Wildman,

You've given me another reason to avoid San Francisco. Lovely place to visit with beautiful scenery, great food, interesting neighborhoods but I'd never want to live there. Probably couldn't afford it anyway.

Thought you'd like this book about the SF Earthquake (1906) Disaster, by Dan Kurzman

I particularly liked the stories about the fire department (my dad was a life-long firefighter, now retired) and the one person who could have led the recovery efforts, the fire chief, was one of the few actually killed by the earthquake.