Joanna L. Dyl

In Seismic City Joanna Dyl makes the important point that so-called “natural disasters” are not created by an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, or other such event alone. Instead, they become disasters due to interaction between the man-made environment and the natural world. In the case of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, it was the hasty construction of a wooden city on unstable land fill in areas reclaimed from the bay that burned because fires fueled by broken gas lines transformed a natural event into a cataclysmic disaster that claimed the lives of 3,000 humans. This is a well-argued, convincing piece of historical research. In addition to the historiographical argument, Dyl describes the growth of San Francisco, its reaction to the earthquake, it’s tragic toll, the different plans and rival visions for rebuilding, and finally the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition that marked the recovery of the city.… (més)