A hundred years ago today, downtown Santa Barbara was devastating by a central earthquake.
The main commercial area is State Street, which is in ruins. Some buildings completely collapsed – the vulnerability in their design is exposed by the power of nature. About twelve people died.
However, despite the damage, the massive Santa Barbara earthquake remains relatively obscure even in a notorious state.
There are many reasons for this, from relatively low death tolls to consistent efforts of contemporary citizen boosters and business interests to downplay the extent of damage.
But the lessons learned from the Santa Barbara earthquake should still resonate even after 100 years, experts are the same.
For example, structural engineers have long believed that brick buildings are one of the deadliest structures in an earthquake. Santa Barbara Temblor reveals how dangerous the brick building was built in that era.
However, for decades, little has been done to force brick buildings to be renovated across California – from the 1933 Long Beach earthquake in 1933 until the 2003 San Simon earthquake, when two women were built in the late 1800s, the building was originally built in the late 1800s.
After the San Simon earthquake in 2003, rescuers were screened through debris by Paso Robles.
(Los Angeles Times)
One of the biggest lessons, Jones said, is: “We are afraid to tell people how to deal with their property, so we always leave with the least amount of time.” That’s how buildings managed to not undergo severe earthquake transformations for more than a century before the brick walls fell in 2003.
Many cities eventually took action to address these vulnerabilities, through mandatory reform regulations – Los Angeles in 1981, Santa Barbara around 1990, and San Francisco in 1992, where the last time the car commuters were crushed to death after the collapse of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
A part of San Francisco collapsed during the 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake.
(CE Meyer/US Geological Survey)
However, other Southern California cities still have no action to fix or tear up unbricked brick buildings, including many in the Inland Empire, the infamous San Andreas failure.
Many cities also have no action to renovate other types of potentially vulnerable buildings, including those with concrete or steel frames with certain defects.
In Santa Barbara, for example, there is no law requiring seismic transformations, the ground of an apartment building is fragile – it is usually placed above a carport or garage. The fragility of these “soft story” buildings is well known and is the goal of mandatory remodeling laws in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The gentle story apartment can collapse as the skinny pole holding the carport breaks when it shakes.
(Raoul Lanioa/Los Angeles Times)
“I know it's already talked about in Santa Barbara, but nothing is there,” said Sage Shingle, a structural engineer. Superintendent of Southern California and T&S Structure. He said there was no need to strengthen the buildings, “of course, this would make Santa Barbara more vulnerable.”
A century ago, Santa Barbara also saw a huge damage to single-family homes that had no support and nuts slipped off their foundations, a structural flaw that many homeowners today still have. (The state program provides grants to attract homeowners to resolve the issue.)
But the most vivid damage from the 1925 earthquake was the collapse of bricks and stones on Santa Barbara State Street.
On June 29, 1925, the California hotel was severely damaged after the Santa Barbara earthquake.
(UCLA's Los Angeles Times Archives)
The four-story California hotel opened about a week before the earthquake and saw its exterior brick walls “flake off the wood floor”, Shingle said.
In Santa Barbara, “there are several places where the ground that lands on the sidewalk actually kills people,” said Greg Rech, architect, president of the Santa Barbara Architecture Foundation.
California learned the dangers of brick building when a major earthquake struck Long Beach in 1933.
The historic Arlington Hotel was also severely damaged during the 1925 earthquake. Shingle said it opened in 1911 to replace its predecessor that burned in 1909 and was rebuilt with a water tank as a storage for future firefighting efforts. But when the local shaking hit the weight of that tank, “its mass just pulled the building apart and collapsed that area of the building,” Shingle said. Two hotel guests died.
Seismic science was still in its infancy a century ago. It may be hard to imagine today, but before 1925, “there was still a debate about the serious harms of earthquake hazards in Southern California, especially in Los Angeles,” said Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
“There are two camps: One is arguing that there is a serious earthquake hazard in the Los Angeles area. Another camp argues that there is an earthquake, but the harm is only mild,” Hoff said.
On June 29, 1925, the hotel in Arlington was damaged after the Santa Barbara earthquake.
(UCLA's Los Angeles Times Archives)
Hoff said the 1925 earthquake did not resolve the debate. It is estimated that Santa Barbara Temblor is between 6.5 and 6.8, the same year as the earthquake in Quebec, Canada, and is now estimated at magnitude 6.2. However, the Quebec earthquake covers a wider area, which we now know is because the rocks in eastern North America are older and drive more efficiently than seismic waves in California.
But at the time, the swaying geographical range around Santa Barbara led some to believe that earthquakes were a bigger problem for Quebec than Southern California. “Yes, you have earthquakes in California, but the impact is not that wide,” Hoff said.
“In terms of public awareness and risk reduction, there was no needle move in 1925 as possible,” Hoff said.
Additionally, Hoff said: “The corporate interests do everything possible to downplay the harm.” There are “the idea that scary people will not have any benefits.”
By 1906, the San Francisco Bay area had a high earthquake risk, but some of the views in the Los Angeles area were different. The USGS said the chance of earthquake minimization is that the chance of earthquake minimization is another opportunity, suggesting that “a moderate earthquake in local faults will cause, most, most, secondary local damage, and the estimated chance of earthquake minimization is the 1920 Ingwood earthquake, which is estimated to be magnitude 4.9.”
“The feeling is, 'Yes, we have earthquakes. It's annoying people, but they don't do any damage,” Hoff said. “They mapped the shortcomings of the Los Angeles area, but they don't think they're active. ”
And scientists have not developed the theory of plate tectonics, and we now know that explains why California is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes.
However, it seems that not everyone completely denies the danger. According to USG, people are aware of the risk of a fire from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and the 8-magnitude earthquake and fire in 1923 destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama, killing an astonishing 142,800 people.
In the first moments after the 1925 earthquake, “three men turned off gasoline, water and electricity. So we didn’t have a fire,” said Betsy J. Green, a historian of Santa Barbara.
According to Stanford University’s Bloom Earthquake Engineering Center, the earthquake did prompt Santa Barkara to adopt seismic safety, citing earthquake safety, which was the first order from California.
According to the California Geological Geological Survey, 120 people died after 70 schools were destroyed and shocked Californians – meaning that earthquakes hit thousands of deaths or injuries during school hours.
The State Field Law requires earthquake safety standards for newly built public schools. In 1933, the State Riley Act also required California local governments to establish a construction department and inspect new buildings.
However, until the 1960s, California's new building codes became more uniform in local governments.
As a decisive moment in Santa Barbara’s history, earthquakes also offer opportunities to reshape the appearance. Even before the earthquake, urban reformers promoted a consistent Spanish colonial revival architectural style throughout the city – the walls were white, on a rough stucco. There are a lot of arches; Green said the roof is usually red tiles, with a lot of decoration on the windows and doors, and the turquoise color is soft.
Rech said a wealthy resident, Bernhard Hoffmann, not only bought and restored the historic downtown Adobe Casa de la Guerra, but also bought the property next to it and built a group of stores called El Paseo.
2019 Santa Barbara Court.
(Ricardo Dearatanha / Los Angeles Times)
“Their idea was that they were trying to build Spanish streets…Santa Barbara was even a tourist town at the time and they did recognize that they needed to be different from Los Angeles or San Francisco, both of which had a lot of Victorian architecture,” Rech said.
Rech said the local town hall was built in this style, as did high schools.
Then an earthquake struck and officials decided to enforce the Spanish colonial revival style in the city. Green said that some people may be angry at the rules today, “but it makes Santa Barbara look like Santa Barbara, not Ventura or Goleta.”
(However, according to the Santa Barbara Trust, the impact of this effort is to replace the city’s old Chinatown.
The earthquake also severely damaged the city's ancient Greek Revival-style court, built in the late 1800s, breaking a column and collapsed the prison. Bob Dickey, a lecture at Santa Barbara County Court, said the county approved alternatives to the Spanish Colonial Revival style, partially funded by bonds, and its costs exceeded the county’s taxes for oil withdrawals.
View of the clock tower of Santa Barbara County Courthouse.
(Ricardo Dearatanha / Los Angeles Times)
Now, the court is considered one of the most beautiful places to get married in a municipal county building in California.
A key aspect of Santa Barbara’s recovery is that it developed into a tourist destination for the rich, even a century ago, and there are many powerful and influential people working to send capital and loans to the reconstruction efforts.
“There's a lot of money here,” Green said.
