TERRIBLE EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2235, 27 April 1881, Page 3

TERRIBLE EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY.

The correspondent of the “ Daily News ” at Rome telegraphed on March 6th as follows : Painful accounts have been received here of the earthquake that has overwhelmed the Island of Ischia. The shock took place at five minutes past one on Friday afternoon, tho hour at which the village clock of Casamiccioli remained standing. It lasted seven seconds, and was accompanied by a noise like subterranean thunder. Then came the crash of falling houses, mingling with the shrieks of the victims. Many were killed instantaneously, mothers being found crushed with infants still clinging to their breasts. At Villa Canetti two girls out of three playing on a doorstep were struck dead by the falling of tho architrave. The third escaped as by a miracle. The extent of the damage is still unknown. Some 300 houses are reported to have fallen at Casamiceiola, and 102 dead bodies have, it is said, been found. At Ameno five persons were killed, and thirteen houses have fallen. The panic stricken inhabitants are now camping in the fields, afraid to venture back even to the houses spared by tho earthquake. Many deeds of heroism were performed by the military, who at once hastened to the spot. A Neapolitan sergeant plunging among the rnits of a falling house rescued a woman with her babe. A corporal saved a blind man who, unconscious of danger, straggled with his rescuer. Harrowing scenes were presented at tho mortuary chamber—mothers, wives, children striving to snatch tho dead from the biers on which the soldiers wore carrying them away. One mother was long seen hugging a little corpse, fondly bel eving that life would return. Three rooms which remained intact in the Monte di Pieta have been fitted up to accommodate 200 of the homeless, and the directors of that institute have sent to Naples for 300 blankets to distribute among those compelled to sleep in the open air. Subsidies amounting to £l4O have been sent by the Ministers of the Interior and Justice, and a Bill will be presented te Parliament for the relief of the sufferers.

The following account of his visit to Casamicciola is furnished by the special correspondent of the “ Daily News I reached this desolated little place in a small steamer on Saturday afternoon, about twentyfour hours after the terrible earthquake had happened. On approaching the coast no sign of the ruin that existed met my eyes. The houses on the beach and scattered on the hills were apparently intact. I believed and hoped that the reports had been exaggerated. Soft grey clouds lay low over the landscape. The air was still and mild, the sea glassy on the surface, as grey ns the sky, and moved only by a gentle swell. Before the town lay an Italian man-of-war, a passenger steamer, aad a fine English steam yacht, the Fair Geraldine. On our way we had met a returning steamer with its decks closed in with awnings, evidently taking wounded people to Naples. Wo still knew nothing of what had really occurred. Our only news was what we had gained from the hasty reports of the Italian papers of Friday evening. Stepping on shore, we found the little jetty and the large Piazzo full of people standing about doing nothing. Every house stood empty, with its windows wide open. The whole population had spent the night, and were spending the day, in the open air. Before a house close to the landing-place, which we afterwards ascertained contained the dead bodies found, tat a group of men and soldiers. Evidently the lower part of Casamicciola had suffered very little. Passing up to the higher part of the town, scattered and clustered on a sort of back-bone of hill running down from the lower slopes of Epomeo, with deep and narrow valleys on all sides, the first sign of the convulsion that had taken place was a quantity of freshlyfallen stones strewing the narrow path between high banks, up which we were going. It was a short out to the high road, planted with trees, which leads to the various hotels and villas towards the sea, and, by a branch, also to the Piazza and parish church of Casamicciola. On this road the first thing we saw was a red-stuccoed house of substantial aspect with a crack as wide as my band from top to bottom, as if the two halves of the house had been forcibly dragged asunder. Opposite was a sadder sight. A little two-storey house had fallen bodily backwards, leaving only the front wall —with a green jalonsied window and a preen door —standing. The rest of the little building lay in an undistingnishable mass behind this wall, with bits of wood, beams, bedding, and other furniture sticking here and there out of the heap. In this house had been entombed a young wife and her baby, while the poor husband, who happened to be standing iu the road before his door, had escaped. More and more striking became the evidences of the great disaster as we ascended the road. All along it, on its outer edge, where it bordered a steep valley, ran cracks in the soil about half a yard deep. Sometimes it was clear that only the roots of the row of trees had kept the edge of the road from giving way altogether. Every house we passed was cracked and split in all manner of curious ways. They looked often as if they had been blown up from within. The Picciola Sentinella, one of the best and most beautifully situated hotels, wes still standing, but a mass of fallen parapet before the door showed that it hud not entirely escaped, while a largo portion of the orchard wall was down. Wo turned back, and taking the other road, went towards the Piazza. And now the real horrors of the catastrophe burst upon ua. Down the steep road came old and young men, laden with such of their household goods as they had saved, chiefly bedding. Their woo-begone faces showed traces of anight spent in tears. Then came a little hand cart, filled with dusty and tumbled clothes, from under which protruded a pair of booted feet, telling of the sad bnrden there hidden. _ Opposite ruined houses, were encamped their occupants, or in the orchards and gardens you saw improvised tents. On the roadside was a bed made on the ground, and tented over with shawls and other garments as warmly ns possible, for beneath lay sick persons. Groups of young girls wandered about, weeping; but all the people were very quiet and as it stunned, and only when some sad burden was carrieu past did their voices rise in lamentable exclamations. Before we reached the Pia zzaweeameupona group of bouses fallen in one heap of ruin across the street, so that wo had to climb over a hill of rubbish. Hero the soldiers were at work digging. Alas ! they conld hope to find no living person under tho-e crushing masses of masonry. On every side of the Piazza the houses wore ruined, iioofs had fallen through, carrying first floor and ground floor into the cellar. Of one house the front, along which ran an iron balcony supported by iron bars, alone remained. To stand within the window is said to be the safest p ace in case of an earthquake, and here I saw frequent evidence that it is so, though not always. The house of the parish priest is_ level with the ground. Hu aged brother and sister, the latter of whom was in bed on the first storey, found themselves deposited in the garden alive, they knew not how. The doctor of Casamicciola has lost one of his children, who, with a servant, was buried with the falling staircase, while the rest of the occupants remained unhnrt and escaped out of the windows by means of a rope, all other ways of descent being cut off.

In tho Piazza two men eat on the doorstop of their house, their arms folded on their knees, their heads bent down in a dumb despair, terrible to see. A woman, weeping, told me that tho wife and mother lay buried in tho ruins of the house behind them. In tho middle of the Piazza sat an officer taking notes of the mo t destitute cases. A poor, ragged woman, flushed with crying, was telling her sad story, and a group of silent and sympathising listeners stool close around. The silence in tho usually voluble Italians was very impressive. Soldiers were being ordered off in parties to various points to excavate. Then two boards were carried past. On them were the flattened and dnat - covered forms of a woman and a little girl, just dug out. Three or four men passed me carrying and supporting in a chair un elderly woman with crushed and bom.dup face. She was speaking, and her bearers tenderly told her not to be afraid. This was about three o’clock in the afternoon._ Tho earthquake had happened at exactly five minutes past one on the day before, as tho groat clock of Casamiceiola, which had stopped, proved. The poor woman had therefore lain buried alive twenty-six hours, with what agony of mind and body tbrongh thn long dark night and following morning, one can happily scarcely imagine. Oh, those heaps of mined houses ! Clusters of them hang on the edges ‘of steep valleys at each sde of the Piazza. Many of them were very old and crowded together, and possibly many had bad foundations in the hilly and loosely composed ground, and here the greatest ruin had token place. The evidences of the violent shaking of the soil extended for about two English miles. Where there were no houses, landslips, fallen walls, and scattered stones along the roads and lanes were proof enough that the convulsion had been general within this area. Tho last houses that were shattered lie beyond the hill of Casamicciola on the descent towards Lacco, at a place called Oasaminella, where there am hot mnd baths. When I tell you that from 300 to 400 houses are totally destroyed, and others will have to be pulled down, and that a million francs will not cover the damage to buildings alone, without recko-ing the loss of portable pro perty, you will have some idea of the extent of the disaster and the misery that must still ensue.

Quite two thirds of the town are destroyed, and it all happened within five minutes, nay, less, for the first shock that did the real damage lasted only seven seconds, followed within the five minutes by the second, causing the already shattered houses to fall. They wer« still falling. As we passed along the edge of one of the valleys we heard a clatter, and looking back saw the cloud of dnet which rose from a house on the ether side that had just fallen in. Excavation was dangerous and had to ho stopped during the preceding night, for there was no light, tho lamps being all broken. All was being done that could be to alleviate tho distress ; but tho misery to be relieved will last for months, and subscriptions are already opened. It is to be hoped that the nsnal summer visitors will not bo frightened away, for that indeed wonld take the bread ont of the months of many who are dependent on the season for their livelihood. Professor Palmieri has already exoressed his opinion that the disaster was not owing to a real earthqnake. His theory is that subterranean cavities have given way from tho gradual corroding of the mineral waters, and that tho shaking was caused by this collapse. By what I have heard on the spot rather contradicts this. All are agreed in saying that they felt an upward shock. The wife of the Syndic and proprietress cf the Piooola Sentinella told me that the shock, accompanied by a rumbling noise, felt as if it came first upwards and then sideways, ont from the mountain. Such an upheaval conld scarcely be the first effect of an underground collapse. Then she told mo that the flower pots on tho pediments of the garden wall were not all broken, but twisted round, which indicates a rotary movement of the earth. So also some cups in a cupboard were not broken, but turned quite round. On the other hand, the sndden collapse of a staircase in a honse that remained standing speaks for the giving way of subterranean supports Whether the earthquake was caused by upheaval or collapse must be decided after examination by scientific men. At any rate, it was entirely local, the shocks being but slightly felt by the other towns and villages in Ischia, and not at all on the mainland. The mischief is done, and the convulsed earth is quiet again, and there is no reason to believe that such a terrible catastrophe will occur again within a lifetime. The last great shock at Casamiceiola was in 1861, when about thirty people were killed. In 1828 there had been a more violent shock. This time it is feaied that more than 200 persons are killed. It wonld he impossible te relate all the sad incidents I have heard of. Two glimpses of happiness in the midst of so much woe are a relief. One yonng man succeeded in digging out alive his mother and sister, though the latter had both legs broken, from the ruins of their house immediately after the shock. I never saw such a happy smile as that on the face of a young woman who showed me her healthy babe safe in her arms. It was the only face with a smile that I have seen. The people seem stunned—too horrified to complain, too weary to utter a word or to take comfort. Those who stand idle— for only a few can relieve their despair by helping in the work —look at us with haggard eyes and blenched or flushed features.