One morning last week seismographs all over the U. S. trembled under their little glass cases. At Fordham University, Jesuit Father Joseph Lynch looked at the squiggles on his instrument's record sheet. He could see that heavy temblors were shaking the earth's crust about 2,150 miles away, but seismologists are used to such things. They happen somewhere every few days. Father Lynch said:
"It was not a very intense or violent earthquake, as earthquakes go. It was not as intense, for instance, as the Naples earthquake [TIME, Aug. 4]. The most violent quake in recent history happened a year ago last November when 13 transatlantic cables were destroyed."
An hour later Herbert Hoover looked up from his desk in Washington as reporters were admitted for their daily conference. Said he, in effect:
"I have just heard that Managua has been rocked by an earthquake and is now burning. I have notified the Red Cross so that they might go to the city's aid. The Army and Navy will co-operate."
It was a hot, still morning in Managua, Nicaragua's capital. U. S. Marines in their tents at Campo de Marte mopped their brows and wondered idly at the exuberance with which the Managuan oxcart drivers were shouting, brandishing their goads, yelling insults at honking motorists this particular morning. (A native rumor of "Earthquake weather" had gone the rounds.) Downtown, women and children crowded through the plaster arches and narrow corridors of Managua's covered market to do their Holy Week shopping. At the old dirty-white adobe National Penitentiary Lieut.-Commander Hugo F. A. Baske, U. S. naval doctor, and Quartermaster's Clerk James F. Dickey paused to exchange a word with the acting warden, Lieut. James L. Denham of the U. S. Marines. They stepped inside to inspect the ancient odorous cells.
Suddenly the earth under Managua rumbled and heaved. A 20-ft. stone wall swayed like an elephant's flank, crashed down on Commander Baske and Clerk Dickey, burying them completely. Lieut. Denham who was seven feet behind was felled but not killed by part of the roof. Meantime, screaming with terror, nearly 300 convicts plunged to their death from the yawning, tumbling cells.
The market building fell like a house of cardboard, burst into flames. Water mains burst in the heaving streets. Towers of brownish adobe dust sprang up as buildings tumbled right and left. In six seconds it was all over. All was silent except the groans of the dying, the crackle of the flames.