ITALIAN DISASTER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3107, 4 February 1909, Page 5

ITALIAN DISASTER.

* THRILLING NARRATIVE.

VIVID DESCRIPTION OF THE HORRORS.

HEROIC DEEDS OF SEAMEN

Receivad February 3, 6.15 p.m. PERTH, February 3

The narrative of Mr Constantino Doresa, a London sharebroker, who was one of ten who survived out of eighty in the Hotel Trinacria, at Messina,- gives a vivid description of the

SCENES OF HORROR. Atter the first crash Doresa found his bed standing by an abyss, the whole side of the hotel having fallen out. With the aid of sheets torn in strips he lowered a Swede and his wife and baby, who were in an adjoining room, to the streaf, and followed himself. Al! round the buildings were falli'ig WITH TERRIBLE CRASHES,

frightful screams rising on all sides. "Captain Owens, his mate, Read, and 13 sailors of the ship Afwen, and some Russians, went ashore with ropes and ladders to see if they could save any of the persons on the high buildings," said Mr Doresa. "They heard little children crying piteously on a building which was ready to collapse. Read reared a ladder against the lowest balcony, and then turned to Smith, one of his seamen, and said: 'Now Smith.' It seemed like sending a man TO CERTAIN DEA T H, but Smith without a word was up the ladder on to the first balcony, where he caught a stone iovvered by me ( ans of string by the children. To this string he attached a light line, and the children hauled this up and made it fast. Then he climbed up to the children. On the crazy ruin he found so many that he could not manage them all himself. Captain Owens turned to Read, who instantly went up to Smith's assistance. One by one they lowered the little creatures in safety. Read's next feat was to release a woman buried to the waist in ruins, while a fire was blazing round her. With a saw he cut the plank pinning the woman and then dasned throngh the flames with her in his arms." "An Italian officer then came up, and said 'What's the name of the ship to whom these men belong. I i shall send an account of THEIR SPLENDID BRAVERY to my Government.' "When daylight came looting was proceeding indiscriminately, wretches hacking off the fingers of the dead to get the rings. "On Tuesday morning the British Fleet came tearing up the Straits, bringing the first help from the outside world." A DRAMATIC STORY. Received February 3, 10.22 a.m. FREMANTLE, February 3. A su.-vivor gives a dramatic account of the cesauotion of the beautiful sea-front a Messina, called the Palazzata, owing to its numerous palaces. In the early morning, he says, suddenly * terrible detonation occurred, and a violent convulsion of both sea and land shook men and things. The sea seemed to withdraw, the ship 3 were thrown one against the other, lines oscillated, lamps waved and trembled, all lights went out, and in the darkness, with an enormous roar, the sea rose to a height of several metres, then fell again, like a monstrous liquid avalanche, with a frightful splash on the shore, shattering buildings on the harbour front, smashing the pier, breaking the embankment, and, invading the beautiful promenade, it rushed against a row of monumental palaces on the sea front, knocking them down, disembowelling them, suffocating under its rage thousands of people surprised in their sleep, and at last retiring, i dragging with it corpses, furniture, and goods lof all sorts. Lower Messina, where were most of the richest and best hotels, was now a shadow. Quays were sunk, walls destroyed, palaces wiped out, and clouds of dust, like a thick fog, enveloped the scene. Those who were not victims o± the tidal wave, and lived in the inner part of the city or houses built on the hills at the back, had been thrown out of bed by the formidable shock, and most of them were later buried under the now trembling walls, roofs, balconies, porches, and columns, which fell everywhere with tremendous noise. A silence like death followed. Then the silence was pierced by the shrieks of the wounded. Dawn was still distant, the lamps were all extinguished, and the darkness was deepened by clouds of dust. Suddenly pillars of flame blazed o"t from broken gas-mains, spread through the ruins, burning beams and furniture, and putting a frightful end to the agony of many poor creatures imprisoned under the debris.

Clouds of smoke thicker than dust, and red with the sinister reflection of the fire, rose turning slowly into

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the air as from an immense pyre. Naked, covered with blood and aghast with terror, the few rsurvivors tried to escape from the area of the ruins, but the old familiar ways were no more; there was no trace of the streets, the corners known from boyhood, where the Messinese could have walked blindfolded. AH was chaos —hricks, beams, iron, wood, and lime, entangled with a waste of broken furniture..