In the early 1900's, San Francisco stood as a proud and flourishing symbol of America's recent conquest of the once-wild West. But on April 18th, 1906, the city would experience an awesome reminder of the uncontrollable forces lying dormant just beneath the splendors of its cosmopolitan surface. This earthquake measured a ground-wrenching 8.3 on the Richter scale, resulting in the worst catastrophe suffered by a North American city in the 20th century.
The film begins with the sudden onset of the massive quake itself, where portions of the earth's crust were displaced as much as 21 feet. The colossal firestorms that raced through the city during the next days would continue the almost complete destruction of what had been until then western America's largest metropolis. Captured in rare, newly restored movie footage from the period and the personal accounts of eyewitnesses, The Great San Francisco Earthquake is a breathtaking record of nature's unimaginable might--and of the survivors' equally impressive determination to rebuild their city and their lives.