India’s Quake Leaves Chaos in Its Wake : Disaster: Death toll now 30,000. Nation faces huge rescue operation.

Bandaged and bruised, Marti Dudwathi wandered aimlessly Saturday through the monsoon mud and crumbled rock where, just three nights before, her village had stood.

There was nothing familiar.

So the frail, 60-year-old woman clung tighter and tighter to half a dozen of her relatives as they stumbled together through the rubble in a collective stupor--the last remains of a family of 15, utterly lost at the epicenter of what may have been India’s deadliest earthquake.

All around them, there was only chaos--and not a single familiar face.

Tens of thousands of Indians from villages near and far had flooded Killari, some to offer handouts, thrown helter-skelter off the back of trucks or vans to bruised and clutching hands.

But most of the throng came miles by foot, car, van, rickshaw, motor scooter and truck, choking off vital relief routes, simply to witness the spectacle of India’s historic outdoor morgue. They crowded around each flattened home or shop as the Indian army or anxious relatives clawed at the wreckage for signs of life.

Of the 30,000 Indians believed to have died in last Thursday’s few minutes of terrifying tremors, nearly one-sixth of them died here, as Killari was flattened in its sleep.

The Dudwathis were among the survivors, pulled from the wreckage of their home within hours of the magnitude 6.4 quake but forced to live in the open ever since. On Saturday, they and their village were symbols of the enormous task that lies ahead for India.

“No relief has come to us so far--we’ve gotten nothing,” Dudwathi told a Times reporter in a monotone, voicing her despair despite the presence of Indian troops and relief workers at every turn.

Killari’s mass cremation fires still burned into the night, blazing infernos where police authorities fearful of epidemics were toting up the death toll, piling corpse atop corpse with no funeral rites, no identification and no notification of kin.

“It’s bad. Very bad. Bodies are coming out by the dozens,” said Col. U. K. Rao, commander of the Indian army’s Grenadiers regiment, as he inched his jeep through the mobs that descended on the district that he and his 400 army engineers have been assigned to assist.

“How many bodies? Can’t say. There’s just no end to it.”

There was no end to the spectators either.

“That’s why these roads are getting clogged,” added Rao’s deputy, Maj. Pankaj Mehra. “The response of the public has been tremendous--positively and negatively.”

Despite the civilian crush, which police finally sought to deter with riot sticks late Saturday, Rao’s men worked through the night--along with about 25,000 Indian soldiers in other hard-hit villages--to excavate house after house amid waning hopes of finding any more survivors. It was the Indian army’s biggest peacetime rescue ever, a spokesman said.

In the process, the soldiers and villagers tried to ascertain just how the earthquake had left behind so strange a scene in this remote region of central India, where even in the most devastated villages some buildings remained intact.

“You see, this has been an earthquake where the earth has not split open,” Rao said. “I suppose it was just a belt that was struck--maybe three to five kilometers wide. The buildings that were solid concrete, well-built, they were not hurt. Neither were the huts. Too light. The ones which were built in stone and mud, they all collapsed.”

On Saturday, D. B. Bhosle stood and stared blankly at the debris that once was the house of his neighbor, Bala Pure. Eleven people died there at the same moment Bhosle lost his entire family next door.

“It’s God’s plan,” said Bhosle, 24, as he watched the Pures’ cow slowly die in the rubble. “Some walls are standing. Some have fallen down. It’s all God’s creation. This is all God’s game. But what it means, I don’t know.”

Around the corner, Rashid Cowtaker and his brother, Maroof Januddin, had no time for such musings.

Unlike Bhosle and the Dudwathis, the Cowtakers were following the example of the other village survivors with anything left to save. The brothers sifted through the remains of their little shop, collecting school ledgers, staples, stationery, pens and paper clips.

When they finished, they joined the human flood moving out of the village, desperate survivors with a few armfuls of possessions.

As they did, Sharad Pawar, chief minister of hard-hit Maharashtra state, indicated that none of the villages will be rebuilt. Instead, he appealed for national and foreign aid to help finance a new township to house the estimated 130,000 homeless survivors. He estimated the cost at 1 billion rupees (about $31 million).

In the meantime, the army and relief agencies are providing tents and materials for temporary shelters, which are beginning to sprout up in the countryside.

Raymond L. Flynn, President Clinton’s envoy sent to assess the disaster, is expected to arrive in Bombay today along with two U.S. transporters carrying aid, news agencies reported. Officials say he expected to spend three days in India before reporting back to Clinton.

It could be several days before the materials supplied by the United States reach the earthquake site, however, because narrow roads leading to the stricken area have become so crowded with pedestrians and vehicles.

At one point, Rao simply shut off the engine of his jeep. The human mass had made the only road leading to Killari impassable. And he and his deputy leaned back for a moment.

“Is this the worst human tragedy you’ve ever seen?” the two officers were asked.

“Well,” Maj. Mehra replied, “we were called in after the Bombay riots earlier this year. Also, too many died. But it was different. There, it was man-made. You feel sad over there. Here, you just feel helpless.”