Messina earthquake

Earthquake

Date: December 28, 1908

Place: Strait of Messina, near Messina, Italy

Magnitude: 7.5

Result: 120,000 dead, numerous communities destroyed or severely damaged

In 1900 the Italian island of Sicily in the Mediterranean had a population of 3.8 million people. The island is separated from the province of Calabria on the Italian mainland by the 20-mile-long Strait of Messina. The strait is only 2 miles wide in the north, near the city of Messina, but expands to 10 miles in the south, near Reggio di Calabria. Even though much of the population of both Sicily and Calabria was employed in agriculture, one-fourth of it was concentrated in towns with populations of over 25,000, which proved disastrous during the earthquake in 1908. The Sicilian port city of Messina, which is located on the northern coast of the strait, claimed a population of 158,812 in 1905. It became Italy’s fourth largest port, from which much of the citrus export was shipped to northern Europe. Ten miles southeast of Messina across the strait in Calabria is Reggio, another important Italian port city, with a population of 45,000 in 1908.

Sicily and the southern Italian region of Calabria are on the edge of the line that marks the collision between the European and the African continental plates. The mountain range that runs down the length of Italy and curves in southern Italy becomes the Calabrian Arc. The Messina Strait is on the southern point of the Calabrian Arc. The severe curvature of the Calabrian Arc causes lateral stretching of the earth’s crust under the strait. Most of the earthquakes in Sicily and Calabria result from movement along the Messina fault, a fracture in the earth’s crust that is 43 miles (70 kilometers) long and almost 19 miles (30 kilometers) wide. Between 1793 and 1908, twenty different earthquakes racked Messina and Reggio, although many were minor disturbances.

Quake. Earthquakes that reached at least magnitude 7 on the Richter scale have occurred repeatedly in Sicily and Calabria. An earthquake in 1783 resulted in 29,515 casualties, and another one in Calabria on September 8, 1905, produced property damage in excess of $10 million (1905 value). The most devastating earthquake to strike this region after 1783, however, occurred on December 28, 1908. The epicenter of this magnitude 7.5 earthquake was in the Messina Strait. The focus of the earthquake was 5 miles (8 kilometers) below the strait. Several weeks before December 28, shock waves were recorded in the region.

The day before the catastrophe was a mild day in Messina. That evening Giuseppe Verdi’s opera A da was being performed at the local theater. People came from Reggio di Calabria, across the strait, to attend the performance, and the hotels in town were completely full. At 5:21 a.m., while it was still dark and most people were sound asleep, the ground moved for thirty-five seconds and destroyed or damaged an area from Terresa to Faro on the Sicilian coast and from Lazzaro to Scilla on the Calabrian coast. The shock, which some survivors compared to the noise of a fast train going through a tunnel, was most intense at the northern entrance to the strait, but it was felt in an area 100 miles in radius.

The earthquake’s 30-mile path of destruction directly affected 40 communities north and south of Messina on both sides of the strait. The devastation was greatest in large towns, such as Messina and Reggio. Aftershocks were felt as late as early January, 1909. The initial shock was followed by a tsunami, or tidal wave, which reached heights of 8 feet in Messina and 15 feet in Reggio. The waves extended 219 yards (200 meters) inland and reached the island of Malta 115 minutes after the earthquake. In Messina the force of the water pushed a 2,000-ton Russian steamer from a dry dock into the bay. On the shore, embankments collapsed 6 feet under water, and cracks appeared on the ground 109 yards (100 meters) long and half a yard (0.6 meter) deep. In Reggio the wharf was wrecked, and freight railroad cars near a major ferry station overturned.

Few deaths resulted from either the tsunami or fires. Most of the 120,000 people who perished died because poorly constructed houses collapsed in the densely populated towns of Messina and Reggio. One-third of the population living in the 30-mile impact area perished. In Messina the dead included soldiers of the local garrison, who died when their military barracks collapsed, and the U.S. Consul and his wife. The last survivors, a boy and two siblings, were rescued from the ruins eighteen days after the earthquake. Until order was restored by the Italian military, a number of criminals, who were freed when the prison in Messina collapsed, added to the carnage by pillaging. Witnesses claimed that former prisoners cut off fingers and ears of earthquake victims in order to collect wedding rings and other jewelry.

Gauged by the Modified Mercalli scale, the epicentral intensity of the destruction measured XI, which is only one level below the highest measurement possible on this scale. Both housing and infrastructure came down in clouds of dust and stones. The quake immediately destroyed the region’s municipal electric, gas, and water facilities. Ports and banks were damaged or destroyed, and the telegraph cable was cut. The principal street in Messina, Corso Cavour, was demolished. In addition, 87 of Messina’s 91 churches were destroyed, including the famous Norman cathedral. More than 1 million tons of debris had to be removed from Messina alone.

In addition to the destruction of the towns’ infrastructure, in Messina and Reggio a majority of housing was completely destroyed. The most important reason for the extent of the destruction was the fact that most buildings were poorly built. In this poverty-stricken land, housing had to be constructed by local labor using available local material. Most walls were erected using rounded stones held together with weak mortar. Walls had weak girders and unsupported cross beams to support the weight of heavy roofs. These shortcomings of local construction had a long tradition. They were well known to French geologist Déodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, who described the poorly constructed housing in Messina in the aftermath of the earthquake of 1783. After that natural disaster, the Bourbon government of the kingdom of Sicily recommended construction of two-story timber-frame houses with the space between the timbers filled with stone embedded in mortar. This type of construction, called baraccata, was not enforced. Only the very rich could afford houses that were constructed adequately. A few of these baraccata buildings actually survived the earthquake of 1908 in Messina and in Castiglione. A doctor’s house in Messina stood through the quake because its foundations were nearly 5 feet thick and the masonry was made of expensive lime and puzzolan mortar.

Response. Predictably, immediate reaction to the misery caused by the earthquake varied. The historian Gaetano Salvemini, a professor at the University of Messina who lost his whole family, lamented that he should have killed himself too. In one small Sicilian community that was not destroyed by the shock, people gathered in the church after the tremor. From there they followed their priest, who was carrying a statue of a saint to the center of the village in order to seek divine protection for the community. Journalists who visited destroyed communities reported that the population was apathetic, not religious, and gave the appearance of stupefaction and “mental paralysis.” Outside Italy, the Russian poet Aleksandr Blok, reflecting on the achievements of modern civilization, asked whether fate was attempting to show how elemental forces could humiliate humankind, which in its hubris thought it could control and rule nature through technology.

Messina received foreign assistance two days before Reggio, where communications were interrupted longer. At first, help came from a variety of foreign ships, although one Italian warship in the region appeared soon after the catastrophe. The north German steamer Theropia left Naples on the afternoon of December 28 and reached the strait by daybreak the next day to offer assistance. By December 30, Russian and British warships were actively involved in rescue work. The injured were sent to Naples by ship and to Palermo and Catania by train.

Because of the initial lack of communication, the Italian government in Rome reacted slowly. Early reports suggested the loss of a few thousand people. Only after receiving a report from the prefect of Messina twenty-four hours after the disaster did the government appreciate the seriousness of the situation. King Victor Emmanuel III arrived in Messina by December 30. The pope offered financial assistance, but, because of health reasons, he could not make the journey to the stricken area. Systematic relief work did not come until a week later, when the Italian premier sent soldiers and imposed martial law. On January 9, 1909, the army secured Messina and helped in the rescue work. Looters were shot on sight. Military control lasted until February 14.

The world community reacted to the catastrophe with both an outpouring of sympathy and massive financial aid. By February 27, 1909, forty-three foreign countries, including even Peru, had provided assistance to this Italian region. The United States Congress voted for an assistance package of $800,000, and the Red Cross donated $1 million to the relief work by April, 1909. Additional funds were raised by a variety of papers and journals, ranging from the Christian Herald to The New York Times. The New York paper devoted front-page coverage to the earthquake from December 29, 1908, to January 6, 1909. In addition, it published appeals for help from various American organizations, particularly the Italian American community.

In Italy a Committee to Aid was organized to assist the victims and to guide reconstruction. This committee included a number of politicians who wanted the aid to benefit primarily landowners and professionals rather than the masses. Peasants were urged to return to work on local citrus-fruit farms rather than rely on welfare in other parts of Italy. The duke of Aosta suggested that because of their poverty, the poor had lost little in the earthquake. The most extreme solution to the problem of recovery was suggested by the journalist Giuseppe Piazza, who thought that the Italian navy should bombard the ruins of Messina to the ground so that the city could be abandoned. Nonetheless, the population recovered and reached 177,000 by 1921. Also, by 1912, commerce in Messina reached 1909 levels and its port was again Italy’s fourth-largest. Still, the earthquake left reminders. In 1958, 10,000 inhabitants of Messina still lived in “temporary” housing that had been built in 1909.

One long-term consequence of the earthquake was that it stimulated scientific studies on earthquake engineering. In early 1909 a committee was appointed, composed of nine engineers and five professors of engineering. Its task, as defined by the Ministry of Public Works, was to recommend earthquake-resistant buildings, which could be afforded by rural communities that had to rely on local raw material. The committee published its findings in Rome in 1909. Like many earlier studies after previous earthquakes, it summarized the weakness of housing construction in Messina and Reggio, ranging from poor mortar quality to unrestrained support beams. The committee recommended two-story wood-frame houses with walls filled with masonry. Based on these and subsequent findings, the Italian government between 1923 and 1930 passed more stringent construction laws, which in 1930 were more rigorous than those issued in earthquake-ridden Japan at that time. The task of meeting the challenge of earthquakes in this region is not finished. In 1970, the Italian government initiated studies on how to build a 2-mile (3-kilometer) single-span bridge across the Strait of Messina.

Bibliography

Bosworth, R. J. B. “The Messina Earthquake of 28 December 1908.” European Studies Review 11 (1981): 189-206.

Hobbs, William H. “The Latest Calabrian Disaster.” The Popular Science Monthly 74 (February, 1909): 134-140.

Hood, Alexander Nelson. “Some Personal Experiences of the Great Earthquake.” The Living Age 43 (May 8, 1909): 355-365.

Mulargia, F., and E. Boschi. “The 1908 Messina Earthquake and Related Seismicity.” In Earthquakes: Observation, Theory, and Interpretation, edited by E. Boschi and H. Kanamori. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1983.

Neri, G., et al. “Tectonic Stress and Seismogenic Faulting in the Area of the 1908 Messina Earthquake, South Italy.” Geophysical Research Letters 31 (2004).

The New York Times. December 28, 1908-January 6, 1909.

Perret, Frank A. “The Messina Earthquake.” The Century: Illustrated Monthly Magazine 55 (April, 1909): 921-928.

Wright, Charles W. “The World’s Most Cruel Earthquake.” National Geographic 10 (April, 1909): 373-396.