MESSINA DISASTER

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 8 October 1913, Page 5

MESSINA DISASTER

A STORY OF DESOLATION.

RAVAGES OF EARTHQUAKE.

THIRTY THOUSAND BODIES NOT

RECOVERED

(Received Last Night, 11.10 o'clock.) LONDON .October 7.

The Daily Chronicle's Messina correspondent gives a vivid description of the desolation that exists at Messina, in Sicily. The Government, he says, a year ago voted £IOO,OOO for the repair of ravages of the great earthquake, but the contractors have not yet started the work. The wharves are still sunken, the quay-sides shattered, and the parade encumbered with rubbish, due to the 150-feet tidal wave.

Nevertheless, the correspondent says, the natural advantages are such that the trade of the port is already greater than before the disaster.

' The Cathedral, of which the gemladen altar alone cost £160,000, is in ruins.

Twenty-two pillars of the Temple of Neptune and Sharybdis lie smashed oil the pavement. Nightwatchmen, armed with revolvers, guarß the ruins, but many Mosaic statues have been plundered. Treasure, valued at £27,000,000 has already been recovered from the ruins, including £BO,OOO in cash from "the premises of one small firm.

Few Sicilians invest their money in the Bank, preferring to conceal it. Hoards of sackfuls of coins. Oriental bonds, exquisite jewels, and pearls were found. Thirty thousand bodies of those who were killed in the earthquake, have not been recovered.

Many of the bodies.disinterred were shockingly carbonised.

In other cases there were unmistakable signs that the victims had survived on change food for days and weeks. Thirteen hundred bodies were buried in a tomb 100 ft by 30ft.