THE INDIAN EARTHQUAKE.

Evening Star, Issue 21630, 27 January 1934, Page 12

THE INDIAN EARTHQUAKE.

At last it is possible to get the scale of the Indian earthquake which occurred twelve days ago. The region which felt its worst brunt was composed of the United Provinces, the provinces o’f Bihar and Orissa, and that of Bengal—-most particularly Bihar. We can get an idea of this area if we imagine a map of Italy stretched over its place on the map, with its broadest or northern part against the Bay of Bengal. If the independent Kingdom of Nepal, which also kuffered badly, is included with the provinces the stricken area becomes a more consistent lozenge shape, stretching from west to last and slightly south. But the area of Italy (excluding Sicily) is roughly 100,000 square miles and its population thirty-six millions. The area of this afflicted territory (excluding Nepal) is roughly three times as large, with a population of perhaps 140 millions. Fortunately it is only a tiny fraction of the enormous population of India who live in towns, and its largest city, Calcutta, with a million and a-half inhabitants, though within the fringe of the convulsed area, was practically immune from the visitation. The only other city with more than a million people, Bombay, and the next largest, Madras, were well outside its radius. The cities worst, affected were Lucknow, Cawnpore, and Benares, in the United Provinces/ and Patna, in Bihar, of which only the first has a population of more than a quarter of a million. It is satisfactory that the loss of life,'now that time lias allowed of sober investigation, proves to have beenAnuch less than was conjectured. For a' few days after the first reports the figures of estimates mounted, as is usually the case with such calamities, • to fall again as they approached nearer to enumerations. Reports estimated the deaths at Mongahyr, a township in Bihar which has been demolished, at 6,000, and the number for the two provinces of Bihar and Orissa was placed at 12,000. It is .believed now that the total death- rate was not very much more than 2,500. 'ln April, 1905, an earthquake, reaching further west in Northern India, was responsible for about 19,000 deaths. Very few Europeans were killed in the latest, disaster, but Europeans form only a sprinkling' in the vast population of India. The mortality of this earthquake becomes awesome, however, when it is remembered that the death rate from our own Hawke’s Bay catastrophe did not exceed 260. The surroundings of horror,, when .living people were still being extricated from pins five days after their crash, must have defied description, and the material- damage, unfortunately, was on a. disastrous scale. It is estimated that railway works at Jamalpur, which was one of the largest railway depots in India, ■ will cost neatly two millions sterling to repair, and the depot may be transferred to Lucknow. Official and historic buildings have been badly injured, and the destruction is not confined to towns. The gravest menace ■to the rural population, we are told, which reaches in places to the unusual density of 900 to the square mile, is the damage to crops as well as\to communications of every kind. And the Indian peasant at all times is poor almost beyond belief. Good organisation has evidently been shown in making the shattered townships habitable and in guarding* against epidemics. Authorities in Britain are co-operating with the Viceroy in India in raising relief funds, and it is gratifying to note that the first —but not the only—subscriptions in this country have come from Napier, which has recalled how, in, its dark day, India was one of the first countries to assist it. It ■is such touches of nature, and with all her harshness of Nature, that make the whole world Inn.