’QUAKE HORRORS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 October 1932, Page 3

’QUAKE HORRORS

A VIVID STORY. ATHENS, October 9. Propping up lur typewriter on u disused mill-stone, Joice „Nankivel, an Australian journalist and author, tapped oat an exclusive account of the Greek earthquake. The eai tuquake came as a -shock to Joicu NamkiveU in more .ways than. one. •Site and her Australian hue band, Sydney Lock (“de author of “.Straits Impregnable,” had been e.» joying a life of monastic calm on Mc>uut Atho-, the “Mountain of 'Monas' irk-s.” • r'i.jir abode was the s°!e remaining Byzantine tower in Greece, in tha village of Pyrgos, c’.os e to the walls ot Mount Athos Monastery, which women are forbidden >to enter.

Now they arc camping among ancient ruins, because their tower, -after surviving .the wear and tear of seven centuries t: re-utens to collap-e.

Tht story Joice Nankivell tells U aw follows:

'“lei issos is reduced to heaps oi ston-e and brick, and the death-roll is ut

<(When the earthquake (began, w* wer<>. attending to a -sick child. It died of fright owing to the repeated shocks. We are living on bread and coffee by th e roadside, -and ve have no change of clothing. This is my second earthquake, and I hop ; it is the laet. “The shock nearly tb-rew us down as chimneys and tiles were hurled from the ’towers and figures split the walls. “We salved at dawn all possible medical impplies and hurried to Jei'issos, where the doctor’s supplies had been buried in the nuns of h : s home. The very hills poured streams of stones niid the valleys reverberated to the wads •of women.

“We placed clean towels on the earth, swabbed wounds, bound broken 1 imb-s, cut lniir from cru'!!:*d heads and ad-, mini tered drugs pending the arrival of a Greek destroyer with surgical aid. Mv -husband t-ok one section, I another, -and a 'doctor a third, but many succumbed during the night. “We if ben returned to PvrviH to w n -'t for a stabilisation of the situation. The i-urvivon, in spit e of the ruin of all the villages surrounding Teri-sos, courageously bore He r afflictions and cagerlv helped in alleviating the sufferings of others. ‘"Under further shocks ,ffl’e crest of Athos trembled and the ancient monastery on the summit itself <waa damaged its cupolas and porticos being crack fd.”