The San Jacinto Earthquake of 1918

Imagine walking home from school or going to the local farmer for some milk and eggs, and having the ground began to shake...Well If you live in anywhere in California you probably have, but.If you are not from California and especially the Inland Empire, this might just send you packing, wanting to return to the east, especially 90 years ago....But people always remember what they left behind.....Tornados, harsh winters, floods and high humidity....What's a little earthquake anyway?

The day was warm, it was Sunday and back then most places of business were closed for the Sabbath day....And while the damage caused by the San Jacinto earthquake of 1918 was high, its timing was fortunate, and kept the number of fatalities and injuries low......Most of the damage caused by the quake occurred in the business districts of the towns of San Jacinto and Hemet, where large masonry structures collapsed in the shaking.....Still, as it was, several people were injured and one death was reported.....Two miners were trapped in a mine near Winchester, but were eventually rescued, uninjured.

In another display of amazingly good fortune, two men in an automobile were swept off a road by a landslide, and would have rolled several hundred feet down a hillside had they not been stopped by a large tree, before they had moved far very off the road at all.....My Grandparents on my dads side lived in San Jacinto then as did my moms mother, Ida Smith....I remember being told by my Grandmother, (Ida) that she had just walked out side from washing cloths and was hanging the cloths out to dry when the quake hit....She said she was knocked to the ground, the cloths overturned and spruned all over the ground which was just red clay and dirt....she said she was madder about getting the cloths all messed up rather than the giant cracks that had appeared in the house....My grandfather could fix that...she had to wash the cloths again.

The Quake cracked the ground, concrete roads, and concrete irrigating canals, but none of the cracks left behind were thought to represent actually surface rupture, though in one place, the alignment of a road was said to be off by about 3 inches.....Landslides, as mentioned above, were triggered, and the road from Hemet to Idyllwild was blocked in several places.....Huge boulders rolled down nearby slopes.....The flow rates of several springs in the area were altered, and it is claimed that the temperature of nearby hot springs changed.....Sand craters were formed on one farm, and an area near Blackburn Ranch seemed to have sunk several feet during the quake.

The earthquake caused minor damage outside the San Jacinto area, as well, and was felt as far away as Taft which is way up by Bakersfield, Seligman, Arizona, and Baja California......Many residents in Long Beach reported feeling a swaying motion not unlike being on a boat....Interesting enough, Long Beach would have a major quake several years later in 1933, that was actually caught on film, during the filming of a movie In which WC Fields is seen escorting several others off of the set before any one was hurt.

Getting back to San Jacinto though, long time resident remember another larger quake that occurred in the same area nearly 20 years before on Christmas Day, December 25, 1899.....Again my dads mom and dad lived through that one as well....Sometimes when talking to my grandmother, she would get her quakes mixed up as she talked about events....My Granddad was always correcting her on those stories, and always getting swatted with a paper when he did, if I remember correctly.

Total property loss in San Jacinto was estimated at $200,000, 1918 money that is......Many aftershocks occurred, including a strong tremor on June 6, 1918.....Two moderate shocks on April 22, shook down loose bricks and tottering walls in Hemet and San Jacinto.

Gary Hall, the ghostpainter