WATERSPOUT 5000 FEET HIGH

Hokitika Guardian, 21 December 1920, Page 1

WATERSPOUT 5000 FEET HIGH

Rcently a gigantic cylindrical-slinp-ed' waterspout, 90 feet in circumference, shot out of the sea to a height of 5000 feet some ten miles off Savona. The phenomenon was accompanied by a dense cloud of black smoke, which gradually assumed an opeal colouring, and subsided after half an hour, leaving the surface of the waters covered with snowwhite foam. Italian seismologists believe the outburst to he closely connected with the recent Apennine earthquake, -which also caused a fiery ei'uption on Pisanello Peak, in the Apuan Alps, the whole being attributed to another under-sea collapse of strata in the eastern section of the Gulf of Genoa. The whole of Italian earthquake history during the past 35 years, experts say, goes to prove that a seismic spectre is slowly advancing in the direction of Northern Europe, athwart the Swiss Alps. Remarkable evidence in support of this thesis is now divulged in the fact that thirteen hours before the serious nature of the last earthquake was known and realised in Italy itself the Italian Red Cross headquarters received a telegram from tlie international centre at Geneva offering to dispatch instant aid. And this came about because, on the basis of the afore mentioned hypothesis, the central meteorological institute at Zurich, where nineteen successive shocks were registered in their vivid passages across the Alps, had been able to give warning as to the exact locality in which the catastrophe occurred.