Yugoslavia: Trembling Dawn

In the predawn hours one morning last week, only a few people were stirring in the provincial Yugoslav city of Skoplje, near the Greek border. In the small Hotel Macedonia, facing the railway station, Pilot Aleksander Blagojevic was dressing before going to the airport for an early take-off for Belgrade. Two German girls, tourists from Bremen who were scheduled as passengers on a Belgrade flight, had just left the hotel and were crossing the square to catch the airport bus.

Then, at 5:17 a.m., the earthquake struck Skoplje, jarring awake its 170,000 inhabitants. Pilot Blagojevic felt the first shock and rushed to the window. “The whole railway station folded in on itself,” he recalls, “and the wreckage covered a train that was pulling into the station. For endless seconds you could hear only the thunder of collapsing buildings. In the room next to mine a woman was screaming for help.”

Shot Bricks. The two German girls had not taken 20 steps across the square when the earth trembled. Behind them the Hotel Macedonia swayed from side to side before tumbling its 180 bedrooms and their occupants into the street. The girls began running and bumped into terrified people pouring half-dressed from the houses. Showered by broken glass, dodging falling roof tiles, they were choked and blinded by a cloud of dust. When it cleared, they saw the airport bus half-submerged in debris.

Three French tourists had just driven into a camping site in a Skoplje park. As they got out of their car they saw the surrounding houses crumble. Bricks shot through the air as if fired from cannon—one struck a running man in the head and killed him. Dazed survivors in pajamas wandered among the trees. A man babbled, “I thought it was the hydrogen bomb.” Only one wall of the main post office remained standing. A five-story building shrank in size as the earth swallowed up the two lower floors. People groped through the ruins calling for members of their families. Perhaps the most crippling disaster was the total collapse of three apartment buildings housing physicians and their families.

Cries in the Ruins. Despite the disorder, Pilot Blagojevic’s plane took off for Belgrade on schedule, with the stewardess wearing a bed sheet because she had lost all her clothes. Below him Blagojevic could see the red eyes of kindling fires shining through the dust cloud hanging over the city, but at least he could no longer hear the cries of the injured trapped in the ruins.

The Yugoslav Red Cross broadcast an appeal for blood donations, and one of the first donors was U.S. Ambassador George F. Kennan, on his last day of duty in Belgrade. U.S. Air Force planes from bases all over Europe flew in with help; one entire U.S. Army hospital was moved to the scene from Germany. Twenty Yugoslav medical teams were rushed into Skoplje, army tank trucks brought in desperately needed fresh water, and volunteer workers signed up to help clear away the debris. At least 80% of Skoplje’s buildings were destroyed or badly damaged, all utilities disrupted, and more than 100,000 people made homeless in a few seconds. By week’s end 630 bodies had been recovered and nearby hospitals were crowded with 2,000 injured. As the Yugoslav government proclaimed a two-day mourning period for the victims, authorities estimated that the death toll may reach 5,000.