What Element are You?

Shining brilliantly in the clear blue sky above America's east coast, the sun promised a good travel day. People boarding planes in New York and Washington, D.C. would encounter few, if any, air-traffic delays on this Tuesday morning. The summer of 2001 was nearing its end as thousands of lower Manhattan office workers followed their usual morning routine. Many worked in the skyline-defining twin towers of the World Trade Center. In Washington, meanwhile, employees of the Department of Defense were at their desks in a newly reinforced section of the Pentagon.

While the people of San Francisco slept, the ground below them was moving. At first, during the early hours of April 18, 1906, no one knew that something was awry. But then the rolling motions came, causing streets to rise, and fall, and rise again. It seemed, to one observer, as though the earth itself was breathing. What happened next devastated one of America's most popular cities and traumatized her citizens.