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India Earthquake Update from the Field

by Alina Labrada, CARE press officer

BHUJ, India (February 3, 2001) -- It's been a little over a week since the earthquake ripped Gujarat state apart, splitting the earth and dividing tens of thousands of people forever from their families and friends. The focus now is turning from search and rescue to helping survivors recover from the devastation.

I had a bird's eye view of that devastation when I flew from Ahmedabad to Bhuj by helicopter on Sunday, two days after the quake.

The landscape had few landmarks left. Multi-story buildings in Bhuj town had shrunk to one-to-two story mounds of rubble. Other outlying areas, like Bhachau, looked as if they had never been on the map.

The force of the quake in Gujarat caused whole blocks to buckle. All photos © CARE 2001.

The amount of damage was numbing. All I could do was stare out the window of the helicopter. The rest of the people aboard were equally struck silent.

On the ground I caught up with a BBC television news crew. They had traveled 22 hours by road the day before to record the destruction. At the time, there were no flights to the area. Some of my CARE colleagues also had taken the road earlier that day. They were going to visit many of the communities affected by the disaster so that CARE could know how to best respond to their needs.

Bhuj was a wrenching sight. Concrete slabs had fallen atop several cars parked on the road. Buildings had collapsed in on themselves. Others had just one wall standing. But the streets were full - full of search and rescue teams wrestling time to clear a path to injured people trapped under debris. Residents were standing by, hanging onto hope that friends and family members would survive until rescuers reached them.

I was drawn to the scene of one search and rescue effort in the old city of Bhuj where several residents were working to dig someone out from underneath. I watched and waited, but when the villagers brought the stretcher out, it bore a lifeless body. Time had won. It seemed like a ghost town. The single remaining characteristic was the powerful foul smell coming from inside the ruins where bodies still remained to be recovered.

The same helicopter that brought me in was soon filled with three survivors as we departed. Medical personnel carried a little girl and boy in their arms. Other attendants had rushed in an injured woman on a stretcher. The helicopter lifted off back to Ahmedabad.

That night in Bhuj, I joined 10 other CARE staff.

A bitterly cold winter's night - minus 2 degrees Celsius - gave way to daylight. I uncurled slowly below the weight of a heavy wool blanket, climbed out from the tent and hoped into a CARE distribution truck to Anjar.

Survivors like these two young boys are now coping with tragic physical and psychological losses.

Anjar is approximately 60 kilometers away from the formerly booming town of Bhuj. There are more than 65 villages scattered here and there, off the main roads. These villages are home to approximately 240,000 people. The local government says there are nearly 1,200 people confirmed dead so far in Anjar. The stench rising from many flattened buildings suggested there were far more casualties.

A young woman named Laxmi lost her daughter. She was taking part in a school celebration of Republic Day, a national holiday, when the earth moved the school in the small village of Khambra in Anjar, causing it to fall atop teachers and students. Villagers have since managed to dig out 24 children and some teachers.

For Laxmi, the grief was overwhelming and escaped her in short bursts of tears. She couldn't even sum enough strength to tell me her daughter's name. All she could say was that she was in primary school and how beautiful she was. Laxmi has two sons who survived the quake.

CARE distributed supplies to Laxmi and others today in Khambra. She begged us to return with more assistance.

"CARE will be back tomorrow," I told her. And we were.

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