The American Red Cross Bulletin (Vol. IV, No. 2, April 1909)

by American National Red Cross

EARLY DAYS OF RELIEF

BY W. BAYARD CUTTING, JR.
Special Representative of the American National Red Cross.

Mr. W. Bayard Cutting, the American Vice-Consul at Milan, who was promptly sent to the scene of the disaster by the Ambassador at Rome to look after American and consular interests, was requested by the American Red Cross to act there as its Special Representative, and $15,000 was placed at his disposition to meet any immediate needs, especially those of any Americans he might discover among the victims. Mr. Cutting most kindly consented to act in this capacity. He was on the scene within a few days of the catastrophe, and his interesting article written for the Bulletin gives a graphic description of the early days of the relief work. The Red Cross is not only indebted to Mr. Cutting for this article, but for the valuable aid he rendered to the Society.—Editor.

When the steamer Nord Amerika entered the harbor of Messina on the morning of January 2, 1909, there was no excited rush among the passengers to get a first view of the town. We knew that we were about to have one of the greatest impressions of our life, to see a panorama of desolation and destruction such as the world has rarely presented in the history of man. Amid that desolation we were to live for days and weeks, and to perform trying duties; new sensations would soon crowd upon us; curiosity would be satisfied all too soon. Meanwhile there was no reason for hurrying to a scene of horror. Thus we sat uneasily in the saloon, where we had spent a night of seasick misery, and tried to munch dry bread and ship’s biscuit, inventing pretexts for not going on deck. We all dreaded the flames and the ruins, and the corpses floating through the straits, up and down with the tide. Then the engines stopped; we had arrived, and must go ashore. Each of us stuffed a loaf or a biscuit into his pocket, and had a look at his revolver. Those few who had water-bottles filled them. With nerves braced to face any horrors, we ascended the companion way.

HON. JAMES TANNER
Copyright, Harris-Ewing, ’08.

We saw what the traveler to Messina has seen through the centuries—one of the beautiful places of the earth bathed in the light of the rising sun. We were close to the shore, it is true, and could make out the ruins. The palaces fronting along the stately Marina were roofless. There were gaps between the palaces—white heaps of debris. Toppling buildings, and houses without outer walls, like children’s doll houses, could be made out. Here and there out of a roof came flames and curling smoke. But to see all this one had to look for it. What attracted the eye, and compelled attention through the magical appeal of its beauty, was a broad expanse of still water, protected from the sea by a projecting point of land; then a flat water front, two or three miles long; and behind, circle after circle of hills, bewildering in their rich variety of form and color. This was the real Messina, you felt, what an ancient phraseology would call its formal and final causes. With those fertile hills, with this spacious harbor, situated on a principal trade route, Messina would always be a city. Houses and inhabitants there would always be to embody the Messina idea, to fulfill the Messina purpose.

Hon. W. Bayard Cutting, Jr. U. S. Vice-Consul at Milan. Special Representative of the American Red Cross.

The port was filled with ships, flying the flags of many nations. Boatmen in rowboats surrounded the Nord Amerika and offered to take us ashore. There was nothing catastrophic or even dramatic in their appearance and manner. I was almost disappointed to see them so well dressed, and pleased, on the other hand, to observe that they did not attempt to bargain. From the boatmen, as a matter of fact, when I talked to them, I first derived that strong impression of the oriental affinity of the Sicilians which deepened with every day of my stay in Messina. Their mood was one of submission, unsurprised and unassertive, to the hard hand of fate. They did not rebel nor complain, and on the other hand they would not strive. Life had ceased to have any value; why trouble about its prolongation? It was folly to think of building a comfortable house, when there was no one left to occupy it; or to earn money which could bring no sweetness. So most of them sat idly in the streets, or under the roof of the market, and took what food was put before them; or stood watching the soldiers dig in their own homes, where their families were buried, without raising a hand to help. The few who worked, like our boatmen, did not care what pay they received. A piece of bread they were glad to get; but when it was a matter of money, one lira or five was all the same.

This apathy of the native population, amounting to a kind of stupor, since it abolished even begging, stood out sharply before us, when we went ashore, in contrast to the activity of the military forces. As we turned to the left down the long Marina—we had landed near the northern extremity of the town and it was clear that the center of things was far to the south—the way was so crowded that we could not walk more than two abreast, and were often obliged to fall into single file. The Marina is a broad promenade along the water’s edge; but at least half its width was blocked with debris from the palaces at the back; and on the water side the way was stopped by impediments of all kinds; piles of lumber, blanket heaps and rude huts put up for temporary shelter—tarpaulins spread over poles, for the most part. As we walked down the middle, picking our way among the cracks and fissures in the ground, we were constantly making way for troops of soldiers with spades and pick-axes over their shoulders. Almost equally numerous were the parties bearing long lines of litters. They were marching in our direction or else out of side streets to our right; and as they passed we looked nervously at each burden, to see whether the face was uncovered. Sometimes it was; occasionally even the occupant of the litter was raised on his elbow, staring with uncomprehending curiosity at the crowd on either side. More often no face was exposed; then we knew that the man was one of those dead who encumbered the path to the living. No bodies were touched, we knew, unless they actually impeded the work of rescue. Otherwise they must be left alone; the living had the first claim. Yet the line of litters was unending.

Illustrating the Capriciousness of the Earthquake.

Soldiers Bearing a Wounded Man Rescued on the Seventh Day After the Earthquake.

On our right the view of the town was screened by a line of fairly intact house fronts. The principal palaces of Messina had flanked the Marina; their outer walls had resisted bravely, on the whole. Such glimpses as we got of the interiors made it clear that those walls were mere shells; still they gave to the Marina a deceptive appearance of solidity. Between the palaces, however, came long heaps of mere debris, thirty or forty feet high. One of them we knew must be our consulate; but which? No one could tell us. No one could even direct us to the military headquarters, or to the office of the Prefect. The Italian officers knew less than the native inhabitants; they were strangers and newcomers like ourselves. We walked ahead at random towards the curve at the southern end of the harbor where masts and funnels were most numerous. Occasionally, as we passed a side street less completely blocked than the rest, we got a view of the interior of the town—an incoherent extravagance of ruin such as no pen can describe. The street always ended in a mountainous mass of wreckage; but the houses at the sides had assumed every variety of fantastic attitude. Beams and pillars crossing at absurd angles; windows twisted to impossible shapes, floors like “montagnes russes;” roofs half detached and protruding, preserved in place quite inexplicably. And then front walls torn away, laying bare the interior of apartments. In the same house one room would be a heap of wreckage, and its neighbor absolutely intact, with the music open at the piano, a marked book on the table, and the Italian Royal Family looking down from the walls. A third room perhaps held nothing but a chandelier, but that chandelier in perfect condition, without a broken globe. No two houses were alike; the earthquake had picked its victims here and there, following no predictable rule. Sometimes the victims could be seen lying in their own houses. Here and there a rope of knotted sheets hanging from a window showed where someone had escaped. And everywhere solitude and silence, save for the sound of the pick and the shovel. Only the soldiers and officials were allowed in the town: all others must remain on the Marina.