Friday's  earthquake  that ripped through western  India  causing  heavy damage in Gujarat state is believed to have claimed  20,000  lives and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The  quake  measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and  was  the  most  powerful   to  have  hit  India  with  tremors  being   felt   in  neighbouring Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Villagers  of  Balamba  said there were  major  cracks  in  their  fields,  water  fountains had erupted from earth with  hot  water  gushing out for days.

One of the villagers said: "The water gushed out in the form of a fountain that rose nearly 15 feet in height." Another  woman  added: "It took two days for this water  to  cool  down.  Earlier it was very hot and we were afraid that  it  might  even damage our fields, we were really scared." Most  villagers said the devastation had rendered  them  homeless  and  posed  danger to their ready to harvest crop  of  cotton  as  well. "There  has been a lot of damage here and there are no houses  to  live  in.  Everything  has destroyed," said  one  villager  while  another said the place  resembled a graveyard. "The whole place looks like a crematorium."

A  spell of chilling winds in peak winters added misery to  their  woes. "Everybody  is  sitting in the streets and it is  very  cold  also," said a villager. "I have never seen something like this in my entire life," said a  woman. Rescue  teams  from India and abroad are racing against  time  to  clear  decomposing bodies in the major centres such as  Bhuj  and  Gujarat's  main  city Ahmedabad.  Fear of  collapsing  buildings,  fresh tremors and disease tracking their every move. The quake was expected to cost the country billions of dollars in reconstruction costs.

Government of India's Official Website on the Gujarat earthquake
(Damage in Bharuch)
Millions of buildings damaged; many buildings have totally collapsed; power and water supply disrupted in Kutch; telecom link with Kutch snapped (since restored); strategic Suraj Bari Bridge connecting Kutch with other parts of State damaged; Historical Golden Gate bridge in Bharuch town of South Guajrat damaged.

Valsad, billimora and Navsari also effected by earthquake.
GujaratPlus.com, Saturday, January 27, 2001

Valsad and Billimora have also been affected by the tremors of earthquke. Buildings & complexes are damaged with cracks on its wall, weakinging the foundation. People living here in fear, are forced to remain awake through the night.
Seven people have been reported killed in Navsari & 12 casualties have reported in Billimora.
Certain areas in Valsad, Billimora & Navsari have been vacated and people have been forced to live in make shift residence.

Its 13 days and Surendranagar still awaits aid
India Abroad news service, Feb 07, 2001 11:55 Hrs (IST)

Surendranagar: Life could not have been more cruel for Savitabehn Sheth. Death stalked in the form of an earthquake in Gujarat and snatched away her only son, destroying her home.

On the cold winter nights since the January 26 quake, 72-year-old Savitabehn sleeps in the open, taking care of her old husband, who is unable to even walk, and tends to her injured grandson and daughter-in-law who are receiving treatment at a city hospital.

It is 13 days since the quake struck, but no government help in any form has reached her yet. All she has to fall back on is the Rs 600 a month she earns as interest on her deposits in an account at the post office.

The earthquake wreaked havoc in the Sutharni Gali area of Surendranagar city, some 125 km from the state's principal city of Ahmedabad, killing five people. The sixth person died Monday following a heart attack he suffered during the quake.

Sheth's house collapsed before her son, daughter-in-law and grandson could run out. She and her husband survived because they were outside. Later the daughter-in-law and the grandson were pulled out alive, but with severe injuries.

While the international focus seems to be concentrated on Kutch district, where several thousands have died in the quake, several villages of Surendranagar are yet to receive any worthwhile assistance.

The old Limbdi area in Surendranagar district of the Saurashtra region is destroyed. According to Limbdi municipality president Shakarbhai Dalwadi, almost all houses in the town of 35,000 people have suffered damage in varying degrees. Dalwadi said that 2,017 houses are not safe to enter and that 1,208 will have to be pulled down.

"This means the town has to be rebuilt all over again," Dalwadi told IANS. He put the death toll at 12, though others said 14 people have died in this small town.

Five of the 10 schools the municipality ran have been razed to ground and the other five have become unsafe for children to enter. Army personnel are engaged in clearing the debris. N Panchami, who is in charge of the 90-member army team, said they are getting good public support but have been making little headway.

The court, the offices of the civic officials and the post office have all been damaged. "I shall shortly represent before the state government and some voluntary agencies to adopt the town for reconstruction," municipality chief officer Salim Uthim said.

A drive through many other villages of Surendranagar district like Ankevadia, Bhadreshi, Bhoika, Bnosna, Jamdi, Kharva, Ladia, Madhad, Memka, Navaniya, Samla and Sauka presents one with similar scenes of destruction with little effort at providing relief.

A two-member team of the non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Children of the World, has come to Surendranagar to assess the extent of damage.

Cyril Collette and Max Zins said their organisation was surveying the damage and plan the assistance that could be provided to the affected areas.

"Our focus is obviously children," they said. Theirs will be a long-term relief effort, which though welcome, what the people in this overlooked district need is some immediate succour.

India Abroad News Service

Okha port crippled by quake
OKHA (PTI)

Okha, which used to be the only port in Gujarat before Kandla came into prominence, has been crippled by the January 26 earthquake, affecting bauxite shipment.

With a badly damaged jetty, bauxite loaded trucks now waiting to be unloaded, are in a quandary: they do not know whether to wait for the jetty to be repaired or head for Kandla, which also has been rendered non-operational for some days.

Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB), which manages this small port, does not have any estimate either of the funds or the time required for the repairs to be carried out.

Okha, from where one has to take a boat for byet dwarka temples, has a population of 15,000, predominantly fishermen.

“Loading and unloading of goods have been completely paralysed as the jetty, which is the lifeline of a port, is badly damaged,” says a top official of GMB.

“We have sought technical and financial help from the government to repair the jetty,” he adds.

PTI
  

Jaisalmer havelis damaged
HT Correspondents
(Jaipur/Mumbai/McLeodganj/ Jabalpur, January 26)

 
ALMOST THE entire country was rocked by Friday's earthquake. But it was Gujarat alone that bore its brunt. No loss to life was reported from other states.

In Rajasthan, several historic buildings, including Jaisalmer fort, were damaged. The back portion of the Salim Singh ki Haveli near the Jaisalmer fort collapsed. Besides, cracks appeared in Badal Niwas near the fort and a few buildings in the Shardapada area of the city. There were also reports of cracks in the walls of Pokran fort.

A 11-year-old boy was injured in a wall collapse in a village in Raisinghnagar town of Sriganganagar district. He was reported to be out of danger.

In Barmer city, several buildings, including a PWD office and the residence of an Additional Superintendent of Police, were damaged. In the district's Bakhasar village, the walls of two schools and an old government office collapsed.

Unconfirmed reports from Kota said a couple of houses in the district collapsed. Cracks reportedly appeared in the walls of the Kota railway station.

In Jaipur, the walls of a Post and Telegraph office near the central jail cracked.

According to official sources, nearly 100 tonne of debris in Zawar mines in Udaipur collapsed.

The Rajasthan Government has decided to send medicines and blankets of worth Rs 20 lakh for relief operations in Gujarat.

Twenty-five teams of paramedical staff are being constituted. They will be sent to Gujarat tomorrow. Two senior IAS officers would also reach Gandhinagar to supervise the distribution of relief materials.

Employees of Hindustan Zinc Limited, Bridge Power Corporation and Mineral and Development Corporation will also be sent to Gujarat to help clear the debris

Mumbai: At 8.47 am today, Mumbai panicked. But by 9 am it was back to normal.

People rushed out of their homes as soon as that realised that they were in the middle of a major earthquake. Mercifully, there was no damage to life and property in Maharashtra, except for a few cracks in old buildings in Mumbai.

The fact that it was a public holiday helped. For, most Mumbai officer-goers crowd the suburban transport services around that time and sudden panic could have been disastrous.

McLeodganj: The seismic zone around Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh too escaped the fury of the earthquake. The area experienced a mild tremor, not felt by many here.

Residents of McLeodganj point out that the Dalai Lama had indeed predicted earthquake. They attribute their safety to him.

"All four oracles of the Tibetan government had predicted the possibility of an earthquake this year on the third day of Losar celebrations in February last. Since then, we have been offering prayers in the main temple and all other Tibetan monasteries in the country. Our prayers have saved us," says Tibetan Minister for Religious Affairs Tashi Wangdi.

Ever since a major earthquake hit Kangra district and other parts of Himachal in 1986, Tibetan Lamas, it is said, have been offering prayers regularly and collectively for their and the Dalai Lama's safety. The township also saw a number of chotins coming up at different places, with nine of them located around the Dalai Lama's palace in the past couple of years. Ever since, word spread in Tibetan circles that an earthquake could rock McLeodganj any time.

Jabalpur: The quake left Jabalpur unscathed. People experienced minor shocks, but that was all. According to a seismic observatory official, the epicentre of the quake lay in an entirely different belt and was not related to the active faults in Mahakaushal region.

Hundreds killed by Indian earthquake
 ITN WORLD
 
"A fear psychosis is developing in the city. People have fled their homes and are taking refuge in open fields" - Chief Rajesh Bhat
 
 
  Hundreds of people have been killed in a devastating earthquake that shook the entire Indian subcontinent from Pakistan to India to Bangladesh.

The worst damage from the early morning quake was near the epicentre in India's western state of Gujarat.

Police in the commercial centre of Ahmedabad reported 200 dead in that city alone, and an additional 281 were killed elsewhere, authorities said.

Dozens of buildings had collapsed in the region, and desperate relatives begged authorities to dig their family members from under the rubble.

India's prime minister called an emergency Cabinet meeting.

The epicentre of the quake was near the town of Bhuj in a desert plateau near the border with Pakistan, the Indian Meteorological Centre said.

The death toll at Bhuj was at least 150, said police official GH Vasaveda.

The epicentre was also perilously close to Jamnagar, the site of a large petrochemical factory, according to the US Geological Survey. Residents of the capital, New Delhi, endured about a minute of shaking.

The temblor hit just before a Republic Day parade, where thousands of police and soldiers were on alert against a terrorist attack.

No injuries were reported at the parade, which was attended by India's top government and military leaders and foreign guests.

In Bombay, the Indian financial and entertainment capital, 700 miles southwest of New Delhi, some people in high-rise buildings held onto doorways as they watched their pictures and cupboards shake, while others people rushed into the streets.

People flee in panic

It was the same in Madras, on the eastern coast, and in Pondicherry, farther to the south, where people began fleeing a Republic Day parade in panic until officials on loudspeakers calmed them.

Millions of Hindu pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela festival in eastern Uttar Pradesh, 930 miles east of Karachi, felt the ground sway beneath them, but there was no panic reported.

In most of India there were no reports of injuries or serious damage. In Pakistan, two children were killed when their house collapsed in southern Pakistan.

The quake was also felt in Nepal, and an apparent aftershock hit Bangladesh, where hundreds of panicked residents flooded into the streets of Satkhira, on the border with India.

In the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, hundreds of people were besieging the fire station asking for help to dig their relatives out of the collapsed buildings, said Chief Rajesh Bhat.

"This is an emergency. We are facing a riotous crowd," he said.

"A fear psychosis is developing in the city. People have fled their homes and are taking refuge in open fields," he said.

About 70 children and some teachers were feared dead in the debris of their school building in one part of Ahmedabad, while in another district 19 engineering students were believed trapped in their collapsed college building.

Baijubahi, an Ahmedabad man who uses only one name, said his wife had died in the earthquake and six members of his family were still trapped in their building.

"The police are trying to persuaded me to go to the hospital for my wife's post-mortem," he said.

"I'm more concerned about the rest, who could have survived."