<Tr> <Th> Tsunami </Th> <Td> Yes </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Casualties </Th> <Td> 700--3,000 + </Td> </Tr> <P> The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5: 12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). High intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area . Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days . Thousands of homes were dismantled . As a result, up to 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed . The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States . The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high in the lists of American disasters . </P> <P> The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate . The strike - slip fault is characterized by mainly lateral motion in a dextral sense, where the western (Pacific) plate moves northward relative to the eastern (North American) plate . This fault runs the length of California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, a distance of about 810 miles (1,300 km). The maximum observed surface displacement was about 20 feet (6 m); geodetic measurements show displacements of up to 28 feet (8.5 m). </P>

When did the 1906 earthquake happen in san francisco