Sirens wailed on Market Street as a horse-drawn fire truck made its way through a crowd of thousands at 5:12 AM on April 18, one hundred years after the 1906 earthquake hit and sparked fires that left the city in ruins.

Before Mayor Gavin Newsom and others city representatives laid the traditional memorial wreath on Lotta's Fountain, the San Francisco Rising ceremony celebrated the rebirth and renewal of the city.

“The pioneering spirit that defines our past, I would argue defines our present, and gives me optimism of the future," said Mayor Newsom. "San Francisco, a city of dreamers. And San Francisco, a city of doers."

Newsom interviewed eleven survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, including centenarian Norma Norwood, who called herself a "result of the earthquake".

“I was conceived and born in a tent in Golden Gate Park” immediately after the quake, Norwood said. The crowd went wild when she explained how she had been looked after by prostitutes as her parents worked each day rebuilding the city.

Three blocks of Market Street were blocked off, and the tightly packed crowd forced many to watch from giant monitors parked a block away from the fountain. After the wreath-laying there was a moment of silence for the thousands who perished during the quake and three days of fire.

Molly Murphy and her brother Mike Murphy, fifth generation San Franciscans, were dressed in Victorian costumes. Their great-grandparents were supposed to be married the day of the quake but the church they had booked burned to the ground. The marriage was postponed ten days, and they joined many of the other 250,000 homeless survivors living in tents in Golden Gate Park.

“My great grandmother said that after the quake there was nothing left, so (the government) baked bread over in Oakland and ferried it across the bay in pillowcases," said Murphy. “She said in the mornings, you could smell it baking all the way in Golden Gate Park.”

Hannah Silver, another predawn Lotta’s veteran, has lived in San Francisco for 25 years. She wore a dress and bonnet for this year’s big spectacle. Although she wasn’t here for the “Big One,” the many San Franciscans who survived the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake have embraced April 18th as a date to celebrate our city coming back from disaster.

“They used to serve Bloody Marys (on this date) when Willie Brown was mayor,” Silver said.

SF State alumni George Masson, a volunteer with the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team, wore his yellow NERT helmet.

“This is a celebration of the rebirth of the city. And the fact that we’re survivors,” said Masson.

The magnitude 7.8 tremor that shook the city for 40 seconds was “The Earthquake that changed the science,” said John Caskey, professor of geology at SF State.

Caskey said the 1908 final report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission headed by UC Berkeley geologist Andrew C. Lawson was the first systematic study of earthquakes and faults.

“Earthquake prediction, although imperfect, came from this report,” said Caskey.

Last weekend Caskey took interested SF State students and faculty on a bus tour of the many sites where SF State’s Creep Project measures the strain along the fault line. Creep is an important indicator of how much elastic energy is building up, the release of which is what causes earth quakes.

“This has to potential to alert geoscientists that the fault is experiencing high strain,” said Caskey.

If you want more information about how to find out where and when the next big quake will hit, visit: http://funnel.sfsu.edu/creep/