The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-04-23 00:00:00

THE EARTHQUAKE AT CHIO.

A French paper publishes an interesting letter from one of
the victims of the Chio disaster. The writer is M. Bernard
de Chivry, a wine merchant, of Paris, who was travelling in
the island with his wife and family of five children. Only
himself and his youngest daughter, a child of eighteen
months, escaped. The sufferer, who has found refuge in
Constantinople, says :

"The first shock was by far the most violent. It
caught myself and wife just as we were about to open
our letters from Paris. The house oscillated from its
very basis; the piano tumbled over against the
window, and the large timepiece was upset into the
fireplace. My wife fainted, and I myself was thrown
to the ground amid a heap of books, chairs, and
glasses. My first thought was of my wife. She was
on the point of recovering, when a second shock
brought the house down, a large rafter striking my
wife on the head and breaking my left arm. My
eldest children, who were on the upper storey
were crushed under the weight of two houses,
—ours and our neighbours—which fell on th a top
of ours. My little Louise was in the garden with
the nurse. They were both struck by the debris,
which was scattered in all directions, but they are now
well again. The shrieks of the inhabitants and the
bellowing of the animals struck me more than anything
else. For a time the noise was frightful beyond de-
scription. When I had succeeded in crawling out of
the ruins I could not believe my eyes on seeing
our beautiiul capital in ruins. I got on to my legs,
and I felt the earth rise and sink again several
times. It seemed as if I were on the sea. My arm
pained me horribly. I felt my reason going from me.
It appeared to me as if the thousands of persons
who were shrieking and crying around me wanted to
take away my life. I tried to run away, when the
nurse with the child came up. The sight of them
called my mind back to the reality of the disaster, and
for the first time since the moment when I held the
letters from Paris in my hands I understood the nature
of the accident of which we were the victims. The
shocks continuing, I had to leave the houses, the
walls of which were falling down on all sides with
a noise that resembled the discharge of several
mitrailleuses. I passed the night with the nurse and
infant in the Cemetery, enduring unspeakable4moral
and physical tortures. The next day I sought forimy
house, but could find no trace of it, nor of the street
itself, amid the heap of ruins. Everything had been
obliterated in the night. Burnt by the sun, parched
with thirst, with my little child on the point of dying,
I directed my steps towards the sea, and was fortu-
nate enough to see a ship in the distance. I made
despairing signals. The ship, a fishing smack, hove
to, and took us on board, from whence we were trans-
ferred to a large Turkish vessel sent to our assistance.',

Writing from Chio on tho 15th, the Correspondent of The
Times says : _ _ _

Since the date of my last despatch I have ridden
through the district south-east of this town, and
found the number of casualties to be much greater
than I had been led to suppose. This district,
together with the neighbouring one of Menita, has
suffered much more severely than the rest of the
island. Several of the villages, such as Kallimassia,
which covers a small pudding-shaped hill, are lite-
rally heaps of ruins, so that it is difficult to distinguish
the remains of one house from those of another.
Looking at the ruins it is difficult to imagine how
a single individual could have escaped, and yet of
1,800 inhabitants only 448 have perished. Probably
very many of them were not in the village at the
moment of the catastrophe.
The neighbouring villages have suffered almost as
severely as Kallimassia. Of the seven principal ones
which I have visited, containing a total population of
8,570 souls, 1,327 are believed to be dead. This brings
up the total of the casualties in the island to a sum
considerably greater than I stated in one of my
previous telegrams. Statistics now before me, chiefly
collected by myself in the different villages' show a
total of at least 4,000. It is quite possible, however,
that many supposed to be dead may be alive in Smyrna.
Syra, or elsewhere' for hundreds fled immediately
after the catastrophe, and the emmigration still
continues.

A Greek photographer who was at Chio when the
earthquake occurred thus describes his experience
He had finished dinner and was without his coat, just
about to take a nap, when hearing an awful boom-
ing sound, and feeling the house, which was one story
high, beginning to shake, he placed himself in a door-
way. The walls came down, and the roof which was
a flat terrace, opened, and through the cloud of dust
which rose he dimly saw the open heavens above him.
Disengaging himself from the stones and mortar,
which reached nearly to his knees, he clambered up
on to the top of the ruins of his own dwelling. No
sooner had he emerged than a girl called to him,
"Come, sir, do come, and help me save my mother."
"But where is my own servant?" he said, and he
looked round in vain for his servant lad, a young
Armenian, whom he had seen a minute before in the
garden. Yielding, however, to the entreaties of the girl,
who rushed in over the ruins of the next house, he fol-
lowed her, and saw the mother with her feet fastened
down, her head covered with dust and dirt,
and feebly moving her hand in the effort to rise. Tell-
ing the girl to take her mother's hand, he disengaged
the feet, and together they dragged her out, and wash-
ing her face revealed frightful bruises. While waiting
upon her a father came up with his two children, one
of which was dead and the other apparently so, though
a little cold water dashed on his face brought him to his
senses. All this happened in ten minutes from the first
shock. A second booming sound was heard, and the
downfall of other houses and walls, tottering in conse-
quence of the first shock, was seen. Our narrator
made his way to the Quarantine Office, running up
and down over ruins of houses piled in the street,
meeting only one refugee like himself. Here he re-
mained some little time, until, about three o'clock, a
third shock occurred, when he with some others got a
boatman to take him on board a small steamer then
in the roadstead. While in the steamer the awful
roaring continued, and for a few minutes a cloud of
smoke burst from the slope at the back of the town
and then ceased.

The Levant Herald of April 13, publishes a descrip-
tion, by a correspondent, of the scenes which accom-
panied and succeeded the earthquake at Ohio on the
3rd inst. The writer says

The morning dawned dull and heavy. The heavens were
hidden by thick mist, clotted here and there with dark
blotches of cloud. The temperature was heavy and oppres-
sive, and the horizon was broken by broad flashes of light
that seemed to denote a coming storm. In all this atmos-
pheric disturbance, however, the inhabitants saw nothing
extraordinary, and were •far from being alarmed by what
they fancied would result in a thunderstorm. At ten
minutes to two in the afternoon a terrific shock was felt,
bringing three-quarters of the houses in the town to the
ground, like so many packs of cards, and burying a thou-
sand persons under the falling ruins. Then commenced a
fearful scene of horror: the ground rocked and danced,
kneading the ruin already formed into an irrecognisalde
mass of stone. The survivois ran hither and thither, not
knowing where to flee, to escape the horrible fate that
menaced them, and were tossed and flung about by the
heaving earth like feathers in a breeze. On every side, the
sinister grumblings of the earth, the noise of falling build-
ings, the tearing asunder of the walls of houses, and the
shrieks of the wounded, lent a fearful horror to the scene.
The unhappy inhabitants rushed aimlessly from place to
place, not knowing whither to direct their flight. Even
those who gained the open country were by no means safe.
The earthqi.mke attacked not only the towns and villages,
but worked its ravages in the hills and mountains of
the island. Enormous masses of rock and earth came
rushing down the hill-sides, carrying all before them,
bounding far into the plains, and tearing a road
in the solid rocks of the mountain, such as might
hays been fornilst 1)y ,a tOrresnt nopanct., ys4rs old. lw
town presented a pitiable specta-ele. In many places whole
streets had disappeared., and it was hard to say where dif-
ferent well-known buildings had stood. No one knew where
to look for family or friends. The ground all heaved and
tossed, bringing fresh buildings to the ground at every
moment, and hurrying innumerable victims to destruction.
People seeking to escape. were caught in the staircases of
their houses by the falling walla, or were crushed by the
entire house falling in on them as they crossed the thresh-

hold. Beneath the ruins of the citadel alone, five hundred
victims at least must be buried. Among others are forty
Turkish women who were engaged in prayer in an oratory
situated in the court of the castle. Only one living creature
has been rescued from the ruins of the citadel: this was a
young girl of eighteen, who was found among the ruins,
lying between two corpses. She had lain in that position
during thirty hours, and was removed only to die an hour
after her rescue.

In the country, the effects of the horrible upheaval have
been even more terrible than in the town. Here the victims
may be counted by thousands instead of by hundreds. l'he
aspect of the plain of \Tonnahi is heartrending. Between
40,000 and 50,000 persons of all ages and both sexes are
camped here and there in the open ground. There are as
yet but few tents to shelter them, and old and young, sick
and well, and dead, even, in some places, are scattered
indiscriminately about the plain. Parents wander from
group to group in the crowd, seeking their children, and
endeavouring to persuade themselves that their darlings will
be found among the living. Not a single baking-house in
the whole island is left standing, and the entire population
was thus without food until aid could arrive from the ex-
terior. What a fearful night was that of the 3rd ! Thousands
of people were huddled together in the plain, without lights
or food, expecting every moment to be their last.
New arrivals continuously poured into the ears of the
terrified multitude fresh tales of horror. The never-ceasing
heaving,s and trernblings of the earth; the strange and
awful sounds, like the grumbling of distant cannon, that pro.
cc :ded from under ground •, the groans of the wounded and
the dying ; the shrieks and sobs of those who had lost
parents or children; the wailing prayers or wild hysteric
laughter of women, some of whom became mad with terror;
the low, fearful murmurings of the whole multitude, rising
anon into a wail of anguish as every fresh shock shook the
plain; all these horrors varied at intervals by the crash of
falling buildings or the roar of a landslip, wore the long
night slowly away. At one moment, an entire village built
in the form of an amphitheatre on the side of a hill, broke
bodily away from the parent rock and rushed crashing down
into the plain
- -

The shocks are now diminishing; in all we have counted
250 since the first Circe awful upheavals, which destroyed
the greater part of the island. Of these 250 shocks at least
forty were capable of overthrowing a solidly built house.
The work of excavation has been commenced, but, alas I how
few of the buried victims shall we be able to extricate from
their living tombs. The scene is sickening; here a hand
makes feeble signs through a crevice, while the unfortunate
wretch to whom it belongs is buried beneath thousands of
tons of masonry; here, again, a voice calls for aid from far
under ground ; a daughter, sobbing, endeavours to encourage
her father who is imprisoned deep below the surface; and at
every turn of the spade or pick some horribly mutilated
corpse is brought to light.

In a letter sent on the 9th the correspondent
writes :

There can now be no hope of saving those who may still be
buried beneath the ruins. Decomposition of the dead has
already set in, and will soon put an end to the existence of
any living victims in their proximity. Peasants arrive con-
tinually from the further villages, bringing tales of woe and
imploring aid. It is almost impossible to help them in
any way. The roads leading to their hamlets are so broken
up and torn by the action of the earthquake as to render
them impassable In many places the earth has been
rent by huge fissures which have engulphed many of
those who had taken refuge in the open fields to
avoid the crumbling walls of their houses. I have ob-
served that the ground in places is split in every direction
and is starred like a broken pane of glass, frequently the
crevices radiating from a centre; others form a circle; and
others, again, take a zigzag direction. During the first two
days, the shocks seem to have acted on the island in almost
every conceivable direction, vertically, horizontally and
even rotatorily. It is impossible to account for the capri-
cious character of the results on any other hypothesis.