“The Earthquake Strikes Athens”: How Ta Nea chronicled the deadly 1999 quake

At 2:56 p.m. on September 7, 1999, time seemed to stop for 15 seconds as a 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck Greece. The disaster would become one of the deadliest earthquakes the country had experienced, leaving 143 people dead.

The next day, Ta Nea ran the front-page headline, “The aftermath of the 5.9 terrifies seismologists.” Lyricist Lefteris Papadopoulos wrote that an earthquake of such strength could seize people “by the collar” and push them instantly into the street, away from their homes, frightened and nearly panicked.

“

The aftermath of the 5.9 terrifies seismologists.

Cartoonist Dimitris Hatzopoulos captured the country’s trauma in two lines: “Do you feel it too? Yes... like something is erasing us!...”

“

An earthquake, and a fairly strong one at that, 5.9 on the Richter scale, is no laughing matter. It grabs you by the collar and pushes you instantly into the street, away from your home, frightened, and not to say panicked.

Several factories were hit. The Rikomex factory collapsed, and Ta Nea described the desperate hours that followed. Rescue crews worked through the night to find survivors, joined by scout groups, volunteers and soldiers. Relatives of missing workers stayed at the site, visibly distressed, while some appealed through television crews for a compressor to assist the rescue operation.

Only seven people managed to reach the exits of the Rikomex building and run to safety, the report said. The excerpt ends as two of them tried, long after the earthquake, to write something down on a piece of paper.

“

Do you feel it too? Yes... like something is erasing us!...