The Warner sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1885-1???, 1886-11-05
THE EARTHQUAKES Terrors.

News and Courier, IN an interview with
q reporter of the New York Post,
said:
"The first unusual thing which sur.
prised me was the long rumble and
gradually increasing oar Of which
Won have heard SO much. Then came
the swaying back andforth, the rotary
motion, and the heaving, as OF a ship
in a heavy sea. To give you some no
ton of the noise which accompanied
the earthquake, and about which lit
tie has been said, although it was one
OF the most potent factors In creating
uncomfortable terror among the peo-
pie, | may say that | never knew that
about twenty tons Of brickwork from
the front of my house had fallen forty
or fifty feet, demolising everything in
it's way and making the whole APP
proach to the house a mass OF
ruin. So great vas this horrible roar,
which can be hkened to nothing else
than the bowling of q terrific storm
intensified ten-fold, that | heard moth
ing of the fall of this tremendous mass.
and l knew nothing of what had hap.
pened in front of my house until |
tried to get out by the front door,
when the commotion had ceased, and
tumbled into a mass of ruins, nearly
breaking my neck. Almost the same
thing happened at the News and Cour-
Ter office. There seems to be q terrific
something in the noise Of an earth
quake, which browns out all other
noises by its effect upon the nerves.
1t is perfectly in~describable, but it
certainly is the most appalling hub
bub OF which we can have any
notion; the noise of battle is "a
nothing compared to it. l would
rather go through all the battles of
the warover again than one more such
earthquake, and | find that this is
the general feeling among the old SOL
diers of Charleston. Many OF us have
been through scores of battles, have
seen pretty bad storms at sea, and
yet nothing car equal The terror-pro-
ducing effect of that horrible roar
which precedes an earthquake. At
the News and Courier Office the para
pet, fifty feet above the sidewalk, is
composed of nearly one hundred tons
of granite blocks, one of which requir.
ed forty men to turn over. These
were all brought down to the side
walk in the first shock, and yet no
one in the building heard them fall.
"To give you some idea of the vio-
lence of the shaking we got, the ex-
perience of my own house may best
be described. Ihave on the first story
a tank holding about 1000 gallons Of
water. When the earthquake reach
ed its height | stood under a door
Intel in my house, and as soon as
the noise of falling plaster had sub
sided / heard the rush of waters from
above, and found that torrents were
pouring down through the broken
ceiling. OF cours / came to the con-
clusion that my tank had been knock
ed all to pieces, and | found that the
water would not run in any of the
rooms. l thought no more about
the matter until the next day, when
| got a plumber, as q personal favor
to me, to come and see how | could
get some water supply. He
found that my tank and pipes
were in as good condition as
ever. The house had rocked
SO violently as to pitch all the water
out OF my tank and completely empty
it. The rotary motion which accom-
panied the earthquake was plainly
shown by the II in which
statuary, lamps, etc, were turned
half way around on pedestals or
tables. From the fact that some
houses escaped unframed, while
stronger buildings near them were al
most demolished, / infer that the
earthquake came in waves somewhat
like the waves of the sea, one much
higher than the other.
IF We had had no more earthquakes
since the first shock, the people OF
Charleston would by this time be
pretty well restored in body and mind,
but these continued shocks make
every one uneasy and keep up the
v tension which must result in
breaking down sooner or later. The
scientific people tell us that these af-
ter shocks should inspire confidence,
as indicating that the original was a
land slide upon a tremendous scale,
and that these little shocks are the
minor readjustments of the vast mass
OF matter. We are glad to think that
this is SO, but confidence will not be
restored until they ease. One feature
OF the shocks W. are now experien-
cling every few days is the peculiar
sharp defamation which precedes the
familiar rumble. To an old soldier /
should say that it resembled the
crack of q rife gun in the distance,
and many of us who have been to the
war ~instinctively listened for the
whizz of the projectile. 1t is this de-
etonation, which ia heard distinctly
about half way between Charleston
and Somerville, which throws soma
doubt upon the land slide theory"