RUSSIA: Titan Quake

On a night calm and cloudless, last week, Death hovered over the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia.* To the west Mount Ararat slumbered. To the east peasants watched their flocks in the valley of Araxes, allegedly the valley created “Eden” by Jehovah. Suddenly the earth’s crust moved, opened a thousand cracks and fissures throughout the great plain of Alexandropol (now Leninakan). Whirling seething earth-masses hurtled and reeled. With a roar like that of thunder, many of the stone buildings of Leninakan crashed in ruins. All electric, gas, telephone and telegraph equipment were thrown out of commission. When communication was restored it was learned that the Near East Relief buildings at Leninakan still stand. and that neither the 9,000 orphans sheltered there nor their occidental nurses, matrons, doctors suffered a single casualty. Some idea of the material damage and loss of life in the quake area was to be gleaned from the fact that the equivalent of half a million dollars was appropriated by the various Transcaucasian Socialist Soviet Republics for Red Cross and general relief work.

*A component of The Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics of Transcaucasia, which is in turn a component of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics: “U. S. S. R.”: “Russia.”