my God and
the and when the people who lived in the house went to go see them they found them the wife was alive and like almost
suffocated that's horrific that's like being red into a wall like just like so
so terrible so a lot of people died that way and then also this actually kind of remind reminded me of the Kansas City um
Hiatt that you talked about because um the some of the hotels like all of a
sudden the fourth floor would be like on the first floor you know what I mean just like pancak the the floors below it
and um so people were drowning in the rubble that happened in there you know
cuz like then like the water mains were breaking and so people some people drowned you know some people were
crushed um you don't really know people some people like you know burned right away but you would hear screaming or you
know there's you know um you know someone would would yell like there's three people here trapped and then they were just like you just never heard from
them again you know like they you know died there together somehow um so it
is still really early in the morning and one thing that happens right away so the fire chief chief Sullivan he had been at
a big fire the night before and when he came home he didn't want to um wake up
his wife so he slept on the couch like in another room so when the earthquake happened he got out of got off the couch
and went to go into the bedroom to see if his wife was okay and when he opened the door he didn't realize that the um
there was no floor in the bedroom because the building next door had collapsed into the bedroom so he did one
step and he fell several stories down and he was caught and when they found him he was still alive but he was like
um getting like pummeled with like hot water from like a a pipe so he was like
getting those burns from the water and they got him out and then they were like he was like you have to have my wife you have to have my wife and they found her
and she was okay her bed had fallen two stories and she was just like wrapped in her bed and actually ended up being fine
which is crazy um so now people are like what do
we what are like people are trying to like figure out what to do everyone's standing outside and now it's quiet you
know people are just like confused a lot of people are like in different states of undress because they were sleeping
you know so some people like they only have like a nigon and some people like only have like one or two things and you
know they're trying to find children so there's people like crying and trying looking around and they you know people
are like sitting in the park together but they're all like just everybody is confused um there's like Rubble
everywhere and then um almost immediately that's when the fires start um because of all sorts of different
reasons so we will talk about the fire that actually destroyed most of San
Francisco um next time so can I tell you that I so do you remember you had a
friend who had a friend who had an apartment that he was subleasing in Los F and we had never met before but we
knew we're going to start work at the same time together and so you I was like I don't know where to live you were going to air a BNB a place but you
introduced me to this guy and I ended up subleasing his apartment and that was the first time I experienced an
earthquake where I don't remember what time it was but it was early I think it
was like 2 3:00 in the morning or something something along those lines and I just remember like the bed shape
and kind of moving quivering towards the center of the room and you wake up and you're
like your brain can in process what's happening you remember that earthquake
that would have been in 2013 do you remember that one you were you were in an Airbnb it happened that I wasn the for
the first month it was it during that month I think it was probably during that month like February March I don't
remember I remember like I remember one in in La were like one and I were watching TV and like we like looked at
each other and we were like what's happening cuz it's just like loud and confusing there I felt a couple like
little ones here out in out in Joshua Tree but um but yeah but it's confusing
and a lot of people in San Francisco like some people went back to bed you know because they like kind of woke them up or whatever and they were confused
and if their house wasn't literally falling on them you know they just like yeah like that's thing like earthquakes
have like a weirdly scary effect to me because okay like I lived in Florida
lived in Texas like I've had been through hurricane season and through
tornadoes but earthquakes like so super surreal like in the so another like
memory that someone had from San Francisco is like you know you're watching the road roll like a wave you
know like that's you're like that's not that's not supposed to happen it's the fact that it can happen
anytime there's like no warnings ever no matter how advanced science gets there's
never going to be warnings for it it's just okay so like hurricane season in Miami I was like you you knew a
hurricane was coming in in and you could like decide for yourself like how big of a deal is this am I going Evac am I not
tornadoes they're not really that horrible anyways and if they are you just go into the bathroom and whatever
like an earthquake can like bring down the entire building on your head and I don't know it's just so scary like one
of the when I left when I left California I actually had a tangible thought like I at least I don't have to think about that anymore because they
always told us in La they always told us remember this like the big one's coming the big one's coming in oh yeah they all
those signs I have like a like a first aid kit that like has a bunch of stuff in it and like we're supposed to have a
lot of extra water and like things like that shoes and Crow bars remember yeah because it's also going to cut you off
from like everything and so like in San Francisco immediately after it happened all communication was cut off cuz all of
the like lines broke so that's going to be a problem coming up in the fire because they can't tell everybody you
should have like all your identification like photo copy and like the cars and everything else and like have jugs of
water everywhere and I don't know like it's scar I mean you're less at risk in
J Joshua Tree than than in San Francisco obviously but still yeah and I feel like
but yeah like if you the idea of a building Falling Down is so scary you know if you're like
those things and like that it also okay so it also some of the buildings that have been destroyed in San
Francisco during this earthquake are ones that were earthquake proof you know and you're like that's not a [ __ ] thing dude you know so like one of the
um the nicest hotel in town was the Palace Hotel at this time and there were
PE it it did not collapse and so like there were a lot of rich people in the lobby like eating rolls and drinking coffee and being like what do we do
trying to figure it out but um I remember when I worked at a hedge
fund in New York I was on the 37th floor of a building and we would have I'm sure I've told you this before but we would have like a fire drw like once a quarter
with the fire people and they'd be like okay if there's a fire you go to the 34th floor because that one's fireproof
and I was like you go [ __ ] yourself I'm going outside like what are you talking about going to the 34th FL because it's
like allegedly fireproof no I'm going outside I'm walking away fireproof
Unsinkable like these are words that you hear you're like yeah
have my own personal fire extinguisher and run out of this building like so yeah um wild crazy yeah so things are
confusing things are scary and about to catch on fire I also predicted this whenever you were doing the Chicago Fire
I was like it's got to be the San Francisco Fire so course I was G have to do it eventually yeah of course you're gonna have to do it um The Daily the New
York Times podcast did an episode recently and you like kind of reminded me of it because you talked about China in San Francisco because they talked
about how like the government in China is like making it so so unal palatable for people that there's a guy who like
got into an argument with the government there because they destroyed his business whatever a bunch of stuff happened and he had to he couldn't come
to the United States directly he had nowhere to go but he was like the United States is the only place I can go so like he but you can't go directly there
so what he had to do was to fly to Ecuador with his daughter and then walk from Ecuador through Texas like which I
don't even know how far that is but it like he knew he was going to get arrested like that was game he was going to do it he knew was happening anyways
it was um it's long story short they shipped him to San Francisco while he's pending court trials and all that stuff
but anyways um remind me of that but yeah um aside
yeah so yeah that's it for now um I'm
looking forward to hearing the rest of this do we have anything we need to read out or I do I do I have something fun um
so my friend Morgan who I told you I mentioned that she had just started listening she's really excited and um
she I think she listened to all of them she's like I just fish finished episode one like she's a champ she Listen to Like Us constantly thanks Moran but she
um used to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York I forgot that she had done you got Eng there I got a
engage of the MoMA but close enough um so she think you for remembering that um
so some fun things that happened while she worked at the Met this is like in reference to the mon like art heists um
but she said that The Thomas Crown Affair the interior in The Thomas Crown
Affair where they tell you that at the Met Museum they're actually in the New York Public Library because the museum director thought that it would give
thieves ideas on how to steal things out of the museum and I was like you think that's true and she was like no no one's
watching Thomas Crown and being like I'm gonna do that you know like I'm wouldn't put it past very few people are
following through on their art Heist you know um and she also said that one time
someone had emailed in in to an inbox that she was monitoring and they had
some questions because they're writing a heist book and she wasn't allowed to answer them which is hilarious they're worried about it um and then she said
actually most of the frames at the Met are um actually just like pieces of art
themselves like thect talked about how like some people have like been just got in trouble for like stealing the frame
of a painting but um but that was cool and then she also had one more art history thing that was fun um is that
ancient Egyptians used egg based paints as well so we talked about that that's what uh Leo used on the um the last
supper and there's a problem because birds can still smell the egg and they're pecking away at the
walls wait the walls of what like of these like buildings in the Egypt where they had used the egg paint oh on the
outsides okay I thought you meant like the paintings I like why are they why are there birds in the art gallery um so I think it's like outside
but that's fun um and I I was so jealous that she worked with the met so that's super cool that a really cool job that
was a really really cool job I've been there I've been there once I've never done New York right and I should I
should at some point yeah I'll take you there my uh when I
was little I loved the book from the mixed up files of Mrs Basil frankwell I have it here it's like about um his
brother and sister who go on a field trip to the met and they stay there they like hide and they sleep in like the nice like the big Grand and bedrooms at
night and um they find like a missing statue and like it's just like really fun and ADV vess and I always loved that
book so much so I was so excited when I finally got to go we did that when we were kids when we were kids like um ele
uh I guess yeah it would been elementary schools in Dallas we have a Dallas Science Museum that's where the Omni
thing in it like it's it's really cool I really love it they have like dinosaur stuff there and they have they'll have
kids spend the night like once a year and I did it in Chicago it was so fun fun that was like the probably my best
chop in memory I did it in the Natural History Museum or the Museum of Natural History
in Chicago and um that'd be incredible I I can't imagine how like
they they turned off the lights and Le was flashlights and let us just go play and then we would like we like turn a
corner they'd be like a mummy and we would like all scream and they had like something where they were like pretending there was a ghost and just like all this stuff and I'm like I can't
believe I do that that was so fun God so cool ow man
to go back to elementary school um so okay so next week we're going to cover the actual fire itself but so far we're
through the through the conception of California through its
acquisition and now history yeah and it's so it's about let's say it's about
5 520 so it's been am on April 18th 1906
you're outside the earthquake just happened you've been sitting outside for like five minutes you're super confused
um and then you started to see smoke you're in your night gown wearing
your you're in your 0 wearing like that Nana hat that's like big and Cone like in the old days you're holding like the
one thing that you thought to bring like the guy who's actually this the main singer in the Opera kmen at that night
he had a signed picture of Teddy Roosevelt in his hotel room and that's what he saved which S I say that too um
so everyone's outside holding their one thing and like super confused well join us next week while we when we
cover the actual fire of San Francisco looking forward to it um sweet tayor we
go ahead and cut us off and I'll see you in 20 minutes SL 3 days
[Music]