I was looking at old films online and came across this fascinating look at San Francisco – filmed just days before the 1906 earthquake. Most of the buildings in the film were heavily damaged or totally destroyed. It’s likely that people seen in the film perished or were injured.
The film was originally thought to have been made in 1905. In 2010, David Kiehn, with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, using clues from the film, scoured microfilm of early 20th century publications and was able to establish that the film was created just 4 days before the earthquake. Apparently, it was shipped from San Francisco the on April 17, 1906, the day before the quake.
CBS Sixty Minutes piece on the film and establishing that it was created just before the disastrous 1906 earthquake:
