Summer Portents

Last week the winds blew and the rains came and they beat upon the earth, which, though it is founded as on a rock, happened to shake violently at the same moment. As if shrugging off the effects of a long, hard winter, the earth twitched, with varying degrees of violence: 1) in a small section around Santa Barbara, Calif, (where last year, to a day, destructive temblors came); 2) over a larger section in the Mediterranean basin, from Italy to Crete and Egypt; 3) and nearer the Equator, at Singapore and in Sumatra. More than 200 humans perished; some 200 Sumatrans; many an Egyptian. At Santa Barbara, 3-year-old Colin Orr perished beneath a tumbling chimney. The town of Padang, Sumatra, collapsed in one thundering crash. Cairo reported over 4,000 houses in ruins. In Crete, the worst damage was demolition of archaeological treasures, especially at the Museum of Candia. Germany felt several shocks; also France, Italy, Southern Rhodesia and the seismograph at Georgetown University (Washington, D. C.). Studying their charts of the globe's temblor areas, scientists had no explanation for the simultaneous shuddering of such widely separated portions of the terrestrial crust, save that earthquakes are all due, ultimately, to redistribution of surface soils by rainfall, causing readjustments to take place in the brittle rock base of Earth's 60-mile crust.* There was much rain everywhere last winter and spring. In Germany, Jugoslavia and Mexico, heavy summer rains last week swelled rivers and lakes far above their margins, flooding mankind out of house, harvest and life. At Leon, Mexico, the Santiago and Gomez rivers burst out upon inhabitants by night, sweeping cattle and humans through the streets, crumbling adobe structures beneath falling walls of water. Confused despatches estimated the destruction far above the flood of 1889 when hundreds of Leonites lost their lives. Terrific lightning displays accompanied the deluge in the Lake Constance region, Germany, killing many as the storms swept northward. The rivers Neckar, Elbe, Weser, Oder and Rhine inundated hayfields, vegetable gardens, vineyards, doing inestimable damage. "All men to the dikes," flashed over the country's telegraph lines.

Along the Danube, 40,000 men, with 10,000 horses and wagons, strove frantically to strengthen dikes and dams, to no avail. Dams burst. Dikes spouted. The Backa region, above Belgrade, one of Europe's richest granaries, became a broad lake. Tens of thousands of city dwellers fled for higher land.

The Vardar River was the offender farther south in Jugoslavia. It rose 22 feet, whirled away bridges, houses, vehicles, pedestrians, killing 150.

*Geologists point out that frequent earthquakes are a blessing in disguise and the more of them that come, the better. If the earth's crust did not frequently adjust itself, tremendous strains would build up, giving way with much more catastrophic results.