6.1 Catastrophes, plagues, failed harvests, animal pests, earthquakes

Certainly each form of land contains the threat of one or more nuisances and catastrophes happen everywhere. Catastrophes in Bessarabia were numerous, especially in the beginning phase of the colonies. Krasna was also affected.

In the beginning years the foreign climate and poor housing and nutrition situations were the cause of large numbers of sick people and high death rates in the colonies. Epidemics were disastrous. The plague struck in 1829. It was spread by the arrival of Russian troops returning from the Turkish War. Entire families succumbed to the plague in Krasna and the neighboring villages of Klöstitz and Alt-Arzis. The cholera, which raged in Krasna in 1831, took many lives. Smallpox and diphtheria came in later years. Weiß ¹⁾ says that cholera and typhoid never ended in the first years.

Livestock was a farmer’s mainstay. He needed the animals as much as he did the land. In cases of epidemics the farmer was helpless and there were no veterinarians. Eduard Ruscheinsky ²⁾) reports that livestock epidemics were rampant in 1827, 1834, 1839, 1844 and 1899. They were different kinds of epidemics, ranging from hoof and mouth disease to mouth rot to scabies. There are also reports of a Siberian plague.

Bessarabia is prone to earthquakes. Strong quakes were registered in Krasna in the years of 1828, 1830 and 1838. The one in 1838 did some damage to houses. There were also later quakes. Mostly, they did not cause much damage.

According to a chronicle of Tarutino ³⁾ the earthquake of March 29, 1934 was the strongest the colony had had so far. As if nature wanted to place an exclamation mark there, after the Germans left Bessarabia, another quake struck, a devastating one hit on November 10, 1940 and it measured 7.3 on the Richter scale. This quake caused massive damage all over Bessarabia. E. Ruscheinsky reports: During the night…. our homeland and almost all of Rumania was hit by a strong earthquake. Our history in Krasna ended with such a strong quake as we never before have experienced in our 126 years of existence there.

Note: Damages in Krasna, also See 9, The Village Krasna since the German Exodus until Today.

Normally the Kogälnik was a harmless body of water. At the time of snow melt and during strong rains, it would overflow its banks. Normally, damage was at a minimum, although there was talk about a catastrophic flooding. It happened on the night from September 2 to September 3 in 1927. Krasna was one of the hardest hit places. Eduard Ruscheinsky has filed an extensive report about this ⁴⁾). He notes damage of 475,000 lei. One Krasna resident was killed. Krasna most likely looked like the following photos taken in Beresina.

Image 90: Kienzle, Robert: Thunderstorm in Northern Bessarabia. Flooding of the Kogälnik Valley published in the Heimatkalender 1985 (Homeland Calendar 1985), pages 108-118

When the colonists first arrived they found a number of wild animals there, which could be considered a threat or plague for agriculture.

• Snakes, some of them poisonous, would slither into homes and stables. Their numbers were reduced, but they were never eliminated.
• Wolves appeared mostly in the wintertime and entered the farmers’ stables. Many hunts almost eliminated them.
• Grain beetles and the wine louse were a terrible plague for the colonists.
• Grasshoppers were a pest in the South Russian steppe lands during the 1820's. “In Wolken” (clouds) of them swarmed and, according to an old report, wherever they landed not a single plant was left standing. Grasshoppers came to Krasna in the years of 1825, 1826, 1827, 1836 and 1847. They destroyed a large portion of the harvest. The grasshopper plague of 1824/1825 was so extensive in the Black Sea region that the Russian government had to extend the repayment time for the loans given to the colonists. According to reports in several village chronicles, they had completely disappeared by about 1875.

Image 91: The Ziesle Mouse, also Called a Sand Hare

• A constantly recurring pest was “Zieselmäuse” (Ziesel mice), which damaged many of the young plants in the early spring and summer. E. Ruscheinsky remarks about this pest in Krasna: The greatest enemy of the Budschak farmer is the Zieselmouse (ground hare, sand hare) and it did extensive damage in the years of 1822, 1823, 1824 and 1848.

Combating pests was limited to manual measures. (Plucking bugs off the plants, smoking out, drowning or catching Ziesel mice and the killing and scaring away of grasshoppers were attempts at extermination.) The effort was tedious and not very effective; there were no chemicals available for pest control.

Max Riehl remembers: Communal work also included the battle against the Ziesel mouse and the hamster (Kormaus). Following the annual assessment of the pests, it was determined how many of these pests each owner had to capture per hectare of land. As visual proof of the captured animals, the animal tails had to be brought to the chancellery. People were fined for shortfalls. The money was used to pay the people who had delivered the proof or paying landless people, who made an extra income from this task.
The hunt went like this. After the animals came out of hibernation, the farmers went into the fields, armed with a sand hare hook, a barrel of water on the wagon, and went to the field with buckets and spades. Places, which the animals used to sun themselves in the spring sunshine, were sought out. Once an animal was spotted as it attempted to slip into its burrow, the 1.5 meter long sand hare hook, which was tipped with a barbed hook, was thrust into the hole and the pest was usually caught. If the critter managed to avoid the hook, water was poured into the hole, forcing the animal out. When it came out, it was killed with the spade and the tail was collected as proof of the catch. Then came the next hole!
Hamsters were dug out of their burrows with the spade. Hamster pelts were more valuable than the tails and if it was undamaged and clean it brought as high a price as ten sand hare tails. The hamster tail was also paid for on top of it. There was a big demand for hamster pelts and the hamster almost became extinct.

Climatically caused failed harvests could not be avoided by diligence or progress in agriculture. The reasons were always prolonged periods of drought. Bad harvests, which occurred often, were bad enough, but failed harvests were devastating. It meant that even if people could still be fed from grains on hand in the supply warehouse, (See also 3.1, Supply Magazine) the lack of fodder forced the sale of draft and breeding stock at extremely low prices. The result was that these animals were absent in the following years to handle work or serve as a food source.

In 1833, practically all of South Russia had a harvest failure and subsequent harvests were poor. Cattle and sheep had to be butchered and horses had to be sold or taken to far distant pastures. Krasna had total crop failures due to drought in the years of 1830, 1832-1834, and in 1839. Krasna livestock was almost completely wiped out by the lack of fodder caused by these harvest failures.

K. Faltin, whose report was published by the Odessa Zeitung newspaper on February 11, 1899, describes the results of a drought quite impressively:

Everything dried up, even the stalks…fields were gray, empty and as desolate as the desert, dust clouds covered the land and the pests of bugs, flies and other plagues hummed in the dry and hot air, scaring even the brave…the grass was dried up, the flowers had fallen off and the herds of cattle are lowing in search of the food that does not exist. The animals lost so much weight that some of them had to be butchered in a hurry, another part sold quickly, weaker animals dropped to the ground in sheer exhaustion.

There were also many poor harvests later, a few examples:

• 1918 poor harvest, 1920 drought,
• Failed harvests in 1924 and 1925 and several parts of Bessarabia were starving. The situation in Krasna was also critical. Loans had to be made for 500,000 lei to buy seed for the next planting.
• In 1926 there was no wheat harvest.
• In 1928 there was a total crop failure and many Krasna people became indebted because of the high prices for seed and feed. Due to the great need, the community made a loan of 2.6 million lei.
• In 1939 there was a very weak barley harvest and almost no corn harvest.

The farmers were also hit by hail damage. In 1834, hail destroyed the entire Krasna harvest. This natural occurrence happened again later, but not to this extent. There was also considerable hail damage in the summer of 1939.

Bessarabian weather also was prone to hurricane like storms. There is a report about one of them in 1928, which damaged many of structures. A storm of March 2 and 3 of 1931 also did much damage. The rectory of Krasna lost half of its roof.