End of a Capital

One morning last week seismographs all over the U. S. trembled under their little glass cases. At Fordham University, Jesuit Father Joseph Lynch looked at the squiggles on his instrument's record sheet. He could see that heavy temblors were shaking the earth's crust about 2,150 miles away, but seismologists are used to such things. They happen somewhere every few days. Father Lynch said:

"It was not a very intense or violent earthquake, as earthquakes go. It was not as intense, for instance, as the Naples earthquake [TIME, Aug. 4]. The most violent quake in recent history happened a year ago last November when 13 transatlantic cables were destroyed."

An hour later Herbert Hoover looked up from his desk in Washington as reporters were admitted for their daily conference. Said he, in effect:

"I have just heard that Managua has been rocked by an earthquake and is now burning. I have notified the Red Cross so that they might go to the city's aid. The Army and Navy will co-operate."

It was a hot, still morning in Managua, Nicaragua's capital. U. S. Marines in their tents at Campo de Marte mopped their brows and wondered idly at the exuberance with which the Managuan oxcart drivers were shouting, brandishing their goads, yelling insults at honking motorists this particular morning. (A native rumor of "Earthquake weather" had gone the rounds.) Downtown, women and children crowded through the plaster arches and narrow corridors of Managua's covered market to do their Holy Week shopping. At the old dirty-white adobe National Penitentiary Lieut.-Commander Hugo F. A. Baske, U. S. naval doctor, and Quartermaster's Clerk James F. Dickey paused to exchange a word with the acting warden, Lieut. James L. Denham of the U. S. Marines. They stepped inside to inspect the ancient odorous cells.

Suddenly the earth under Managua rumbled and heaved. A 20-ft. stone wall swayed like an elephant's flank, crashed down on Commander Baske and Clerk Dickey, burying them completely. Lieut. Denham who was seven feet behind was felled but not killed by part of the roof. Meantime, screaming with terror, nearly 300 convicts plunged to their death from the yawning, tumbling cells.

The market building fell like a house of cardboard, burst into flames. Water mains burst in the heaving streets. Towers of brownish adobe dust sprang up as buildings tumbled right and left. In six seconds it was all over. All was silent except the groans of the dying, the crackle of the flames.

Every telephone, telegraph and electric light wire in the town was down. S. M. Craige, a former Marine, operator of the Managua radio transmitter, ran out to his station nearly four miles in the country. The station was still standing. He burst in, panting, and sent the first word of Managua's ruin to the outer world. Soon came vivid reports to the U. S. Press. Besides the regular correspondents, several able newshawks happened to be in Managua last week. Dapper Charles J. V. Murphy, a former New York World man, was there preparing a book on the Marines in Nicaragua. All day long he worked with the rescue squads, writing despatches at night by the light of a flashlight. And less than 76 hours after the earthquake, U. S. newspaper readers and cinemaddicts 2,000 miles away were looking at pictures of the disaster. Specially chartered planes flew films of rival agencies via Havana and Miami to Atlanta whence telephoto machines flashed them on. Picture men boasted: "A record!"

Relief. U. S. Marines have been in Nicaragua since 1912. Nicaragua may be an independent republic on the statute books, but officials and citizens instinctively realized last week that U. S. responsibility in a Nicaraguan disaster is precisely like that of Great Britain in an Egyptian disaster. Immediately after the 'quake, all available planes of Pan American Airways were placed at the disposal, not of homeless President Jose Maria Moncada, sleeping in a tent last week with his new Presidential Palace a mess of pink stucco on the side of La Loma. an extinct volcano, but of U. S. Acting Secretary of the Navy Ernest Lee Jahncke.

Emergency meetings of the Red Cross were held in Washington. Ernest J. Swift, who had charge of Red Cross relief work in the Santo Domingo hurricane last fall (TIME, Sept. 15, 22), took the first train to Miami, flew in a Pan American plane to Managua, took charge of all emergency feeding stations.

The U. S. Fleet had just broken up after battle practice in the Caribbean. On the Atlantic and Pacific, ships swung round, raced for Nicaragua. The hospital ship Relief was off the west coast of Mexico, bound for San Diego. Knowing that every bed would be needed, convalescent sailors went over the side in lifeboats, were transferred to cruisers and destroyers while the Relief plowed south to Corinto.

Up from the Canal Zone came the cruiser Rochester. The transport Chaumont, due at Corinto in four days, raced at full speed with blankets, tents, medical supplies. The aircraft carrier Lexington raced out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at 28 knots, outdistanced her destroyer convoy. Next day, 150 miles off the coast of Central America, she swung into the wind and a covey of fire planes roared off her flying deck. In a little more than four hours they landed in Managua with physicians, surgeons, loads of urgently needed anaesthetics. (By the previous midnight, four Navy surgeons had performed more than 500 operations, mostly without anaesthetics.)

From Rome, Pope Pius cabled a special relief fund.

Tension. Meanwhile, Managua burned and horror began piling on horror. Wrote Correspondent Murphy:

"Strangest of all is the quiet that has come. When first I arrived in Managua I believed it to be the noisiest place in the world. . . . One might imagine that workers screamed at the top of their voices, that every automobile blew at least two blasts to every block. . . . But now there is everywhere a quiet as of a tomb. The natives, in the appalling realization of what has happened within two short days, have suddenly been stricken dumb."

Most of them fled to the mountains, down the dusty roads to Granada, but not all. In the ripped-up streets of Managua little groups knelt in prayer all day before religious statues dragged from the crumbling churches and houses, set up on the curb. Meanwhile Marines and soldiers of the U. S.-officered Guardia Nacional worked till the soles burned off their shoes carrying stretchers, pulling bodies from the wreckage, fighting the flames. In three days after the earthquake more than 800 bodies had been buried or accounted for. But there could be no more burials. Managua was beginning to smell. The patrols searching for bodies now carried cans of kerosene which they poured on corpses where found. The smell of cremation now mingled with the smell of decay.

Lieut.-Colonel Daniel I. Sultan with a battalion of U. S. Army engineers was in charge of an expedition surveying the proposed route of the Nicaraguan Inter-Ocean Canal (see p. 18). Arriving in Managua, he took charge of the Marines' fire-fighting detachments. There was no water, no fire apparatus. Dynamite was his only weapon. Marine squads blew up a ring of houses round the blaze, fought the creeping flames with spadefuls of earth and adobe dust.

More Tension, U. S. Minister Matthew Elting Hanna was on vacation in Guatemala on the fatal Tuesday. Reporters found him. on his swift return to the wreck that had been his home, standing beside a suitcase with Mrs. Hanna. "That suitcase," said Minister Hanna dully, "contains all we have in the world." It was not quite all. As the U. S. Legation crumbled and blazed, the Hannas' pet green parrot had slipped from his cage, crawled down a ledge and flopped into the arms of an Army officer. Nerves stretched to the breaking point. Immediately after the shocks, the city had been put under martial law. No one rested, but soldiers relieved from digging in the ruins patrolled the city with fixed bayonets. Col. Frederic C. Bradman of the Marines ordered the patrols to shoot all stray dogs on sight (fear of rabies) and anyone caught looting. The crack of a sentry's rifle tumbled one man like a jackrabbit; in his pockets were seven $1,000 bills, dug from the shell of one of Ma nagua's banks. Four other persons, thirst-crazed, were shot by Marines as they tried to drink the polluted lake waters. Soldiers shot two grave diggers who refused to go on with their heart-breaking task. Saturday night, as Marines snatched a moment of sleep, a loud fusillade rang out. A U. S. lieutenant and a Guardia sergeant. both nerve-frazzled beyond self-control, had gone at each other with pistol and submachine gun. The lieutenant was killed.

Natives trembled at the persistent rumors that bandit armies were gathering to loot the stricken city. Marine officers paid no attention, knowing that the bandits knew perfectly well how thoroughly Managua was protected. A graceful gesture came from none other than Augusto Sandino, the insurrectionist who for years has been waging warfare against U. S. troops. By grapevine to Mexico it was announced that "all divisions" of the Sandino army would maintain an armistice until the emergency was passed.

End of a City, As the hot days wore on, people everywhere realized one great difference between this earthquake and most others of recent date. San Francisco. Tokyo, Naples have been wrecked by earthquake. All have risen again. But Managua, Nicaragua's capital, seems doomed. There is no money to rebuild the city. Last week the brewery and the power house were the only habitable buildings still standing. Hour by hour it became increasingly apparent that the city must be, like the ancient Mayan cities of Mexico, abandoned to the vulture, the lizard, the tapir, the rank jungle. Managua was a pretty city; in its 76 years as the capital it had flourished. Among the adobe shacks were handsome villas, gardened palaces, pretentious public buildings. Managua was chosen as the capital in 1855 to end the interminable bloody rivalry of Nicaragua's chief cities: Granada, stronghold of the Conservatives, and Leon of the Liberals. For years these two, like Florence and Siena, battled bloodily to be the capital. Last week Granada and Leon were ready to resume this fight.

Before flying north to report to his editor, one U. S. correspondent took a last look at the city. The wreck of a saloon, split open to the sun, stood on the outskirts. From the one remaining wall still swung the sign SANGRE Y ARENA-- Blood and Sand.

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