A Crack in the Edge of the World (61 page)

“I studied geology in Oxford back in the 1960s; I wouldn't say that I'd forgotten it all but I'd certainly not been a geologist.”

Well, I really suppose so. I studied geology in Oxford back in the 1960s; I wouldn't say that I'd forgotten it all but I'd certainly not been a geologist. I did work in that field one year in Uganda (1967), and then essentially abandoned it and went off and worked as a foreign correspondent and did all sorts of other things. But after I wrote a book called
The Professor and the Madman
about seven or eight years ago, we were casting around wondering what to do next. My then editor, Larry Ashmead, said, “Was there anyone fascinating from the world of geology?”; oddly enough, Larry had been a geologist in his youth before he began working as a publisher. I remembered this chap William Smith, who was the creator of the first-ever geological map, and it did seem that his life was interesting. Not only had he created this map, but it had been plagiarized; he lost a lot of money, went bankrupt, and was sent to debtors' prison. His wife went mad. She turned into a raging nymphomaniac. The story had all the sort of ingredients that made
The Professor and the Madman
so fascinating.

It was agreed that I'd write that book, and it whetted my appetite for the geology I'd abandoned all those … I mean, four decades before.
The Map That Changed the World
, the story of William Smith, did rather well. I
thought, My word, geology is not, so far as the reading public is concerned, as dull as I had anticipated. So Larry and I had a discussion. I said, “Well you know, if geology is setting people on fire, then there's a story I'd love to tell.” This was the story of the Krakatoa eruption.
Krakatoa
followed
The Map That Changed the World
as the second geological book and also, by good fortune, did quite well. Then I thought, Well my gosh, let's go for broke, because there's another fantastically good story—the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake—which has all the elements that underpin the geology making Krakatoa so interesting. And not only is it a great story illustrating all the new geology (and how much it's changed since I studied it), but April 2006 is of course the one hundredth anniversary of the earthquake. All the curves coincided to make it seem a pretty decent idea to write a book about San Francisco.

So, yes, the three books are interconnected. I suppose they reflect my real enthusiasm and excitement and reconnection with a field of study that I had so long ago abandoned. And the one person who's particularly pleased by all of this is my old tutor Harold Reading at Oxford, because he knew I'd become a journalist and an author, and I think he was ever so slightly disappointed. He thought he had taught me well enough and that I would remain enthusiastic. When he heard I was writing about William Smith he was thrilled, and helped me so enormously that I dedicated the book to him. He liked
Krakatoa
and I very much hope that he is going to like the new book on San Francisco.

“Not only is it a great story illustrating all the new geology (and how much it's changed since I studied it), but April 2006 is of course the one hundredth anniversary of the earthquake.”

Simon Winchester at Meteor Crater, Arizona, on research for
A Crack in the Edge of the World
.

I'm sure he'll love it. One of the most fascinating things about your book is how
you place the earthquake in historical context. Tell us a little bit about how this particular earthquake, the 1906 earthquake, affected the future of San Francisco, the state of California, and (for that matter) the rest of the twentieth century in America?

“One might argue that Krakatoa triggered the first militant Islamic fundamentalist uprising in the world. A similar thing happened in California, not with Muslims but with fundamentalist Christians.”

A very complicated series of things seems to have happened. For instance, it drove all the artists out of San Francisco. This city had been famous for Mark Twain, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and all these luminaries and Bohemians. All these people suddenly scuttled off to the hills, and for a good twenty, thirty, or forty years San Francisco was a cultural wilderness. But that, of course, isn't one of the truly important things that happened. More importantly, people started to take earthquakes seriously and engineer their buildings in a stronger fashion. So the earthquake had an effect on the way the city was rebuilt and on preparations for the future, so that should another disaster happen they would be a little bit better able to cope with it. It had interesting sociological consequences too. One of the things that fascinated me, not least because it also seems to have happened in the aftermath of the Krakatoa eruption, was the effect it had on religion. After Krakatoa, you had a lot of Muslims saying this is clearly a sign from Allah. This volcano is a sign that he's angry. We must rise up and kill our rulers, the Dutch, and drive them out. And essentially they did. One might argue that Krakatoa triggered the first militant Islamic fundamentalist uprising in the world—a long, long time before the creation of Israel in 1948, and all those things. A similar thing happened in California, not with Muslims but with fundamentalist Christians. There was a church down in Los Angeles in a place called
Azusa Street. This was a fledgling church of people who called themselves Pentecostalists. They spoke in tongues, they waved their arms around, and did all sorts of crazy things—things that would appear to others as crazy. And that sort of direction came about because of what they saw as manifestations from God. He would send them signs. Miracles would be proclaimed. People would, as I mentioned, talk in tongues. On the week before the San Francisco earthquake this little church had a modest-sized meeting, a couple of people spoke in tongues, and it was all going along quite nicely. But the pastor stood up and said, “We are expecting a sign from the Lord.”

“The power of the Christian right and particularly the Pentecostal brand of Evangelicals has had a crucially important effect on contemporary American politics. This movement was triggered in large part by what was perceived as a sign from God on April 18, 1906.”

The ruins of St. Francis Church, 1906. It was later restored and still stands.

Three days later San Francisco, arguably the most sinful of all American cities and given over to drinking, whoring, gambling, and all those fun things that prevailed in the aftermath of the Gold Rush days, was destroyed by an earthquake. So the Pentecostalist pastor, not unjustifiably, said “Well, there's no doubt about it, this is the sign from God we've been waiting for.”And suddenly this little church was overrun with people. I mean tens of thousands of people came, they had to have overspill locations. It became like the Crystal Cathedral that you see in Los Angeles today; the comparison is not actually an unreasonable one to make, because out of the Pentecostalist Church that essentially began in 1906 came all the great American Evangelical figures, from Aimee Semple McPherson right through to Pat Robertson and Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. One might argue—and I don't want to make too much of this—that the power of the Christian right and particularly the Pentecostal brand of Evangelicals has had a crucially important
effect on contemporary American politics. This movement was triggered in large part by what was perceived as a sign from God on April 18, 1906. So the downstream effects of the San Francisco Earthquake are Pentecostalism, conservative Christianity, and certain political ramifications that are today being felt around the world.

It does underpin the overarching theory of this book, the Gaia theory, which holds that the entire world is an interconnected system where everything leads to everything else. To think that an earthquake in San Francisco had an effect on global politics today may be stretching credulity, but to a geologist it's not completely fanciful.

“The year 2004 was a very bad seismic year. Lots of people died, lots of places were destroyed. And 1906 was exactly the same—uncannily the same.”

Sounds reasonable. This past year we've seen a whole string of geological events, earthquakes in particular, from the tsunami in South Asia to the earthquake in Iran. What do you think we can learn from the year 1906 to help us understand these recent occurrences?

You know, that's one of the most interesting things. Here you had on Boxing Day—well, I'm an Englishman, December 26—2003 the devastating earthquake in Bam in Iran; on December 29, 2004, almost to the hour a year later, you had this devastating tsunami-causing earthquake off the north coast of Sumatra. Between those two bookends of calamity you had a year full of seismic happenings. Mount St. Helens was erupting, you had earthquakes in Peru, Chile, Taiwan, China, and Japan. I mean it was a very bad seismic year. Lots of people died, lots of places were destroyed. Such years happen infrequently, but they do happen.

And 1906 was exactly the same
uncannily the same. We tend to think of it as merely being the year in which the San Francisco event occurred, but it began with a terrible earthquake off the coasts of Colombia and Ecuador in which thousands died. There was also an earthquake in Saint Lucia and an earthquake in Taiwan that was very big—eight or nine thousand people died in that one. There was an earthquake in the Caucasus. Vesuvius was erupting. Then came the San Francisco Earthquake. As if that wasn't enough, the port of Valparaiso in Chile was leveled by an earthquake in August with twenty thousand people killed.

Why are certain years so seismically active? It's beginning to seem (ever since the theory of plate tectonics was put forward) that it's not unreasonable to suppose a sort of butterfly effect happens. You get a terrible and devastating event on a plate up in the northern hemisphere, let's say in Alaska; the event triggers a sort of cascade of events all around the world. Something can happen in Sumatra, and immediately after the Sumatran event 144 earthquakes occur on exactly the opposite side of the world in northern Alaska. The world is sort of like a big brass bell; if you hit it
really
hard the whole thing vibrates, and on the far side of the world other devastating, seemingly unconnected events can happen. It seems to have occurred in 2004. It certainly seems to have occurred in 1906, and scientists are now fascinated with the idea of this seismic butterfly effect.

When Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in late August 2005, much of the debate in the aftermath centered on the inadequate public response by local and federal authorities. In a
New York Times
op-ed column a week after the hurricane struck, Simon Winchester remarked on the comparative response in San Francisco in April 1906
.

“In tone and tempo, residents, government institutions, and the nation as a whole responded to the earthquake that brought San Francisco to its knees a century ago in a manner that was well-nigh impeccable.”

T
HE LAST TIME
a great American city was destroyed by a violent caprice of nature, the response was shockingly different from what we have seen in New Orleans. In tone and tempo, residents, government institutions, and the nation as a whole responded to the earthquake that brought San Francisco to its knees a century ago in a manner that was well-nigh impeccable, something from which the country was long able to derive a considerable measure of pride.