'Opera Talkie House after Earthquake, May 31st 1935'

Photograph, Quetta, India, 1935.

On 31 May 1935 an earthquake hit Quetta and the surrounding countryside in Baluchistan. It had a magnitude of 7.7 and somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 people died. Several British and Indian Army units took part in the efforts to rescue people from collapsed buildings, retrieve and bury corpses, assist refugees and prevent looting.

From an album of 113 photographs compiled by Captain A G M Steers, Indian Army Ordnance Corps, 1932-1935.