No, the city was not decimated

From StoneHome

This is why using t3h big w0rds doesn't make you sound teh sm4rtz0rz.

Decimation doesn't mean that a city is levelled, that a budget is wiped out, that catastrophe has struck and everything plus your dog larry has been left a smoking crater. The building that was turned to rubble in an earthquake, the animal population set to plague, the village under the meteor: these things have been annihilated, destroyed, pulverized and razed. They're scorched earth. They're dust. Vapor.

But they ain't decimated. No, sir.

Decimation was an ancient Roman practice. Romans were a brutally expansionist military regieme. One of their tactics was to offer to a region to allow to be taken over peacefully. Should the region resist, when the Roman legions inevitably walked the streets of this new Roman province, the entire town would be lined up on a main street. Then, every tenth individual, regardless of age, gender, status or health - just wherever they stood in line - was killed. 10% of whatever remained after the military conquest was over were simply wiped out at random. And, given that families tended to stand together, it tended to be well distributed throughout the town's bloodlines.

This was decimation - the killing of one tenth. When used properly, even metaphorically, decimation doesn't refer to the wiping out of a population. Decimation refers to dropping one out of every ten elements. It's a small but significant loss.