THE KILLER EARTHQUAKE

India's most powerful earthquake in fifty years devastates vast areas of Gujarat, with Bhuj town and nearby areas being the worst affected.

V. VENKATESAN in Ahmedabad PRAVEEN SWAMI

THE sheer scale of death defies imagination. Three days after the Republic Day earthquake, India's worst in half a century, no one seems certain just how many people have died or are injured. At least 20,000 people are certain to have been killed, but ma ny believe the final figure may be as high as 30,000, perhaps even more. Rescue teams have yet to reach many of the worst-hit areas in rural Kutch, dusty and drought-hit in the best of times.

When this nightmare ends, others lie ahead. Decomposing bodies buried under rubble, and the lack of potable water in Kutch, threaten disease. And once the rubble is cleared, the gigantic task of reconstruction and rehabilitation will still lie ahead.

About the only thing still standing in Bhuj, Gujarat's worst-hit major town, is its landmark tower. Amazingly, the historic building seems to have survived intact, although almost half of the town's structures were levelled, killing an estimated 10,000 p eople. Bhuj had a population of 150,000. Elsewhere in the town, high-rise buildings keeled over like children's building blocks, before crumbling into a mass of tangled concrete and iron. Bhuj lost its hospitals and clinics, which meant that those who su rvived the carnage had nowhere to turn to for medical aid. Doctors at the town's Indian Air Force base, one of the country's largest and most important, carried out surgical operations round the clock in impromptu theatres pitched on open ground. The ruined runway was rapidly made operational, even though some 150 base personnel or their family members, many of them living outside the IAF camp in multi-storied buildings, are believed to have been killed.

Pilots coming into Bhuj airport at night say it looks a little like what hell must. Smoke rises off huge funeral pyres. Because wood is still hard to come by, as many bodies as possible are piled on to the same heap. The Lohana Sansthan crematorium in th e centre of the town normally handles 200 cremations each year. In the two days after the earthquake, it handled 305 cremations. Although food, wood and emergency supplies have begun to come in, in quantities the dazed district administration seems ill-e quipped to handle, those who survived are not necessarilly counting themselves lucky. Most have to live in makeshift camps, sleeping out in the cold, bearing the pain of the death of kith and kin. Perhaps the only people who have reason for happiness are the 268 convicts who escaped when the Bhuj prison's walls collapsed, a figure which includes six terrorists.

Small habitations around Bhuj seem to be even worse off. The village of Anjar alone lost 400 schoolchildren, most of them girls, who were buried under building debris on their way to a Republic Day parade. No real figures of casualties were available for Adhoi, the village believed to have been closest to the earthquake's epicentre. No aid could be moved into the area until a unit of the Central Reserve Police Force's Rapid Action Team managed to clear a route. Officials fear that over 3,000 dead could be under the ruins. Even on January 29, rescue forces were yet to reach Rapar, with a population of 20,000. Rapar and Bhachau, which had a population of 35,000, are believed to be as badly hit as Adhoi. Only air surveillance of these areas has been condu cted so far. Casualties in the rural areas between these Kutch towns are, again, unknown. Unsurprisingly, a massive exodus has begun from Kutch.

For those outside Kutch, the wait to learn of the fate of their relatives is just as agonising. Many people from the area live outside the State, or even abroad. Mumbai, which has a large community of Kutchhi origin, has seen its railway stations packed with people waiting to travel to Bhuj and further at the first available opportunity. Others wait for trains coming in from the area, holding out placards with names of relatives, or asking travellers from Bhuj for information. In the chaos, reassuranc e is hard to come by. Although a 2,000-line telephone exchange has been activated in Bhuj, it is nowhere near adequate to cope with the demand. Non-resident Indians in the United Kingdom, which has a large Gujarati community, are working on setting up a satellite link to meet the demand for information.

Other towns have also seen a rising level of fatalities. By January 28, 6,072 bodies had been found in the State, while the total number of people who were admitted with injuries to government-run medical facilities was 14,512. Some areas in Kutch saw ma ss cremations, carried out by volunteers, using what little firewood was available. The scale of the tragedy is not quite as horrific elsewhere, but it is nonetheless appalling. Forty-three bodies had been recovered from the debris in Surat, while anothe r 130 residents suffered injuries. In Rajkot, 303 bodies were found, while 1,220 people were injured. In Jamnagar, a hundred bodies have been recovered, while 800 suffered injuries. The figures were rising each day with depressing regularity.

AHMEDABAD'S experience suggests that at least some of the deaths could have been avoided. Passengers peering out of flights landing in the city, where some 700 people are believed to have died, would see few signs of destruction. There are no broken road s, and much of the city, particularly its old quarter, is intact. New buildings seem to have collapsed where older ones have survived. Sometimes, one within a housing complex is safe while those around it have caved in. At other sites, buildings next to one that has fallen seem intact. City residents say that new buildings in Ahmedabad, put up with little concern for structural safety, have been the worst hit. At last count, 131 buildings had collapsed in the city, just a small part of its entire built- up space.

What particularly upset residents was the inability of the State government to cope with even this level of damage. On January 28, Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel admitted that rescue work had yet to be completed in 17 buildings that had fallen, a sign of the painfully slow pace of progress. At the Mansi housing complex in Ahmedabad's satellite area, problems in the way of rescue operations were evident. The 10-storied Block A of the complex, which consisted of 40 flats, had partly collapsed. The remaini ng portion threatened to fall anytime, posing a serious hazard to rescue workers. Cranes and heavy equipment could not be used because rubble blocked access. Some residents of the block were finally rescued more than 48 hours after the earthquake, when a n expert team from Sweden arrived with sniffer dogs and special equipment.

Members of the international rescue corps at work in Bhuj.

Could the early availability of such equipment have saved more lives? As late as the afternoon of January 28, rescuers were still struggling to pull out some of the 40-odd students who were killed at the Swaminarayan School in Mani Nagar. Early efforts t o rescue the students, who were doing experiments in the laboratory when the earthquake hit, were slowed down by lack of victim detection equipment. Although such equipment does exist in India, there are no clear protocols in place for moving them in mas s into a disaster zone. What was available was sent to areas like Kutch, worse-hit than Ahmedabad. There too, however, the resources available were insignificant compared to the magnitude of the disaster. "If the response to the relatively minor tragedy in Ahmedabad is so inadequate," says one city resident, "you can imagine what it must be like in Kutch!"

Once the rescue effort is complete, there will clearly be the need to do an audit of what went wrong in Ahmedabad. Not all residents in the Mansi complex agree that design faults or poor construction were to blame, pointing out that other structures put up by the builder of Block A were intact. Many people point out that uniform construction standards and adherence to safety norms might not have been observed. They blame politicians for allowing the flouting of building regulations. Greed and political payoffs lie at the heart of the destruction of the city, they say.

NOT even the best building regulations would have prevented the casualties: the Kobe earthquake in Japan, for one, saw supposedly earthquake-proof structures cave in. But poor building regulations are not the only reason for the people's fury. A rescue v olunteer at Shikhar Apartments in Ahmedabad described how one State Minister came to the site on the evening of January 26, in a convoy of 17 vehicles "as if he was going to attend a wedding". The Minister, he said, "asked us to stop rescue work, so that photographers and television camera teams with him could take pictures of the victims". Several political visitors, including Union Home Minister L.K. Advani and Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi, faced local hostility. Mediapersons too were often told not to interrogate victims and relatives of the dead. "We have suffered enough," said one grieving relative, "why do you want to inflict more pain by questioning us about what happened?"

Death and destruction, however, brought out the best in Ahmedabad, a city torn apart over the years by communal violence. Dilip Shah, a resident of Shikhar Apartments, told Frontline that young Muslims in the area had helped transport the bodies o f Hindu residents, and insisted on helping with their cremation rites. Thousands of volunteers, cutting across communal lines, joined volunteer teams, while others left for Bhuj to help rescuers there. At many sites, workers from organisations as diverse as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Congress(I) could be seen working together. Non-governmental bodies and religious organisations, such as the Swaminarayan sect's Akshar Purushottam Bochasanvaasi Swaminarayan Samstha, also pitched in to prov ide accommodation and community kitchens.

Such efforts, though valuable, were not a substitute for properly organised rescue efforts. Army, police, paramilitary and Home Guard personnel did the best they could, but were often just unequipped to deal with the diverse problems. One soldier, workin g at the Chandrama flat complex in Paldi, Ahmedabad, where 16 structures had collapsed, was candid about why searches were not conducted in some of the more dangerous areas. "There are hanging concrete blocks everywhere," he said, "which could come loose any time. I can't risk lives to find people who may not be alive at all." Cranes arrived a day late. National Cadet Corps volunteers, who arrived at Akashdeep flat complex soon after their Republic Day parade, struggled to rescue a woman cadet who lived there. They had neither the equipment nor the expertise or leadership to help others buried in the debris.

Rumours flourished in this climate of chaos. With telecommunications lines down, government officials were not immediately able to provide credible information of what had happened, and where. When Ahmedabad residents spent the night in the open areas on January 27 rather than stay even in undamaged apartments, the State government did virtually nothing. People were not warned about the inevitable aftershocks and how to cope with them. Aftershocks, which came on January 28, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, then provoked the State government to ask people to avoid partly damaged structures for the next 48 hours. This provoked panic and also stories that the epicentre of the earthquake was moving closer to Ahmedabad. Timely, scientifically accurate in formation would have done not a little to reassure city residents that no further calamity was likely.

CONSIDER this as an example of disaster-preparedness: it took the Gujarat government two days to set up a functional control room in the State capital, Gandhinagar, which was untouched by the earthquake, and to get to Bhuj satellite telephones already av ailable with it. No clear protocols appeared to be in place, and the government was forced to wait for additional earth-moving equipment to come from Udaipur, Rajasthan. Large bulldozers could not reach many downtown areas, and no special provision had b een made for smaller models. Diesel generators turned out to be in short supply in Kutch, where they were most desperately needed. The absence of adequate quantities of such equipment immediately might be understandable, but the failure to make arrangeme nts to acquire and transport them immediately after a disaster illustrates the complete absence of crisis management protocols. Any disaster plan for an earthquake, for example, should anticipate that hospitals will be destroyed, and have defined measure s to cope with such a situation.

International teams that arrived in Gujarat showed just how such disasters should be handled. The Swiss brought nine sniffer dogs, 20 tonnes of special rescue equipment and 40 trained experts. Within hours of arrival, they were able to locate and rescue at least 14 people who were alive under the debris, in Ahmedabad. Two of those rescued, 13-year-old Vicky Raval and 28-year-old Mona Sanghvi, emerged almost uninjured. The Royal Air Force sent in special teams of doctors and paramedical personnel, who we re despatched to Bhuj. Russia, Germany, France and Turkey also despatched specialised personnel, while Muscat and Oman sent food and medicine. It is worth noting that these teams, travelling long distances, arrived at about the same time the Ministry of Defence was able to make available sniffer dogs and the Tamil Nadu government, specialised equipment to detect the heart-beat of buried victims.

Armed forces and paramilitary personnel were left to cope with the disaster as best as they could. The Air Force responded swiftly, turning Bhuj into one of the busiest airports in India. Massive Il-76 cargo aircraft and the versatile An-32 transport pla nes were pressed into service to move equipment and personnel from bases as far away as Chandigarh, and to fly critically injured victims to Pune and other centres. The Army made available some 5,000 men, the Border Security Force some 2,000 and the Rapi d Action Force pushed in some six companies, or 600 personnel. Army engineers, along with units from the Railways, the Gujarat Fire Service and personnel of several major industrial houses worked to help clear the debris and restore vital infrastructure.

Contributions from both within the country and abroad have been generous. Volunteers have poured into Gujarat from metropolitan cities, from where the Indian Railways ran special trains. Several State governments have made large donations of food, emerge ncy equipment and shelter. The Union government, for its part, has provided the Gujarat government with what has been described as a blank cheque to draw on Central resources, ensuring that cash will not be an immediate problem. Some States and industria l houses have announced that they will adopt specific towns and tehsils, and take responsibility for their reconstruction. Major foreign countries, the United Nations and international non-governmental agencies too have pitched in with material and finan cial contributions. The steady flow of relief material and personnel into Gujarat should help mitigate hardship in its worst-hit areas.

For at least some victims, this flow of aid will, sadly, come too late. On January 28, just 560 doctors, 110 of them specialists, were available for the tens of thousands of injured. More seriously, only 480 paramedical personnel and 210 ambulances had r eached the area, a small figure given the critical needs. Efforts were on to move 21,000 seriously injured patients to other hospitals.

This is not a tragedy that could have been prevented. But the killer earthquake of January 26 was not India's first natural calamity, and certainly will not be its last. Few of the lessons of past experiences seem to have been learned. Gujarat's industri al infrastructure is largely intact, including its vital ports and petrochemical installations. This, along with the aid coming in, should help the State raise the thousands of crores of rupees that rebuilding is expected to cost. That should not be a re ason not to prepare for the next tragedy.

THE Kakrapar Atomic Power Station, situated in Surat district of Gujarat, was operating safely. A spokesman for the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) said, "All the safety systems and the entire plant, which have been designed to withstand high-intensity e arthquakes, continue to operate normally. The two units, each of 220 MWe, are operating at full power and providing the much-needed electricity to the grid."

Other nuclear stations such as the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station at Rawatbhatta, the Tarapur Atomic Power Station and the Narora Atomic Power Station, where earthquakes of lower intensity were felt, "are also in a healthy state and have been operating s afely," NPC officials said. According to them, nuclear electricity plants in the country are designed to be safe even under intense seismic conditions.