About 100 people, most of them women and children, were killed and Koynanagar, the hydel project town 250 miles from Bombay, was reduced to ruins in the worst earthquake that rocked the whole of the western half of peninsular India early this morning [December 11]. The severe tremors which were felt over a vast area from Surat in the north to Hyderabad and Bangalore in the south around 4-20 a.m., also caused at least three other deaths, one each in Bombay, Sangli and Akkalkot. According to official reports reaching Bombay, at least another 1,300 were injured, 300 of them seriously, in house collapses in Koynanagar and its environs. Most of the casualties were trapped under the debris of their residences while they were asleep. Two hundred of the seriously wounded were admitted in hospital in nearby Karad town, and the other 100 in Sangli and Satara towns a little farther away. The shock, which was recorded at 4-22 a.m. by the Poona Observatory, was classified as a “major shock” and the rattling and rumbling caused by it were heard for about 45 seconds. To-day’s tremor was preceded by four minor ones between 11-25 last night [December 10] and 2-05 a.m. to-day [December 11]. It was followed by a series of minor shocks of which nearly 50 had been recorded till 3-20 p.m. to-day [December 11] at Poona. Another casualty of the quake was power supply in Western Maharashtra, which failed as the Koyna Project power house at Pophali went out of commission due to the impact of the quake.
