City by the Bay: San Francisco in Art and Literature, edited by Alexandra Chappell

On Wednesday morning at a quarter past five came the earthquake. A minute later the flames were leaping upward. In a dozen different quarters south of Market Street, in the working-class ghetto, and in the factories, fires started. There was no opposing the flames. There was no organization, no communication. All the cunning adjustments of a twentieth century city had been smashed by the earthquake. The streets were humped into ridges and depressions, and piled with the debris of fallen walls. The steel rails were twisted into perpendicular and horizontal angles. The telephone and telegraph systems were disrupted. And the great water-mains had burst. All the shrewd contrivances and safeguards of man had been thrown out of gear by thirty seconds’ twitching of the earth-crust.
Jack London, The Story of an Eye-Witness

That’s from City by the Bay: San Francisco in Art and Literature, edited by Alexandra Chappell, a little book published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was a quick and easy read. The above passage is the only one that jumped out at me. It describes the great earthquake and fire of 1906, but really talks about the hubris of man shaken and destroyed by the forces of nature. Like the Titanic. Like Moby-Dick.