GREEK CITY DEVASTATED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18448, 26 April 1928, Page 10

GREEK CITY DEVASTATED.

MANY DEAD AND HUNDREDS INJURED. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) ATHENS, April 24. Details of the devastation and the death-roll In Bulgaria were hardly complete when serious shocks, lasting from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, were reported from Greece. Corinth was devastated. This is not the Corinth where St Paul preached, but a new city three miles away, built to replace the town destroyed by the earthquake in 1858. Only the ruins of the Temple of Apollo remain to indicate the classical city. The climax of the shocks came at 9.30. They were so severe that within five seconds 80 per cent of the houses in the city collapsed, and the rest were rent, by fissures, none being habitable. The streets are impassable. Dozens of dead have already been found. The injured number hundreds, and the list would have been much greater had not the inhabitants had a long warning. Thirteen thousand Corinthians spent the night in the open. Communications connecting the peninsula w’ith the mainland are interrupted. The walls of the prison at Corinth ■were broken down, and some prisoners escaped to the country. The panic was intensified by a lightning-like flash at the time of the earthquake. This is believed to be due to a short-circuit at the Corinth central electricity station.

15,000 HOMELESS AS RESULT ’QUAKES.

ATHENS, April 25. Thirteen earthquake shocks were recorded in Greece on Tuesday. Fifteen thousand Corinthians are still homeless. Rain is falling heavily. Many desire to settle elsewhere, and the railways have begun transporting some free of cost. Others are trekking on the roads, abandoning all property in order to escape the terror of further shocks. Cabinet ministers who visited the Corinth district estimate the damage at £2,500,000. British sailors who happened to be in port did splendid service in rescuing distressed people. The superintendent of the telegraph service displayed great heroism. Though his wife and children perished in a collapsing building he remained at his post. —United Service.