The soldiers had to shoot the horses and dogs for eating the corpses, and the thieves for pilfering. The horses had escaped from their stables, which were broken by the earthquake, and the dogs had come in from the country. And besides the pilfering they told me of other things the doing of which had better be ignored by those who seriously cultivate the belief that civilisation and education have already so transformed human nature that all restraints may be safely removed, things which, nevertheless, were done by human beings in Messina while the houses were tottering during the closing days of 1908 and the opening weeks of 1909. I inquired whether the townspeople were themselves
guilty of these horrors and they said: No. The bad things were done by people who came into the city from the country, like the dogs, and across the straits from Calabria to take advantage of the catastrophe. As my friend Peppino Fazio in Catania put it:
“The earthquake was very judiciously managed; it killed only the wicked townspeople; it did not touch the good ones, they all escaped.”
Giuseppe’s brother, Giovanni Platania, is a scientific man and a professor; he went often from Catania to Messina during the early part of 1909 to study the behaviour of the sea during the earthquake—the maremoto. He has embodied the results of his researches in an opuscolo on the subject Il Maremoto dello Stretto di Messina del 28 Dicembre 1908 (Modena. Società Tipografica Modenese, 1909). It took him twelve hours to return to Catania from one of his first visits; the journey in ordinary times is performed by the express in two hours and a half. There was no charge for the tickets because it was the policy of the authorities to empty the town; in this way malefactors who escaped from the prison got easily away. In the train was a woman who talked, saying that no one could blame her for travelling to Catania free, especially as she had not deserved to be put in prison—she had been put there for nothing. There was also a man who did not exactly say he was a thief, but he informed his fellow-travellers that the bundle he had with him had been confided to his care by the padrone of his house. There was no reason why he should have told them this, no one had asked him about his bundle, and Giovanni drew his own conclusions.
GIULIO ADAMO
In Trapani I talked with another friend, a doctor, Giulio Adamo of Calatafimi. Communication was broken and it was not until the evening of the 29th that they began to
know in Trapani that there had been an earthquake in Messina. Giulio went with others by train to Milazzo and the train could go no further. They continued the journey by boat from Milazzo to Messina, where he arrived on the 30th. When they approached the city and saw the row of houses facing the harbour where the Albergo Trinacria was, they thought the disaster could not have been so very great. But it was only the facciata that was standing, the houses behind were down. There was great disorder, heaps of bodies, no water to drink because the pipes were broken, and for the three days Giulio was there they only had bread from Palermo and the oranges which were in the railway-waggons.
CECÈ LUNA
In Palermo I talked with another doctor, Cecè (Francesco) Luna, of Trapani, whose acquaintance I made many years ago on Monte Erice when he was there as a student in villeggiatura. In September, 1909, I found him in the children’s hospital at Palermo. As soon as news of the earthquake reached the city, the Regina Margherita was fitted out to help the wounded and Cecè went in her among the doctors. When they arrived at Messina, they could neither enter the harbour nor take anyone on board because they had to obey orders. It was raining, the sea was rough and covered with little boats full of fugitives, some unhurt, some wounded. One boat contained a young man holding an umbrella over his mother, who was wounded and lying on two tables.
“I am strong. I can wait seven or eight days without food, it is not for me, it is for my mother.”