source - In the dawn hours of April 18, 1906, a sudden shock rattled San Francisco. Half a minute later, one of the largest quakes in California history pummeled the sleeping city awake.
"Modern geologists estimate that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured somewhere between magnitude 7.7 and 8.3. The shock waves and subsequent fires from the quake destroyed 28,000 buildings, killed at least 700 people and rendered more than half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless. [Lost Footage: Shocking Still Images from the Great San Francisco Quake's Aftermath]"