St. David

But the water was moving so slowly that there was a malaria problem.

And there was another town called St. David, Arizona, which was a, a Mormon community, um, in southern Arizona, and they had a terrible malaria problem.

And the people there were suffering so greatly that they wanted-- they asked the bishop of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City if they could move because it was, everyone was sick.

And the bishop said, "No, um, d- don't move.

Um, God will provide, and everything will be okay." So in 1887, this earthquake happened, and this is all a story from the state health department official.

He said an earthquake happened in 1887, and the malarial pools were wiped out because the San Pedro River next to St. David surged and wiped out all the malarial pools.

So I'm sitting there in this meeting thinking, "How had I never heard of this earthquake?" Because I grew up here in Tucson.

And then I thought back to when I was in high school, and I know that there were these metal plates across the hallway called earthquake bands, and they were there so if there was an earthquake, the building could f- flex, be flexible and not crumble, and so people would have a chance to get outside.

But the water was moving so slowly that there was a malaria problem.

And there was another town called St. David, Arizona, which was a Mormon community in Southern Arizona.

And they had a terrible malaria problem.

And the people there were suffering so greatly that they wanted, they asked the bishop of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City if they could move because it was, everyone was sick.

So in 1887, this earthquake happened.

And this is all a story from the state health department official.

He said, an earthquake happened in 1887 and the malarial pools were wiped out because the San Pedro River next to St. David surged and wiped out all the malarial pools.

So I'm sitting there in this meeting thinking, how had I never heard of this earthquake? Because I grew up here in Tucson.

And we were getting trained on what to say to people and the problem by a state health department official, and he was speaking on a speakerphone to a group of us, and he said, "Well, you know, malaria was always a problem in the Southwest in the, in the 1800s." And, you know, I think of malaria as a tropical disease, and there was, um, slow-moving rivers here in Arizona, and there were various army posts along these rivers because that's, they needed to be by water, but the water was moving so slowly that there was a malaria problem.

And there was another town called St. David, Arizona, which was a, a Mormon community, um, in southern Arizona, and they had a terrible malaria problem.

And the people there were suffering so greatly that they wanted-- they asked the bishop of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City if they could move because it was, everyone was sick.

And the bishop said, "No, um, d- don't move.

Um, God will provide and everything will be okay." So in 1887, this earthquake happened, and this is all a story from the state health department official.

He said an earthquake happened in 1887 and the malarial pools were wiped out because the San Pedro River next to St. David surged and wiped out all the malarial pools.

So I'm sitting there in this meeting thinking, "How had I never heard of this earthquake?" Because I grew up here in Tucson.

And then I thought back to when I was in high school, and I know that there were these metal plates across the hallway called earthquake bands, and they were there so if there was an earthquake, the building could f- flex, be flexible and not crumble, and so people would have a chance to get outside.