TERRIFIC STORM.

Evening Star, Issue 3100, 25 January 1873, Page 3

TERRIFIC STORM.

DESTRUCTION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.

The London Times, of the Bth November, has the following account of the hurricane in Sicily, which the town of Palazzulo: —“There has been no instance of such calamity within the memory of living man. No earthquake ever caused so much destruction, Tirere are houses ruined, houses fallen to the ground; walls cleft from end to end. walls hanging outward so as to rest on adjourning houses. There are roofs wholly swept away; sunken balconies torn from their places; windows and shutters either entirely carried oil, or hanging loose from the walls; lamp-posts forced up by the sockets; uprooted trees. -And this is all one sees al -ng the north-east side of the town. Not one house remains in which the whole roof and window's do not require thorough repairs. The streets are a mass of fragments and rubbish. The incidents of the disaster aro so strange as to be almost incredible. There was a store with twentyfive hectolitres of wheat, of which not a trace is anywhere to be seen. 'I he books of excise and of the land and registry otfioi s have vanished, and only their torn leaves have been found here and there at great distances. In one house all the copp r kitchen utensils were blown through the roof. In another, benches and heavy chests flew through the windows. The iron bars ..n the balcony are to be seen curled up one way, and those of another twisted up another way. Tnere is a pillar of a palace which has been moved forward one foot without, breaking, and stands up isolated all in one piece. There ia the wall of another palace which has fallen back more than three feet without a crack. Here is a beam of one house which has thrust itself Into another house. There is the half of a bedstead, the other half of which lies no one knows where. All the tiles of one building aro huddled together in one spot (>ne roof is crushed and broken up as small as if it had been pounded. The rafters of another building are all bare, the sides having flown no one can see where. In a stable on the bare ground, men are laying the dead bodies one by one as they are being dug out. Most of them are in their nightdresses, having been crashed as they were quietly sleeping. Their features ami forms aie so disfigured that no one can look at them without shuddering Their nostrils, ears and mouths are stopped with earth and white dust, which has everywhere pierced through the skin. Here ijS tin? body of a man holding close to his heart a Qliiitl —probably his own chi,ld skulls of both shattered. There are two young men in each other’s arms—probably brothers —the chests and backs of both crushed. Near them is another youth covered with blood. He was a clerk in the Government office. He had his eyeg ass still stuck in his right eye, and was probably reading or writing when struck, ihere arc some disfigured past recognition ; others that sopm unhurt, and look as if they were sleeping. Without exaggeration, or\e-thivd of the town is dismantled, and more than 1000 families literally without a home. Above 100 more have only one little corner of what was once their home, to shelter them. The dead number thirty-two, and the seriously hurt about half-a score besides.