EARTHQUAKE SQUARE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 14 January 1913, Page 7

EARTHQUAKE SQUARE

TN' VALPARAISO.

On October 10th of last year, at 1.23 p.m., Valparaiso was visited by 'ft severe earthquake shock. In.itself this fact is not particularly noteworthy, for the shock, although accompanied by "a terrifying sound as of the passing, of a thousand gun carriages" was only a "tremor"' in comparison with the great earthquake of 1906. The shock of October 16th, ; however, has a special interest, owing ' to the fact that its coining had been predicted two months previously, and because in consequence the whole country bad beep expecting a repetition of the horrors of. August 16th, 1006. The "prediction" appeared in the "South Pacific Mail" of August 28th,, under the heading "Another Torremoto Coming." "Captain Cooper," ran the announcement, "who so successfully prognosticated the awful catastrophe of August 16th, 1906, has now worked out that. Valparaiso will lie the scene of another such calamity i.n the early hours of Monday, September 30t;h between 2 and 5 a.m." Captain Cooper, who was a seismologist, living in the Tsle of Wight, had, it anpears. written a letter accompanied bv designs explaining his calculations to the Acting British Consul- ' General, and it- was a garbled, version of this letter which fonnd its way into the. "Mail." The lette-- merely stated that signs of earth unrest and displays of natural forces were to be expected during the night of the 29th, but this prediction 'was enough to strike terror into the hearts of a people in whose minds the catastrophe a f 1906 was still fresh. Captain Cooper* prophesied, as preliminary svmptoms. cold weather, on September 18th, gloom and rain on the 22nd, storms on the 25th. and sure enough enc.h of tlveso predictions was verified. Accordingly, on the fateful day intense. excitement reigned in Valparaiso and Santiago. A correspondent of "the Times" thus describes the vigil held at Valparaiso:—-"The squares and wider streets were filled with anxious crowds herded under tents and any sort of temporary shelter, while thousands had fled to the surrounding bills. Large forces of soldiers and polico patrolled the streets, and in the public squares military bands played, in order to keep up the spirits of the people, until the deluge of rain came. For the rain began to fall, as predicted, punctually at 2 o'clock, and to fall with a pitiless, unprecedented volume. So the wretched people crouched for two long | hours, expecting every minute the ! terrible shock and upheaval—which never came." When a shock did occur, however, on the tenth day of the next month, it was not unnatural that it ■should create great alarm, the nerves of all having strung up to so high a pitch of expectation.