Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] SATURDAY, 14th OCTOBER, 1933. NATURE IN UPHEAVAL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 14 October 1933, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] SATURDAY, 14th OCTOBER, 1933. NATURE IN UPHEAVAL.

It is the fashion with shallow thinkers to speak at times as if man alone, amid Nature’s orderly workings, was turbulent and violent. -Yet rarely at any given moment is the earth at rest. Look in almost any direction, and some form or other of havoc is to be seen. Central Italy, by no means for the first time* is suffering from the effects of an earthquake. A much greater catastrophe, declared to be the worst flood experienced for many years, is reported from certain districts of China. Against calamities of this kind it is hard to see what precautions it is possible to take. Nevertheless, men cling to their homes, or return there after the earth shocks have ceased. The wind-storm is a commoner phenomenon, though usually less dreadful. Still, it can on occasions cause terrible destruction. Its blow has just fallen on Tampico, a squalid Mexican town which, but for oil, would probably never have gained as much as a name on the map. As is frequent in such cases, the loss of life following on the breakdown of transport and civic amenities is likely to prove fully as severe as that caused by the tempest itself. Nor is Mexican administration, even under normal conditions, regarded as a model of efficiency. Some slight set-off to that may be found in the reflection that Mexican officials are not called upon to deal with a very exacting populace. Dwellers, too, in such a region as that which surrounds Tampico are only too well accustomed to expect shattering storms. Calm weather has no long “expectancy of life” there. There is, indeed, a world of historic significance in the very word ‘ ‘ hurricane” itself. It comes from the Caribbean “huracan,” which was introduced by the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into almost every European language under one form or another. The originating fact still keeps its headquarters in Caribbean and adjoining seas. The world knows no worse wind scourge than those which occur there, and which do not show signs of diminishing, either in severity or in seasonal frequency.