Lives Lost
“Following the earthquake there was a stillness—a stillness as of the tomb. A calm which to some people was almost as appalling as had been the mighty upheaval a few seconds previously.”
—Herbert Slater, 1908
The greatest loss of life in Santa Rosa occurred in the downtown center, where multi-story, un-reinforced brick buildings failed catastrophically. Particularly bad were the larger hotels like the Occidental and the Grand, which claimed multiple victims. Several second story boarding houses did not completely collapse, but left occupants trapped in a jumble of debris, and in some cases, they succumbed to spreading fires. Since many of the fatalities occurred in hotels or boarding houses, many victims were visitors, including a novelty actress and several traveling salesmen. The search for victims went on for days and the newspapers kept a running list of the dead and injured.
Though estimates range, at least 100 people perished in Santa Rosa as a result of the earthquake, likely more. It is this unfortunate statistic that gives Santa Rosa its place as the most devastated city in North America as the result of an earthquake—before or after 1906. Though San Francisco suffered many more total deaths, Santa Rosa’s casualty figure represents nearly 1.5% of its total population of approximately 7,000. San Francisco’s revised death estimate of over 3,000 represents less than 1% of the city’s 1906 population of 400,000.
