Downpour holds up ’quake relief

Press, 20 April 1979, Page 5

Downpour holds up ’quake relief

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade, Relief supplies are pouring in to Yugoslavia’s earth-] quake-devastated southern' region of Montenegro, but heavy rain and fresh tremors have slowed aid reaching an estimated 80,000 homeless people. Road and rail links were shattered by the earthquake which hit southern Yugoslavia on Sunday, killing 200 people and injuring 1000. Now heavy rain has turned tracks into bogs and convoys of trucks carrying relief supplies battle against mud and fallen rocks.

Many families, terrified of new tremors, are sleeping in the open for the fourth night running, huddled under umbrellas or inside tents, wrapped in blankets. The earthquake has also destroyed or severely damaged several mediaeval monastries and churches considered not onlj’ part of a priceless cultural heritage but also attractions for millions of foreign tourists. The ravaged churches in-! eluded the eleventh century Prastiva monastery, and the! Podmajne monastery,!

dounded by the Serbian Tsar Dusan in 1350, when his empire stretched over most of |the Balkan peninsula. Relief supplies are reaching the coastal areas with less difficulty than the mountainous hinterland, where several hilltop villages were razed in the disaster. Only now are a few loaves of bread and cans of food getting through. Thousands of tents have been delivered and prefabricated houses set up in the coastal region of the Adriatic, but rescue workers have been unable to get them through to the remote areas. Yugoslavia’s State and Communist Party leaders met in Belgrade on Wednesday night to discuss the disaster. Mr Vojo Srzentic, the Communist chief of Montenegro, told the meeting that comprehensive and patient political action was necessary as new problems would emerge after the first shock 'when people realised they ! had lost everything in a minute that had taken decades to create.