16,000 Feared Dead as India Quake Toll Rises

Frantic rescue teams dug through rubble with shovels and bare hands today as estimates of the death toll from India’s massive earthquake Friday soared to at least 16,000, including several hundred schoolchildren feared killed as they marched in a parade.

Emergency crews waiting for additional equipment strong enough to lift slabs of concrete rubble weighing more than 40 tons were struggling to do the best they could in their search for survivors, the inspector general of police in this western city, Sathya Saikia, said in an interview Saturday.

Hope was all but lost for about 350 schoolchildren and 50 teachers who were buried under collapsed buildings in the town of Anjar, close to the earthquake’s epicenter near Bhuj.

The children were marching through town, waving flags and chanting slogans in celebration of the Republic Day holiday marking the 1950 adoption of the Indian Constitution, when the quake struck at 8:46 a.m. Friday.

Houses on both sides of a narrow alley toppled onto the students, and only a few managed to escape, Gujarat state Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel told reporters after visiting the region.

The rest of the children are all probably dead, Narenda Modi, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party--which rules India in a coalition government--told a local television interviewer Saturday.

In Ahmadabad, Gujarat’s largest city, an estimated 7,000 people died in the quake, and local officials said they had recovered more than 3,000 bodies by Saturday night, the central government’s crisis management team reported. An additional 14,502 people were known to be injured.

To the Mogul emperor Jehangir, Ahmadabad was the City of Dust. Today, it is the City of Rubble.

At least 150 of the city’s buildings have collapsed, Bipin Bhatt, a district official coordinating the rescue effort, said in an interview Saturday night. With the help of cranes able to lift 50 tons, rescuers had saved 50 people trapped in the debris, he added.

But at least 100 people were still thought to be trapped in the ruins, and no one could be sure whether they were alive, Bhatt said.

The first foreign rescue equipment arrived in Ahmadabad from Europe about midnight Saturday and would be up and working in the early hours today, Bhatt said. The equipment, which can scan for people trapped about 25 yards under rubble, would concentrate on the sites where the 100 victims were thought to be.

Ahmadabad, almost 6 centuries old, is India’s second-largest industrial center and thrives on the textile trade. It is also a source of national pride as the place where Mohandas K. Gandhi established his ashram in 1915. He set out from the city 15 years later on a historic protest march against British rule.

In the city hit worst by the quake, Bhuj--with a population of 150,000--hundreds of people spent a second night huddled around bonfires, too terrified to go back into buildings even as temperatures dropped to about 45 degrees.

“The situation there is not happy. Over 90% of the houses had developed cracks, and many aftershocks had been reported,” Bhatt, who is also a member of the national crisis management committee, told reporters.

Relief agencies are sending at least 30,000 blankets and tents to the quake zone, and a number of countries--including the United States, Russia, Germany and Turkey--have promised to fly in heavy cranes, concrete-cutting equipment and sniffer dogs, said India’s agriculture secretary, Bhaskar Barua.

Officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington said $1 million in emergency supplies, including plastic sheeting, blankets, water containers, purification and distribution kits, and generators, will arrive in India on Monday.

The devastation caused by the quake proved a lucky break for about 188 convicts who escaped through the destroyed walls of a prison in Bhuj. The escapees included hard-core criminals, the Press Trust of India reported, quoting the state’s home minister, Haren Pandya.

It was also the Press Trust of India that reported the estimate of 16,000 fatalities.

Elsewhere, overstretched emergency crews had to deal with a huge oil spill at the port of Kandla, where the quake’s shock waves ruptured an oil tanker’s hull.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee ordered the country’s armed forces to mobilize as if they were at war in order to aid the rescue and relief effort. About 5,000 soldiers were assisting in rescue operations.

In Bhuj, where a strategic air force base was badly damaged, two Indian air force transport planes landed with relief supplies Saturday.

The quake also cut phone lines into Bhuj and the surrounding region and cracked roads, but the government was able to get a limited number of phone links established and to send in surgical teams with mobile operating rooms.

The quake, centered in the west of Gujarat state, had a magnitude of 7.9, according to U.S. and Chinese experts. But Indian seismologists have insisted that it was a 6.9.

Whatever seismographs measured, the temblor was so powerful that it sent tremors across the Indian subcontinent, leaving people as far south as the financial center of Bombay feeling dizzy.

It also rocked neighboring Pakistan, and the ripples were felt as far as China.

Today, nonstop coverage of the devastation continued to rivet India, a nation of more than 1 billion people, many living in fear of more tremors.

More than 180 rolling aftershocks had been recorded by Saturday morning, including five tremors that registered greater than magnitude 6, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center said in Bombay.

“The pattern analysis of the pattern of the earthquake showed it is oscillating in nature and still continuing,” said G. J. Nair, who heads the research center’s seismology department. “As a result, more tremors are expected to affect the region.”

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Major earthquakes this century

Some of the major earthquakes this century that caused significant loss of life:

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Date Location Magnitude Deaths Jan. 26, 2001 India 7.9 at least 2,500* Sept. 21, 1999 Taiwan 7.6 2,400 Aug. 17, 1999 Western Turkey 7.4 17,000 Jan. 25, 1999 Western Colombia 6 1,171 Feb. 4, 1998 Northeastern 6.1 5,000 Afghanistan May 10, 1997 Northern Iran 7.1 1,500 Jan. 17, 1995 Kobe, Japan 6.9 more than 6,000 Sept. 30, 1993 Latur, India 6 as many as 10,000 June 21, 1990 Northwestern 7.3 to 50,000 Iran 7.7 Dec. 7, 1988 Northwestern 6.9 25,000 Armenia Sept. 19, 1985 Central Mexico 8.1 more than 9,500 Sept. 16, 1978 Northeastern Iran 7.7 25,000 July 28, 1976 Tangshan, 7.8 to 240,000 China 8.2 Feb. 4, 1976 Guatemala 7.5 22,778 Dec. 26, 1939 Erzincan, Turkey 7.9 33,000 Jan. 24, 1939 Chillan, Chile 8.3 28,000 Sept. 1, 1923 Tokyo-Yokohama, 8.3 200,000 Japan Dec. 16, 1920 Gansu, China 8.6 100,000 Aug. 16, 1906 Valparaiso, Chile 8.6 20,000 April 18, 1906 San Francisco 8.3 3,000 in quake, aftermath

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*Estimates put death toll as high as 16,000.

Source: Associated Press

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How to Help

These agencies are among the many accepting contributions for assistance to victims of the earthquake in South Asia.

Adventist Development and Relief Agency

Earthquake Relief--India

12501 Old Columbia Pike

Silver Spring, MD 20904

(800) 424-ADRA

https://www.adra.org

*

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

India Earthquake Relief

711 Third Ave., 10th Floor

New York, NY 10017

(212) 885-0832

https://www.jdc.org

*

B’nai B’rith International

Disaster Relief--India Earthquake

Disaster Relief Fund

1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20036

(202) 857-6533

https://www.bnaibrith.org

*

Christian Children’s Fund

India Earthquake

P.O. Box 26484

Richmond, VA 23261

(800) SPONSOR

https://www.christianchildrensfund.org

*

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

2850 Kalamazoo SE

Grand Rapids, MI 49560

(800) 55-CRWRC

https://www.crwrc.org

*

MAP International

Emergency Relief Fund

P.O. Box 215000

Brunswick, GA 31521

(800) 225-8550

https://www.map.org

*

Salvation Army World Service Office

Mark donations “India

Earthquake”

615 Slaters Lane

Alexandria, VA 22313

(703) 684-5528