The 1906 San Francisco earthquake (also causing the subsequent Great Fire which further devastated the city), struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on April 18 with an estimated  "moment magnitude" of 7.8 and a maximum "Mercalli intensity" of "XI" ("Extreme"). Severe 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 of the long vast Central Valley. Devastating fires fueled by broken and twisted underground natural gas supply pipes sparked by downed poles with tangles of overloaded new electric lines, soon broke out in the city that lasted for several days. As a result, about 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of  San Francisco was destroyed. The earthquake and resulting fire are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest natural disasters in the history of the United States (along with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Great Baltimore Fire just earlier in February 1904). The death toll from the earthquake and resulting fire remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high in the lists of American urban disasters.