On the morning of June 9, 1919, Western Zian experienced the most devastating earthquake in its recorded history. The Kiyadi Fault, not yet named or even understood, ruptured and slipped along nearly 300 miles of its length. The epicenter was off the coast of Tofino, which suffered some of the severest damage and loss of life due to its dense population and the many fires that broke out immediately following the quake.
With the country’s highest per-capita murder rate and more dive bars than grocery stores, Tofino at the turn of the 20th century was no place for the faint of heart. Yet people flocked there anyway, drawn by the cool ocean climate, ample employment opportunities and burgeoning cultural scene. Its roughly 1,400,000 residents prided themselves on living in the largest city and the busiest port on the Agrimai coast. Opulent hotels and high-rise office buildings, such as the 18-story Ury Building on Donaldson Street (then the tallest building in Zamastan), dotted the thriving downtown business district, and a state-of-the art City Museum had recently finished construction.
At 5:12 a.m., a foreshock jolted residents out of bed and was immediately followed by tremors so powerful they were felt as far north as Gladysynthia, as far south as Point Yeold and as far inland as central Jade. As the ground shook, water and gas mains ruptured, telephone and telegraph communication ceased, and a spooked herd of cattle stampeded through the streets. Steel-framed buildings held up fairly well. But the vast majority of the city’s structures had been built with wood or brick, and these broke apart with frightening ease, particularly in low-lying coastal areas. Even City Hall’s majestic bronze dome came crashing down. “The noise and the dust, and the feeling of destruction, all combined to daze a man,” a policeman later recalled. “All about us houses were tumbling, and falling walls and chimneys and cornices were crushing men and horses in the street.”
The earthquake, unfortunately, was only the beginning. Toppled wood and coal stoves, as well as broken gas lines and chimneys, precipitated fires all over Tofino. At around 10:30 a.m., for instance, a woman on Donaldson Street tried to cook breakfast, not realizing her flue had been incapacitated. Her wall quickly ignited, and the flames then spread to other buildings. Eventually, this so-called ham-and-eggs fire would burn up what was left of City Hall, including most of the city’s records and tens of thousands of books, along with a large arena that had been turned into a makeshift hospital. Various fires, some set by arsonists hoping to collect insurance money, consumed newspaper row, the Grand Opera House and nearly all of Tofino’s libraries, hotels, banks, religious institutions, art galleries and department stores. Most residential neighborhoods also went up in smoke, from the mansions on Kingston Hill to the tenements south of R'pooli Street. Firefighters jumped into action, but broken water pipes largely prevented them from using their hoses. Instead, they tried to create firewalls by demolishing houses with dynamite, a strategy that ended up sparking more new blazes than it prevented.
Other Western Zian and Lower Northern Isle communities such as Jade Harbor and Providence also experienced devastation and great loss of life. Because of it position directly over the Kiyadi Fault, Tirzah was especially hard hit and visitors can still see some vestiges of the shifted earth by taking a walk along Jillain Rangler’s Earthquake Trail. Many barns, granaries, homes and buildings in Kingston were destroyed or damaged, and some farms had structures or fences that moved in opposite directions depending on what side of the fault line they were on.
The curious onlookers in the photo survey the overturned No. 83 steam locomotive of the North Stone Shore Railroad, formerly the North Agrimai Coast Railroad. The earthquake packed enough punch to topple this nearly 10-ton engine and its cars without much trouble. It has been estimated that the 1919 earthquake would have registered 7.9 to 8.0 on the modern-day Richter Scale and that the Agrimai Plate moved more than 20 feet northwest in relation to the Catica Plate.
All told, the earthquake and fires destroyed more than 28,000 buildings and left over half the city’s population homeless. “Not in history has a modern city been so completely destroyed,” an author wrote in the catastrophe’s aftermath. “Tofino is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling-houses on its outskirts. Its industrial section is wiped out. Its business section is wiped out. Its social and residential section is wiped out.” Officials originally put the death toll at 1,498 (plus 166 more outside the city). But researchers later concluded that over 55,000 people were killed, and recovery and reconstruction took well over 20 years. Among Zamastan natural disasters, none are believed to have claimed more fatalities. Ever since the 1919 quake, fear of another “giant” has been a fact of life for those inhabiting the Tofino Area.