TERRIBLE 'QUAKE.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19066, 30 July 1927, Page 15

TERRIBLE 'QUAKE.

CATASTROPHE IN CHINA.

TOWNS WIPED OUT

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(Received July 29th, 7 p.m.)

SHANGHAI, July 28.

After a lapse of two months owing to lack of communication resulting from the existing disorders in China a letter from Monsignor Buddebrot, Vicar Apostolic to the Hanchow Kansu Province, supplies details of a terrible earthquake on May 23rd. He estimated that 100,000 people perished, the survivors living in huts practically without food and clothing. At Twon Lisiang 100 people were in a church when it collapsed. Many were killed, including the Mother Superior. In other parts of the town houses collapsed . wholesale, thousands being buried.

Many other towns and . villages within a radius of seventy kilometres were destroyed, and thousands perished. The important town of Tumexze was practically buried beneath a moving mountain.

Following the first disastrous 'quake, shocks occurred daily, adding terror to the distress and destruction, which missionaries were working heroically and feverishly to alleviate. The letter adds that the full extent of the havoc is not known, but describes the visitation as among the world's greatest catastrophes.

AIRMAN KILLED.

_♦

FATAL NOSE-DIVE.

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(Received July 29th, 7 p.m.)

LONDON, July 28

Barnard, the famous flier, was killed near Bristol while testing a racer intended to fly for the King's Cup. Engine trouble developed as a result of which the machine banked, nose-dived, fell 100 feet, and was smashed, Barnaud receiving terrible injuries, causing death.

A GREAT CAREER.

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(Received July 29th, 8.15 p.m.)

LONDON, July 29.

Barnard was one of the finest air navigators in the world. He had already twice won the. King's Cup. He navigated by the most up-to-date scientific methods. Where many pilots preferred, when possible, to depend on landmarks, Barnard used instruments and calculations only. He habitually flew' on the assumption that there were no landmarks to guide and'thus flew safely iii cloud and fog. As a Benior pilot of the Imperial Airways he was most careful, but took plenty of. risks in war-time, when he was engaged in day and night bombing. He had flown throughout Europe in a hundred different types of machines and had flown more. than" 500,000 miles in cross channel journeys. '

Among his exploits was a flight from Paris to London above the clouds without once seeing the ground' after his tjike off.. He journeyed from Croydon to Cologne one day. and; covered 840 miles round Britain at an average speed of over. 150 miles an hour.