Bay Area fired up about centennial of 1906 Great Quake

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Communities up and down the San Andreas fault are going all out to make sure they aren't overlooked in the centennial of the 1906 Great Quake, the disaster that killed about 700 people and left San Francisco in ruins.

Some events seek to evoke solemn memories of the quake's victims. But others range from commercial to artistic — such as plans for a Jell-O sculpture of a quivering San Francisco neighborhood.

In Santa Rosa, which was a farm town of 7,500 residents when the San Andreas snapped and lurched on April 18, 1906, a band will play dirges as 119 volunteers dressed in vintage garb walk by candlelight behind a horse-drawn hearse.

The procession begins April 18 at 5:13 a.m., the time the ground started jumping 100 years ago. The Great Quake killed 119 people in Santa Rosa, highest quake-related death toll per capita of any American city before or since.

"We thought it would make something kind of dramatic and interesting," said Bill Montgomery, a former city parks director who is helping to organize the event in the city north of the Bay Area.

The Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, more than 100 miles south of the city, hopes to remind people that the next "Big One" could strike anywhere in Northern California. The museum recently opened an exhibit called "Collateral Damage," showing photographs of the 1906 tremor's impact.

However, Pacific Grove is in Monterey County, which didn't suffer a whole lot of damage. To get enough pictures for the exhibit, archivist Esther Trosow had to extend a call for entries to three neighboring counties.

"We have made the exhibit more theatrical and dramatic by having a faux painter come in and paint the wall so it looks like bricks are falling down," Trosow said.

In San Francisco, an artist at the Exploratorium science museum will use Jell-O to produce a sculpture of a shaking neighborhood. A performer at the San Francisco Ballet will improvise a dance by coordinating her movements to real-time seismic data transmitted on stage.

And guests who sign up for a commemorative package deal at the city's Orchard Hotel will receive a 5:13 a.m. wakeup call, an emergency preparedness kit along with a copy of "1906," a new novel set in the aftermath. The cost: $190.60 a night, plus tax.

The city's restaurants and bars also plan to promote mixed drinks with names such as Earthquake Cooler, Trembling Martini and the Quake and Fire cocktail — a mix of sparkling wine, orange juice and raspberry liqueur.