Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1887 — WORSE AND WORSE. [ARTICLE]

WORSE AND WORSE.

The Loss of Life by the Earthquake Now Estimated at Two Thousand. A Church Filled with Refugees Destroyed, with Three Hundred Lives. The effects of the earthquake in Italy and France prove to have been far more serious than at first was thought, says a cable dispatch from Rome. The loss of life and destruction of property is learned to have been terrible. The number of deaths reported to the present time is about two thousand. The most startling news comes from the Genoese iviera. Over fifteen hundred people were killed in that district. At the village of Bajardo, situated at the top of a hill, a number of the inhabitants took refuge in a church when the shocks were first felt. A subsequent and greater shock demolished the church, and 300 of the people who werp in it were killed. The shocks were felt at Parma, Turin, and Cosenza. Undulations of the earth were noticed at Catania in Sicily at the foot of Mount 2Etna. The earthquake was strongly felt at sea. Off Genoa it woke sailors from their sleep. At Turin a portion of the ceiling of Santa Teresa Church fell upon the worshipers, but none were killed. In many streets the traffic was stopped,, as houses were rendered liable to fall. At Castellaro a church collapsed, killing many persons. The transport Roma has left Genoa to take on board five hundred prisoners confined in the Oneglia prison, which is expected to collapse. Parties of soldiers hate been sent to the villages visited by the earthquake to assist in burying the dead. It is reported that at Russana, a village of 800 inhabitants, successive shocks leveled nearly every house. One-third of the people are said to be buried in the ruins, and there is no hope of rescuing them. Not one of the 106 communes in the populous province of Porto Maurizio escaped injury. The villages built on terraces on the sides of hills are almost all destroyed. The distress is great everywhere. At Nice sixty houses are tottejing and ready to fail from the shocks inflicted. Many others are much damaged, and in most residences more or less of the furnishings are damaged. The toial number of people injured at Nice is twenty-three. Forty were injured and one killed at Mentone. Two hundred and fifty houses there w ere rendered uninhabitable. Several fires occurred, but were speedily extinguished. Military guards are on \ duty to prevent pillaging of the wrecked houses. A bread famine is expected owing to the destruction of the ovens of the bakers. Some wells around Nice are dried up, while ethers increased in volumfl. A jet of hot water burst from the bed of the Pailion River, throwing up a mass of shingle.