Killer ’quake leaves town a shambles

Press, 15 September 1986, Page 8

Killer ’quake leaves town a shambles

NZPA-Reuter Athens At least 10 people were killed and 300 injured when a strong earthquake destroyed buildings and sent residents of a town in southern Greece rushing into the streets. All the casualties were in Kalamata, where people spent the night sleeping outdoors, many of them in cars and others in sleeping-bags and wrapped in blankets, on pavements. A news agency photographer, Amy Gunville, reported from the scene, “the town is a shambles. Buildings have fallen down everywhere. Two churches collapsed and so has a five-storey building.”

A ferry master in the town told State-run television, “there was panic in the streets.” Officials said all the injured were being flown to Athens. About 15 were reported to be in serious condition.

There were no immediate reports of foreign tourists among the dead or injured. The quake, which registered 6.2 on the Richter scale, had its epicentre 250 km south-west of

Athens. It struck at 6.23 a.m. (NZT) yesterday.

An airlift of doctors and medical supplies rushed from Athens and rescue workers worked through the night searching in the rubble for survivors. State-run Greek radio said 10 people had been pulled out of the debris of the collapsed five-storey building in Kalamata and 20 others were still trapped inside. The power supply for half the town of 35,000 people failed as many were having their evening meal. The power was later restored.

A main road leading from the town of Sparta to Kalamata was reported to be damaged and closed. Officials ordered the evacuation of a hospital in Kalamata and called on residents to leave their homes after more tremors shook the town after the main quake. The quake hit southern Greece only two weeks after an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale, centred in eastern Rumania, rocked the Balkans and killed two people and injured more than 500 in the neighbouring Soviet republic of Moldavia.

The Soviet news agency, Tass, giving the casualty figures on Friday, said more than 12,500 had been made homeless.

Casualties in rural earthquakes like the one in southern Greece could be limited by even minor improvements in village building techniques, experts say. Earthquake specialists at an international conference in Ankara, Turkey, this month blamed flimsy construction for the scale of the toll in a fierce quake in 1983 in the Erzerum area of north-east Turkey. It killed 1155 people and injured 1142.

The conference, attended by 86 engineers, planners, architects and social scientists from 18 countries, studied the Erzerum disaster to try to learn lessons for Turkey and other tremor-prone areas, especially around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East

Mustafa Erdik, director of the Earthquake Research Centre of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, said small changes in rural building techniques could bring big benefits.