A first - no 1906 survivor at quake ceremony
Kevin Fagan | San Francisco Chronicle
Updated 4:48 pm, Thursday, April 18, 2013
The quirky annual ceremony that compels hordes of folks to dress up in early 20th century duds to remember the 1906 earthquake and fire was rudely shoved into the 21st century Thursday - making a little history of its own along the way.The shoving started when celebrators showed up before dawn at Third and Market streets in San Francisco to gather around Lotta's Fountain, as celebrators have on every April 18 since 1906 to mark the moment of the city's destruction and honor its rebirth.
They couldn't get to the fountain. It was blocked off, along with several city blocks, by police inspecting a package across Market Street as a possible bomb.
So for the first time ever, the whole shebang decamped to a new location, two blocks away at Union Square, led by a tour guide decked out as goofy 19th century icon Emperor Norton.
They got there, vintage top hats and bustles and all - only to find that for the first time in memory, no survivor was on hand to mark the day.
The usual moment of silence fell onto the crowd of several hundred at the precise time the quake and fire began to ravage the city 107 years ago, 5:12 a.m. The usual blaring of sirens followed that, then the usual sing-along of "San Francisco," the city's official anthem.
But everyone agreed this was the weirdest 1906 celebration any could remember.
"We are doing today what San Franciscans do best - we are improvising," Supervisor London Breed said as the crowd roared approval.
The city's emergency services chief saw the kerfuffle as Exhibit A for pushing forward through time and adversity. Coming on the heels of the Boston Marathon bombings, said Anne Kronenberg, the morning's explosives scare - which is all it turned out to be - highlighted the 21st century's sad new reality of the possibility of terrorism.
"What happened here this morning can be summed up in one word: resilience," said Kronenberg, director of the Department of Emergency Management. "We were resilient in 1906, we were resilient in (the Loma Prieta quake of) 1989, and we will be resilient next time."
Survivor no-show
There are at least three known 1906 quake survivors, and one of them, 107-year-old Winnie Hook of San Jose, was scheduled to show up Thursday morning. But at the last minute, it was decided she was too fragile to travel to the city, said event organizer Lee Houskeeper.
Fellow survivor 107-year-old Bill Del Monte of Greenbrae rode in a pre-celebration parade Wednesday, but couldn't muster the energy for Thursday.
The prospect that last year's fete - when Hook was present to call the celebration "awesome" - may have been the final one to host a witness to a defining moment in Bay Area history hung in the air.
"It would be very sad if we don't see another living survivor here, but what happened here shows that this ceremony is going to continue," said Donna Ewald Huggins, a San Franciscan who has been coming to the observance for 38 years. "The can-do spirit of San Francisco is still there. It always will be."
Ten minutes after the final notes of "San Francisco" faded, Police Chief Greg Suhr announced that the suspicious package on Market Street turned out to be a suitcase full of clothes. That freed up him and a half dozen others to troop back to Lotta's Fountain to wedge the annual memorial wreath into its decorative upper reaches.
Lotta's Fountain was a meeting place for thousands of refugees in the days after the earthquake and fire. But so was Union Square - people were fed there en masse as the city took its first steps toward recovery - so organizers reckoned that with everyone able to stand around the signature Dewey Monument, it was an appropriate alternate to Lotta's.
The ceremonial spraying of gold paint onto the "fire hydrant that saved the Mission District" at 20th and Church streets started a tad later than usual, at 6:30 a.m. But by then nobody cared about being punctual.
The hydrant was the only one working well in the Mission as the '06 blazes marched across the city, and it's credited with saving the neighborhood.
'Nice city'
Jeff Pearl, whose grandfather Dr. Felix Pearl rode out the quake at the age of 9, helped spray the ancient stub of metal pipes and valves. The sun had just come up, and like everyone else he was flush with excitement from having pulled everything off despite the hiccups.
"Nice morning," he said, watching shadows climb halfway up the buildings across the street from the hydrant. "Nice city."
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-first-no-1906-survivor-at-quake-ceremony-4444979.phpCheck out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/californiadisasters/
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