1.
AV: wrecked buildings on shoreline near Bar, roofs cracked, walls crumbled (3 shots)
0.19

2.
GV: more damaged buildings PAN TO line of cars crushed under debris
0.37

3.
GV: Hotel Slavija cracked and buckled (2 shots)
0.54

4.
GV: wrecked house PAN TO devastated building next door (2 shots)
1.00

5.
CU: Paving stones torn out of ground and cracked PAN TO damaged houses silhouetted.
1.10

6.
CU: wide crack in roadway PAN TO SHOW van slowly crossing crack and bumping as it does so.
1.17

7.
SV: flight of outside stairs PAN UP stairs and ACROSS TO debris nearby and rescue team working in back ground.
1.23

8.
AV: roofless and crumpled buildings.
1.28

9.
AV: homeless people setting up camp.
1.41


When first reports of the disaster came through, Yugoslav President Jose Tito called, in a radio broadcast, for citizens to do all they could for victims of the disaster. The federal government immediately set up an administrative committee to co-ordinate all aspects of aid and rescue.




Initials RH/


TELERECORDING

Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: In Yugoslavia, an estimated tow hundreds people were killed and more than one thousand injured--same critically--when the country's worst-ever earthquakes hit the southern Adriatic coast early on Sunday (15 April). After the first devastating impact, the second quake struck eight hours later. Another sixty after-tremors shook the foundations of buildings during the day. These tremors threatened to increase the initial figure of eighty thousand homeless. Yugoslav scientists said the first quake struck with the force of a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb.

SYNOPSIS: One place that looked to have been torn apart was the resort of Bar, about three hundred kilometres south-west of the capital, Belgrade. Officials said some of the critically injured people had died in hospitals, and the death toll was expected to rise as rescuers in army helicopters reached remote mountain villages. The first quake was worse than the one that devastated Skopje in 1963, killing more than one thousand people. Both of this year's quakes had their epicentre in the Adriatic Basin just off the south-west cast of Yugoslavia.

The first tremor, lasting fifty seconds. destroyed hotels, hospitals, houses, shops and many other buildings. It set off landslides which closed road and rail links in a number of coastal resort towns, and meant that all aid and supplies had to be flown in.

The second quake completed the damage wrought by the first, shattering and collapsing many buildings which had earlier been cracked and undermined. Most of the tourist hotels were either closed or half empty when the quakes struck.

While damage to several resorts was severs, Reuters news agency reported that the impact hit hardest in largely uninhabited mountain regions--keeping the number of casualties below what it could have been.

In the forty-eight hours after the first tremor, more than two hundred aftershocks were recorded, bringing further damage. Emergency camps were set up, but many of the eight thousand homeless had to huddle in the open in bleak and chilly weather.