OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bhuj, India | Sunday
SOLDIERS digging through the ruins of crushed buildings on Sunday pursued the faint voices of survivors of India’s devastating earthquake, bolstered by the rescue of three people pulled from the rubble 36 hours after the disaster struck.
But with more than 6_000 confirmed dead and authorities saying the toll from Friday’s 7.9-magnitude quake in western India could reach 13_000, rescue workers were mostly finding bodies under the piles of concrete and masonry.
The emergency police control room in the western state of Gujarat’s state capital, Gandhinagar said that at least 6 072 people had died in the quake. While some had died in hospitals, most had perished under wrecked buildings.
”This is death and destruction,” said a bearded old Muslim man, sitting morosely on a string cot. He refused to talk about his family and wouldn’t give his name. ”I am just an unfortunate Indian. That is enough.”
On Saturday, a unit of soldiers, among the 5 000 Indian troops deployed in Gujarat, rescued two men and a girl after digging through the fallen masonry of their homes in Bhuj, Captain Amartej Singh of the 108 Engineers unit said on Sunday.
It was the first report of anyone being pulled out alive by rescue workers from the rubble, although others were saved by friends and relatives in the early hours of the disaster on Friday.
More than half the houses in Bhuj were reduced to rubble and the rest were damaged. In the congested old part of the city, dogs, pigs and cows foraged for food in streets made narrower by mounds of rubble.
Friday’s quake – India’s strongest in more than 50 years – struck on Republic Day, a national holiday. It shook the earth for more than 1930km.
Among those buried were 350 children who had been taking part in a parade for Republic Day, which commemorates the adoption of India’s constitution 51 years ago. They were marching through a Kutch street when several houses toppled onto them.
As hope faded at finding more survivors, local residents began to point fingers: Local authorities hadn’t checked shoddy construction in recent years, they said, and many were unavailable when the quake hit because of the holiday celebrations. – AP