p. 200 | News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 3, 1872

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

Europe.

GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE HURRICANE IN SICILY.

New York, Nov. 20.—The London Times of the 8th has the following account of the hurricane in Sicily which destroyed the Town of Palazzolo. There has been no instance of such a calamity within the memory of living man. No earthquake ever caused so much destruction. There are houses ruined, houses fallen to the very ground, walls cleft from end to end, walls hanging outward, as if to rest on adjoining houses. There are roofs wholly swept away, sunken vaults, balconies torn from their places, windows and shutters either entirely carried off or hanging loose from walls, lamp-posts forced from their sockets, uprooted trees, and this is all one sees along the northeast side of the town. Not a single house remains in which the whole roof and windows do not require thorough repair. The streets are a mass of fragments and rubbish. The incidents of the disaster are so strange as to be almost incredible. There was a store with 25 hectolitres of wheat, of which not a trace is anywhere to be seen. The books of excise and of the land registry offices have vanished, and only their torn leaves have been found here and there at great distances apart. In one house, all the copper kitchen utensils were blown through the roof, and in another, benches and heavy chests flew through the windows. The iron bars of one balcony are to be seen curled up one way, and those of another twisted up another way. There is a pillar of a palace, which has been moved forward one foot without breaking, and stands up isolated all in one piece. There is a wall of another palace which has fallen back more than three feet, without a crack. Here is a beam of one house, which has thrust itself into another house. There is half a bedstead, the other half of which lies no one knows where. All the tiles of one building are huddled together in one spot on the roof, crushed and broken up as small as if they had been pounded. The rafters of another building are all bare, the tiles having blown no one can see where. In a stable, on the bare ground, men are lying, the bodies one by one as they are being dug out, most of them are in their night dresses, having been crushed as they were quietly sleeping, their features and forms are so disfigured that one cannot look at them without shuddering, their nostrils, ears and mouths are stopped up with earth, the white dust has everywhere pierced through the skin. Here is the body of a man holding close to his chest a child, probably his own child, the skulls of both are shattered. There are two young men in each other’s arms, probably brothers, the chest and backs of both are crushed. Near them is another youth covered with blood, he was a clerk in a government office. He has his eyeglass still stuck in his right eye. He was probably reading or writing when he was struck. There are some mauled past recognition and others that seem unhurt and look as if they were sleeping. Without exaggeration one-third of the town is dismantled and more than 1,000 families are literally without a home. About 1,000 more have only one little corner of what was once their house to shelter them. The dead are 32 and the seriously hurt about half a score.—Det. Post.