TERRIFIC STORM—DESTRUCTION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 11, 13 January 1873, Page 4

TERRIFIC STORM— DESTRUCTION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.

The London Times, of the Bth of November, has the following account of the hurricane at Sicily, which destroyed the town of Palazzuolo : — " There has been no instance of such a calamity within the memory of living man. No earthquake ever caused so. much destruction. There are houses ruined ; bouses fallen to tbe very ground ; walls cleft from end to end ; walls hanging outward 30 as to rest on adjoining^ houses. There are roofs wholly swept away ; sunken balconies torn from their places ; windows and shutters either entirely carried off, or hanging loose from the walls ; lamp-posts forced from their sockets ; uprooted trees. And this is all one sees aloDg the northeast side of the town. Not one house remains in which the whole roof and windows do not require thorough repairs. The streets are a mass of fragments and rubbish. The incidents of tbe disaster are so strange as to be most incredible. There was a store with 25 hectolitres of wheat, of which not a trace is anywhere to be seen. The books of excise and of the land and registry offices have vanished, and only their torn leaves have been found here and there at great distances. In one bouse all the copper kitchen utensils were blown through the roof. In another, benches and heavy chests flew through the windows. The iron bars on one balcony are to be seen curled up one way, and those of another twisted up another way. There is. a pillar of the palace which has been moved forward one foot without breaking, and stands up isolated all in one piece. There is the wall of another palace which has fallen back more than 3ft 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 are huddled together in one spot. One roof is crushed end broken up as small as if it had been pounded. The, rafters of another building are all bare, the sides having fiojsvn no one can see* where. , In a stable on the bare ground, men are laying the bodies one by one as they are being dug out. Most of them are in their night-dresses, having jbeen crushed as they were quietly sleeping. Their features and forms are so disfigured, that one cannot look at them without shuddering. Their nostrils, ears, and mouths are stopped with earth and wjiite dust, which has everywhere pierced through the skin. Here is the body of a man holding, close to his ( Seajr't a cbjldfr-pfobiably Kißip^Qfc|iiW~- : JtheSktflla tff "both^shattereai 1 " "TtierS are two young men in each other's arms— probably, br6thers--the chests and backs of both crushed. Near them is another

youth covered with bloods ', He; was c clerk in a Government office. He had his eyeglass Bti 11 stuck iv his right eye, and was probably reading or writing when struck. There are some disfigured past recognition others that seem unhurt, and look as if they were sleeping. Without exaggeration one-third of the town is dismautled, and more than 1000 families are literally without a home. Above 100 more huve only one little corner of what was once their homo, to shelter them. The dead number thirty-two, and the seriously hurt about half-a-score besides."