San Francisco after the fire

With ASLA being in San Francisco this Fall, it seems like I am being bombarded with maps and images and places to see. As a compliment to some of the more predictable San Francisco info is this one: Strange Maps has a map of the burned area of San Francisco right after the fire of 1906. It is hard to imagine the way the city must have felt with block after block of rubble. Aside from the way a huge portion of a city was destroyed, it also reminds us of eerie parallels to the Katrina response:

The quake lasted 42 seconds, causing severe damage. Ruptured gas lines (and the scarcity of water due to ruptures in those lines) caused city-wide fires that eventually were responsible for up to 90% of the total destruction. Additionally, since the insurance companies didn’t refund the actual quake damage, many people set fire to their own homes.

It is hard to call that a rational response to the insurance situation, but it is also hard to describe it as irrational. And, as the current mortgage market shake-ups may remind us, the institutional side of property ownership and rapidly change the face of cities.