NIGHT OF HORROR

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 97, 26 April 1928, Page 7

NIGHT OF HORROR

CORINTH DEVASTATED,

City Demolished Within 3 linute.

REPEATED EARTHQUAKES

(Australian I'rtsd Assn.—United Service.)

ATHENS, April 25.

Details of the devastation and death roll in Bulgaria from the recent earthquakes were hardly complete when the serious shocks, which lasted from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., occurred in Greece. The city of Coirinth, which was devastated, is not the Corinth where St. Paul preached, but the; new city three miles away, built to replace the one destroyed by the earthquake of 1858. Only the ruins »of the Temple of Apollo remain to indicate the classical city. The climax of Jthe shocks came at 9.30 a.m. They werei so severe that within five seconds SO p« r cent of the houses in the city collapsrd. and the rest were rent by fissures. None is now habitable and the streets a.re impassable. Many dead bodies have already been found, and the injured number hundreds. The latter would have been much more numerous had not the inhabitants had long warning. Thirteen thousand Corinthians spent last night in the open. The communications connecting the peninsula with tlhe mainland are interrupted. The Willis of the prison at Corinth were brq'ken down and some of the prisoners escaped to the country. The panic was intensified by a lightninglike tlasli at the time of the earthquake. This is believed to have been due to a short circuit at the central electricity station in CorintSli.

Thirteen further shocks were recorded to-day. Rain is falling heavily. Many people desire to settle elsewhere, and the railways hare begun to transport some of them fi;<:e of cost. Others are trekking along the roads and abandoning all their property in order to escape the terror of further shocks.

Cabinet Ministers who visited the Corinth district estimate the damage at £2.500,000. Sonne British sailors who happened to be in port at Corinth rendered splendid service in rescuing distressed people.

The superintendent of the telegraph service displayed ;great heroism. Though his wife and children perished in their collapsed home, and he was injured, he remained at his fiost.

BULGAR DEATH ROLL.

DEAD 103, INJURED 700

(Australian and K.Z. Press Association.) (Heceivf.-d 11.30 a.m.) SOFIA, April 25. Parliament lias accepted the Government's proposals for the relief of sufferers in the earthquake damage, for which the Prima Minister announced that about would be pro- \ ided.

The revised of casualties shows that 103 are deail and 700 injured.