Surviving Huge Quake, and Century That Followed

SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 — When she was 14 months old, Della Vattuone-Bacchini survived the Great Quake of 1906, which ruptured the San Andreas fault, twisted rail lines into pretzels and sparked a three-day inferno that burned much of this city to the ground.

But whether she makes it through this year's centennial, she said, is an entirely different question

"It's been a mad rush," said Ms. Vattuone-Bacchini, 101, of the anniversary celebrations. "They come up every year and you get caught up with them whether you like it or not. I like it, but it's a pain, both."

Sure enough, over the last two weeks, about a dozen survivors of the quake — a magnitude 7.8 or 7.9 on the modern earthquake scales that struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 — have been made into centennial celebrities, shuttled from opening day celebrations at the ballpark, media-frenzy lunches downtown and Tuesday morning's painfully early breakfast with Mayor Gavin Newsom.

All of which is fun, most survivors say, but also taxing for a group of people whose claim to fame is somewhat dampened by the fact that they do not really remember the event in question.