Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1909 — QUAKE ZONE IN STATE OF SEISE [ARTICLE]

QUAKE ZONE IN STATE OF SEISE

Cars Containing Refugees Are Telescoped. FIVE CRUSHED TO DEATH Soundings Taken By Experts Aboard the British Battleship Exmouth Show That at a Point a Half Milo South of Reggio In the Messina Straits There Are Fifty-Eight Fathoms of Water Where, Formerly, There Were Two Hundred anfl Forty-Three. , Messina. Sicily, Jan. 5. —At Nivxa, between Messina and Catania, a freight train ran into and telescoped a relief train crowded with injured persons, five of whom were killed.

The British battleship Exmouth. at a distance of half a mile south of Reggio, found fifty-eight fathoms of water where formerly there was 243. A royal decree was issued today proclaiming a state of siege In the earthquake region. Therefore nobody will be allowed to go within the area of the disaster without special permission from the government Signor Orlando, minister of Justice, speaking of the re-bullding of Messinn, •did: "Messina will grow again independently of the efforts to prevent it. It was a convulsion of nature which destroyed Messina; it is also a law of nature which held it there for twenty centuries, an open port to the sea, the center of flourishing commerce and a strong city. Messina is an absolute necessity to the life of the island; she has reason for existence. Twenty centuries of history cannot be destroyed.” An officer wired for the permission of the king to put on board the Vittoria Emmanuele a small baby girl, the only surviving member of a family of nine, whom he had saved. The king gave permission and asked the officer what he was going to do with the child. He replied: “Give her as a sister to my two little sons.” Earthquake experts who are here generally assert that the quake was the result of a fault in the geological formation under Messina, which constituted a line of contact In the volcanic action between Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius, and that a slip occurred similar to the one which detached Sicily from the mainland. That a subsidence occurred at certain points and that there was a rising of the earth’s surface at others is proved by soundings, which show the channel of the harbor to be deeper at some places and shallower at others.

Historical Relics Gone. The city records were consumed and a high wind carried the burning papers far into the air and scattered them over the warships in the harbor. The fire communicated to the building of the Bank of Italy, where 75,000,000 lire ($15,000,600) in paper money was stored. The energetic efforts of the firemen and sailors, however, served to control the flames and the

money was removed to a warship. A correspondent made two tours of Messina through streets piled twenty or thirty feet high with debris. It was a wilderness of ruin a mile wide and two miles long. Beautiful churches, splendid villas in the foothills, hospitals, barracks and the university all shared the common lot. Two->thirds of the magnificent Norman cathedral, the pride of Messina, is in ruins and little or nothing remains of the relics of Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Saracen architecture which marked the stages of Messina’s twenty-six centuries of tragic and tumultuous history. The loss to the world will be irreparable. Here.and there the correspondent encountered salvage parties at work. They were digging at the instance of some distracted wife or mother who Imagined she.heard a voice, but usually there was no echo to the pathetic calling. One party was trying to dig out a girl whose crying could be heard plainly, but as the correspondent watched there was a sudden cave-in and thereafter silence. Standing walls had fallen out exposing one tier of rooms above another in which nothing seemed tohave been disturbed. Pi- ures hung straight on the ' walls. lamps were on tables and vases and fioweis on mantlepieces. Accomolished In One Minute. The survivors of the disaster are so dazed and worn out that they are quite incapable of describing their experienes connectedly but the accounts of all agree that me devastation was accomplished in less than one minute, The strata below the strait slipped along the line of a fort, then a tidal wave rushed in and out and all was over. All those capable of analyzing their sensations say t’rat whan the shock came they felt an upward thrust of the earth. This was followed by an oscillatory , motion and the crust of the earth vibrated. Few of the survivors are able to explain how they escaped. They know only that amid falling plaster and masomy they managed to jump safely from windows or stumble down crumbling stairways. Major J. F. Reynolds Landis, the American military attache at Rome, who was scut to Messina with Vice Consul Cutting and the interpreter of J the embassy, Winthrop Chandler, has already a force of sixty soldiers at work on the ruins of the American consulate under wHch are the bodies of

Consul Arthnr S; Cheney and bis wife. There are still living people under the ruins of Messina. taken out but they cannot survive. The Duke of Genoa has arrived and iAJ»ow taking a prominent part in the relief work; Queen Helena is taking particular Interest in the six-year-old glrlwbowa* rescued from the ruins under remarkable circumstances. While some Russian sailors at Messina were climbing over wreckage they heard weak cries of "Maria! Mariar* After much work they reached a room where they found a parrot continuing to utter cries of "Maria!” The seamen turned to leave, but as the parrot persisted in its cries they broke Into an adjoining room and found a girl lying senseless. She and the parrot were taken on board the battleship Regina Elena.

Instead of burning the ruins to prevent an epidemic. It Is now understood that the authorities have decided to clear Messina of every living person and surround 'lt with a cordon of troops in order to keep it absolutely isolated. The gruesomeness of the scenes during the first few days cannot be exaggerated. A correspondent tells of seeing a baby alive held tightly in the arms of its dead mother. Each morning at dawn the funeral procession begins. Ten thousand soldiers and sailors are at work among the ruins. They carry the wounded to the ambulance stations and the dead to places which have been prepared with quicklime for burial. This continues until dark, when the searchlights from the ships In the harbor facilitate the work along the shore.