Piece Description

"Great City Will Rise Again," trumpeted a San Francisco newspaper headline shortly after the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires that leveled the city. The words embody the perennial human instinct to rebuild after disaster. The great city did, indeed, revive, over an incredibly brief period, to become the urban crown jewel of America's Pacific coast. But the story of San Francisco's rebirth is no simple myth of success in the face of adversity. Much of the destruction had human, rather than natural, causes; and much of the effort of reconstruction was misplaced, misjudged and mismanaged--with consequences that persist to the present day. THE CITY WILL RISE delves deeply into the little-known stories of the landowners, the press lords, the cultural, political and military leaders and the ethnic minorities of the time, and their responses to one of history's greatest natural disasters. The theme of the documentary is "lessons learned and lessons lost," and producer Jesse Boggs takes the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Centennial as his cue to examine our responses to contemporary disasters of equal magnitude: the Twin Towers attacks of September 11, 2001, and the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of last year. The emphasis remains on storytelling throughout--not statistics. Boggs wants to re-acquaint us with what is most basic in these horrific events: the irrepressible human urge--with all its costs and all its rewards--to build again, regardless of the extent of the devastation.