Evening star., 1939-12-28
42,000 Killed,
Injured in One
Area Of Quake
Bitter Cold Takes
Lives of Thousands
More in Turkey
By the Associated Press.

ANKARA, Turkey, Dec 26-Of-
ficials announced today $4,000 per-
sons were killed or injured in the
region of Erzincan alone in yester-
days Anatolian earthquake.
New tremors shook Anatolia today
while a blizzard and fierce winds
increased the suffering of hundreds
of thousands of homeless. A heavy
storm ragged along the Black Sea
coast, tearing ships loose from moor
in2s and battering down seaside
homeG.
"a Budapest dispatch said all
telephone communications to
Istanbul were suspended by an
unexplained break in the lines as
two new earthquake shocks were
recorded at 1923 am. E. S. T. to-
day. The shocks were estimated
to have occurred 1.200 miles from
Budapest, the same distance
away as the stricken Anatolian
Zone.)
With the Temperature % degrees
below zero (FahrenheiD, many
thousands of earthquake survivors
who had fed to fields we're frozen to
death, according to sparse reports
reaching Ankara officials.
10000 in City of Erzincan.
Erzincan is vilayet, or province.
IN the extreme east of Turkey. on
the Armenian border. The States
mems Yearbook gave Erzincan's 1885
population as 1894. The City of
Erzlncan had a population of about
10000.
Erzincan is about $50 miles east of
Ankara and about 200 miles east of
Sivas and Samsun. in the area
which earlier reports had indicated
was hardest hit.
Before the report on the Erzincan
district reached Ankara. an unoffi-
cial estimate had given the number
killed or injured yesterday in Ana
tolia as 5000.
llullbI Ctto Va llIouSoliuS 1dISQ lllC
menace of epidemics.
The suffering of survivors was
accentuated in many localities by
deep snow as we'll as the bitter cold.
Fires swept many habitations which
had Withstood the earth shocks.
forcing many into the open, where
exposure carried the risk of wide
spread illnesses.
Food and pure water supplies were
scanty
953 Killed in One City.
Twelve cities ranging in popula-
tion from 10000 to 10000, and 80
villages were said to have been de-
molished. In the city of Tokat alone,
e53 persons were reported killed and
443 injured. Dwellings were shaken
down on sleeping occupants.
Erzincan lay in flaming ruins
Every large building had collapsed,
including a large military barracks
where all the officers. 80 sadets and
a large number of soldiers were
killed.
The district of Kemah was an
other of the hardest hit sections.
The Black Sea towns of Sam
sun and Ordu were pictures as
vistas of shattered buildings in the
reports filtering through to Ankara.
Samsun, about 200 miles northeast
of Ankara, has population of 49,
900
Another large city reported heav-
lily damaged is Sivas, about 200 miles
east of Ankara, nesting in the hol-
low of two mountain ranges near
the head of the Kizil Irmak River
1t has a population of $4,000.
Still others caught in the sweep
of the catastrophe include Amasia
and Yozgad.
Bursting gas mains and over
turned Oil lamps set fire to collapsed
buildings in almost every corner of
the wide disaster area.
Slowly, bit by bit, over disrupted
communications the picture of the
catastrophe was put together.
Hundreds Trapped by Fire.
Hundreds who escaped death in
the wholesale collapse of buildings
met a more gruesome fate when
they were trapped by fires which
spread quickly in the stricken area
Whole villages were turned into vast
funeral pyres.
Screams OF the trapped women
and children mingled with the dull
roar of crumbling masonry, the
crash of breaking glass and sirens
of ambulances and fire engines.
The lack OF apparatus to fight
hundreds of fires which still were
(See QUAKE, Page A-9D