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By Kamil Zaheer
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| Reuters Photo |
BHUJ,
India (Reuters) - Fresh tremors, hunger and thirst added
to the anguish on Sunday of tens of thousands of dazed survivors
of a giant earthquake which rocked western India claiming
some 15,000 lives.
In the
town of Bhuj, near the epicenter of Friday's quake, residents,
rescue workers and the injured who had spent a chilly night
out in the open were shaken awake by aftershocks.
As temperatures
climbed, people wandered around in confusion among the rubble
of the dusty city, barely reassured by a huge army presence.
There
is a severe shortage of food, water and fuel, virtually
no electricity and very little transport.
Among
the mounds of mangled steel and concrete, dotted with makeshift
funeral pyres, the occasional building which survived the
quake jutted up into clear blue sky.
Bhuj
counted many of the dead among its 150,000 people and thousands
more were believed to be still buried under debris.
Officials
warned of a serious risk of epidemic if trapped bodies were
not removed quickly.
``As
the weather is quite cold, the bodies are not rotting,''
one army official told Reuters. ``But if they are not removed
soon, there could be a major risk of disease spreading.''
Temperatures
in the region can rise to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees
Fahrenheit) during the day, but fall sharply at night to
below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit).
Bhuj,
in the marshy Kutch district on the western coast, is about
20 km (12 miles) from the epicenter of the quake, the most
powerful to hit India in half a century.
The
quake, measured at 7.9 on the Richter scale by the U.S.
Geological Survey , claimed victims across the western state
of Gujarat, including an estimated 500 in the prosperous
gold-trading commercial capital of Ahmedabad .
Two
Days After Quake, Few Pulled Out Alive
In Bhuj,
army rescuers with bulldozers and cranes combed through
rubble which towered 25 feet (eight meters) high in some
places.
One
college student was pulled alive from a mound of debris
in which he had been trapped for more than 36 hours, providing
a brief respite from the grim task of unearthing dead bodies.
The
boy's weeping father and other relatives kept vigil all
through the rescue effort, urging the soldiers to greater
effort.
In Ahmedabad
as well, officials said two people had been pulled out alive,
30 hours after the quake.
Officials
have been unable to give an exact death toll from the quake
but have said up to 15,000 were feared to have died.
But
many were beginning to say that the numbers had become meaningless,
the sheer scale of the tragedy still unfolding as more and
more bodies were unearthed from the rubble.
Newspapers
on Sunday published varying estimates of the death toll
from 15,000 to 30,000. The Indian Express simply left a
question mark over the number.
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| Reuters Photo |
A government
official in the Gujarat capital Gandhinagar said 6,072 bodies
had been recovered by early Sunday, 5,000 from Bhuj alone.
Official figures showed 40,512 people had been injured.
More
than 250 aftershocks hampered rescue efforts.
G.J.
Nair, head of the seismology division of the Bhabha Atomic
Research Centre (BARC) in Bombay, told Reuters Sunday morning's
tremor had recorded about six on the Richter scale. ''It
was a sufficiently big shock,'' he said.
Though
it appeared to have caused no damage it sowed panic in Ahmedabad,
where terrified residents who had returned to their homes
ran out again into the streets.
Television
showed pictures of one woman breaking down in tears in the
Surat, in the state's southeast, and repeating; ''I'm really
afraid, I'm really afraid,'' while one official warned of
a risk of stampede as panic set in.
Hospitals
Overflow With The Injured
In Ahmedabad,
there was a long queue at the local electric crematorium.
``I have been sitting here since last (Saturday) night.
My number will come today,'' said a dazed man who had come
to cremate a relative.
At the
city hospital, the injured spilled out of the packed wards
into the corridors and out into the grass outside. Some
had intravenous drips hooked up to bushes.
Six-year-old
Rashmi, fully-bandaged after multiple fractures, lay on
her father's lap on the road outside the hospital where
doctors were attending to her.
``We
were able to come out, but one of our daughters was stuck
inside,'' said the distraught father. The two had come from
Morbi, a small town 150 km (90 miles) from Ahmedabad.
Special
trains from India's main cities ferried anxious relatives
to Gujarat. Many waiting on station platforms had had no
news of their families since the quake.
Gujarat
Home (Interior) Minister Haren said a massive rescue and
relief operation had been launched in Bhuj and priority
was being given to restoring communications in the area.
Public
health teams were flown in to Bhuj and Ahmedabad to fight
against any outbreak of disease.
The
region has a history of plague. In 1994, 54 people died
in an outbreak of pneumonic plague in Surat.
Thousands
of troops, engineers and doctors joined the relief effort.
The Air Force said it had 40 cargo planes and military aircraft
ferrying engineering equipment, mobile kitchens, food, water,
tents, blankets and power generators.
Many
countries offered help.
Neighboring
Pakistan, putting aside its differences with nuclear rival
India, said it would provide relief. The quake killed at
least 15 people there.
Rescue
teams, sniffer dogs and relief funds from Britain, Germany,
Canada, Italy, the United Nations and Turkey were set to
arrive in India on the weekend.
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