Living Good Life, With Eye On Ground

Before Hurricane Katrina, it may have been hard to imagine an entire city leveled by a natural disaster. But it happened in San Francisco, 100 years ago Tuesday.

And, reports The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler from the "City by the Bay," experts say a similar size quake will hit there again, very likely in our lifetime.

Life in San Francisco is as vibrant today as it was in 1906, when the city was an American showcase.

Then, everything changed, in an instant.

One of the handful of survivors still alive today is Chrissie Martenstein, 108, who told CBS News, "The house shaking, to doors rattling, and the house kind of creaking, you know. It was scary. Very scary."

The numbers remain staggering: an estimated three thousand or more dead, 28,000 buildings leveled, and over 200,000 people left homeless, half the city's population at the time.

What the earthquake couldn't destroy, fire consumed. Flames raged for three days, leaving San Francisco in ruins.

But not for long.

Less than ten years later, according to city archivist Gladys Hansen, San Francisco hosted a world's fair and had a message for the world, namely that, "The city has rebuilt. It's bigger, it's better, it's taller."

Today, Syler points out, many buildings are stronger, made to withstand a major earthquake.

But the last significant temblor in the area, in 1989, still took a heavy toll, and it was 30 times smaller than the 1906 quake.

That has experts concerned.

Author and geologist Simon Winchester, who wrote, "A Crack in the Edge of the World," says the famous San Andreas fault, which runs directly under San Francisco, hasn't budged in 100 years. And it's due.He tells Syler the fault is "inevitably going to rupture again … and very dramatically, and a lot of buildings are going to come down. And there's no doubt about it at all."

But many San Franciscans say there's no reason to live in fear.

One said to Syler, "I figure I'll do what everybody else did from the '89 one, you know, hope for the best and, you know, move from there."

Remarked another: "It's a crapshoot. It's like walking the streets of Manhattan. You know that any moment, you can get mugged, but it's not going to stop you from walking the streets."

"This is a beautiful, beautiful city," observes Winchester. "It's very easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency. … Californians do, all too often, think it's far easier to pour a glass of white wine, stare at the sunset, and think what a wonderful place this is to live. It's wonderful, but it comes at a price."

But Jerry Dodson of the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society says, "I don't think we're living in denial. We know it's here. But we know, if we build things properly, we'll be able to survive another earthquake, just as we survived the quake of '89."

"The pictures are scary," concedes Corey Keller, an assistant curator with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "One hopes that … the kinds of problems they had in 1906 won't happen again. But that's the price we pay, I guess, for living in the most beautiful part of the world."

The problem, explains Syler, is that, while geologists can say where a dangerous quake may occur, they can't say when.

Says Winchester, "We're really no nearer predicting earthquakes than we were 50 years ago. … We know a great deal more about them, why they happen, but as to whether we can forecast them, it doesn't look very good."

So now, concludes Syler, as San Francisco looks back at how the city's good life 100 years ago suddenly turned to horror, there's another generation living the good life, but keeping a wary eye on the ground.