BURIED IN ’QUAKE RUINS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 85, 4 January 1940, Page 8

BURIED IN ’QUAKE RUINS

People Still Alive After Five Days SURVIVORS’ SUICIDE By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. ANKARA, January 2. The first group of 10C) injured refugees from the Erzincan earthquake area has arrived by train. 'Flic refugees reported that most of the oflicers and soldiers in the garrison were killed. Many people committed suicide because they had seen ilieir families perish. People buried the dead with their own hands. Epidemics are feared from tin- number of bodies which have not been buried. Torrents in the Bursa region swept hundreds of persons and whole villages into the sea as the downpours of rain and (lie earth tremors continued. At Giresun 1500 are dead and at Urdu 9(10.

Four hundred houses were demolished at Kernel Pasa and 5000 at Urdu. 1 The first relief sliip from Istanbul arrived at Ordu after a perilous voyage. One Ibousand destitute persons were found wandering naked in one district in peril of hunger-maddened dogs and wolves, which soldiers shot. The clearing up of Erzincan is proceeding. People were found living in sidle of live days' burial in the ruins.

In Turkey rescue work in the earthquake zone is going ahead, and communications are getting back to normal. Troops are helping to clear roads of wreckage and snow, and trains and lorries are running more frequently. At one place, where every building was destroyed, relief work is under the personal supervision of President Inomi. Government help lias been promised in the reconstruction of property. Thousands of dead have already been buried and trainloads of women and children have been removed to southern provinces. No new earthquakes have been reported since yesterday’s comparatively small tremors. ’file deathroll in the flooded zone in western Turkey is now put at 1200. Damage and loss of property have been greatest in the Kernel Pasa district, where the dams burst, sweeping away •100 Imuses and drowning most of Hie inhabitants. There is a slight improvement in the weather in the Smyrna district, and in consequence the water is- expected to subside. A district some 200 miles to the northwest is one huge lake and the floods are still spreading.