April 18 marks the 100th anniversary of the greatest earthquake to hit California - the 1906 San Francisco 8.25 quake and subsequent fire that killed hundreds, destroyed 28,000 buildings and left more than 225,000 homeless. The earth shook from southern Oregon to Los Angeles and The Tidings issue of April 27, 1906, described the event as "the most spectacular conflagration that has ever taken place on the American continent." The quake occurred at 5:12 a.m. and lasted almost 60 seconds as the paper noted: "it was fortunate that the shocks came about daylight or the terror would have been intensified."

The Cathedral of St. Mary in San Francisco, numerous churches, schools, seminaries, convents and even cemeteries were all damaged or in many cases, completely destroyed in the wake of the disaster. Outside of the city quake destruction affected Watsonville, Gilroy, Salinas, San Juan Baptista, San Jose and many other towns although the lives of priests and nuns were spared.

Although the 1906 quake remains a major historic event, other California temblors should be recognized as significant events of notable consequences. The December 8, 1812 quake severely damaged several of the historic California missions and collapsed the stone church of Mission San Juan Capistrano. The Fort Tejon quake of January 9, 1857 was probably stronger than the San Francisco one. Estimated at 8.25 it lasted about three minutes in the area near Palmdale and Taft and completely reversed the flow of the Kern River. The patronage of St. Emydius was invoked as a protection against quakes then and today is still one of the major patrons of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Again in 1925 a 6.3 quake brought severe damage in Santa Barbara and two years later the 7.3 shock created a tsunami wave that crashed along the coast. The Long Beach quake of March 10, 1933 killed 120 persons, affected 75,000 square miles and was the first to be recorded and analyzed. In 1935 Charles Richter formulated the scale that is recognized as a mathematical formula to register the intensity of earthquakes. Each whole number represents 31 times more energy than the preceding one.

Other recent quakes include the 1952 Kern County 7.5 temblor; Sylmar event of 6.5 that killed 64 and Northridge 6.7 with the most expensive tab of $2.5 billion in damages. Approximately more than 150 major temblors have rocked the state since the first recorded shock of 1769 that occurred about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The mission padres prayed to St. Emydius for protection, a model that might be of use even today before the next quake.