Earthquake’s Tragic Toll

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 308, 30 December 1939, Page 7

Earthquake’s Tragic Toll

Scenes of Horror and Destruction Deathroll Mounts By Thousands United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Friday, 7.40 p.m. LONDON, December 29. The earthquake in Anatolia partly or completely wrecked 12 provincial towns, each of between 15,000 and 40,000 inhabitants, besides 80 villages. Numbers were trapped without assistance in the ruins. The full extent of the disaster is unlikely to be learned for some time, Anatolia being again cut off by telephone communication from Western capitals, which indicates further shocks, two of which were recorded on the seismograph at 3.28 p.m. The estimate of 40,000 victims is not confirmed, but other sources say there are 8000 dead. President Inonu went to the scene in order to take over the direction of rescue work. Thousands who fled to the fields were frozen to death. Relief expeditions battled through a blizzard on mountain roads and railways in the hope of aiding victims of pneumonia and typhoid, which are already spreading. The entire northern stretch of Anatolia is strewn with debris, among which lie countless dead. Whole families were crushed while in bed. Those who escaped were trapped in the streets and burned alive in a holocaust due to broken gas-mains and burst oil lamps owing to the absence of fire-fighting equipment. The town of Erzindjan was a flaming ruins after the earlier shocks. Every large building collapsed. There were 953 killed and 443 injured at Tokat. A tempest in the Black Sea before the first tremor tore ships from their moorings and battered down homes, many of which were swept to sea with their screaming occupants. The centre of the earthquake is believed to be the Janik Mountains, 10,000 feet high. SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE CAPE TOWN, December 28. Twenty-five earthquake tremors have shaken the Rand in 24 hours. Two very severe tremors shook a building, causing panic among natives.