Janis Cooke Newman:

In April 1906, 70 years before my own first visit, Enrico Caruso also thought he was lucky to be here. The famed Italian tenor was supposed to be in Naples, but Mt. Vesuvius had erupted two weeks before, and Caruso thought he would be safer in San Francisco , where, after all, there are no volcanoes. “God has sent me here,” the singer declared before he went to bed the night of April 17. When he was shaken from that bed the following dawn, Caruso changed his opinion of the Almighty’s intent. “We are all doomed to die!” he shouted at his valet.

Jeanne Cooper chronicles the great quakes from 1906 to 2006.

Carl Nolte:

San Francisco, the ‘Paris of America,’ was booming with industry and culture — a Gold Rush city built in an instant. It was also a calamity waiting to happen.

This is the first of a 10-part retelling of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake — and its aftermath.

Samuel Dickson was 17 years old, almost a man, that April night in San Francisco 100 years ago. He and a friend had gotten standing-room tickets for the opera and heard the great Caruso sing.

The night was clear and beautiful, so after the opera they went to the top of Telegraph Hill to look at the city — the lights of the Barbary Coast, the steeple of Old St. Mary’s Church on California Street, the rounded domes of Temple Emanu-El on Sutter, the alleys of Chinatown and the distant gilded dome of City Hall.

Somewhat related: I wrote about my Loma Prieta (The “Pretty Big One”) experience here.