Last survivor of 1906 San Francisco earthquake dies at 109

SAN FRANCISCO – The last survivor of the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 has died, a relative confirmed Monday.

William A. Del Monte died at a retirement home in nearby Marin County on Monday. He was 11 days shy of his 110th birthday. His niece, Janette Barroca, of San Francisco, confirmed his death of natural causes.

He’d been doing “great for 109 years old,” Barroca said Monday.

Del Monte was just 3 months old when the quake struck, forcing his family into the streets to escape in a horse-drawn buckboard with fire burning on both sides, Barroca said. The family crossed the bay to Alameda County but eventually came back to the city after the home was rebuilt, Barroca said.

His father had opened the famous Fior d’Italia on Broadway in 1886 and it was destroyed in the quake but reopened in a tent not long after. By 1915 the Italian restaurant was prospering again.

More than 1,000 people were killed in the earthquake and fires. Measurements of the quake have ranged from magnitude 7.7 to 8.3.