Letter from Western India: Part I

Written by Christina Ward, Staff Writer, RedCross.org

AHMEDABAD, India, January 30, 2001 — When the earthquake struck, Hidendre Barot was at home with his wife, on the top floor of the 10-story Mansi Apartment Complex in Ahmedabad. "Suddenly the entire building began to vibrate and move," he said. "We did not understand what was happening. So we went out of our door, and up to the roof." Standing in the open air, on top of the shaking high-rise, Barot grasped his wife's hand. Within moments, the entire building collapsed to the ground.

Barot fell 10 stories, from the roof to the ground. When he opened his eyes, the shaking and roar of collapse had ended, and his chest and legs were covered with debris. Surrounded by rubble and obstructions, Barot managed to pull himself up, and immediately began looking for his wife. She was not near him and did not respond when he cried out her name. He crawled into the street — and at that moment began a search effort that was still in progress on Monday morning (Jan 29), three days after the quake. In that time, Barot had not gone to the hospital, despite injuries from his fall. He remained at Mansi day and night, watching and waiting for workers to find his wife. About 30 dead bodies had been pulled from the rubble, but she was still missing.

The city is full of stories such as this, containing both miraculous escapes and terrible tragedies — often intertwined. Of the tens of thousands of people killed by the quake in India's Gujarat state, more than a thousand were here, in this thriving middle-class town. As the commercial capital of Gujarat, Ahmedabad has many new high-rise offices and apartments.

The population of Ahmedabad had climbed considerably in recent years, as people from rural areas came to the city to find better jobs. P.C. Pande, the police commissioner for Ahmedabad, said that the disaster's aftermath has severely taxed his department's resources.

"We were short staffed before the earthquake," he said. "We positively do not have enough people to handle the recovery. It is a 24-hour job."

The leader of the local Indian Red Cross branch, S.K. Sharma, agreed. Immediately after the quake, he and his staff of volunteers began calling hospitals, offering to supply blood. Ahmedabad's central hospital had survived, and all of the thousands of injured were taken there as the weekend progressed. Although they received plenty of blood donations, they were short on doctors and nurses. And then reports began to come out of Bhuj, 420 kilometers (260 miles) away.

In the first few hours after the quake, Ahmedabad seemed to have suffered the most in the state. Later, it became clear that more remote towns and cities near the quake's epicenter at Bhuj, may have been totally destroyed. Roads were blocked and communication systems were down, making damage assessment difficult in those areas. Power was also completely out in Bhuj, so the Ahmedabad Red Cross branch could not send blood — there would be no way to store it. The central hospital there had collapsed, and only a small military hospital was even partially operational.

Immediately, while power generators were being transported to Bhuj, the local branches of the Indian Red Cross pulled all of their emergency supplies — bandages, blankets, medicine — out of storage to distribute throughout the affected region. Although their warehouses were well stocked, it was clearly not enough.

"This is so much larger than our regular calamities," Sharma explained. "We have droughts or heavy rains, and they affect maybe 200 people. This is in the thousands. We were not prepared for something like this."

The American Red Cross team joins those from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent and the Japanese Red Cross who are assisting the Indian Red Cross with the relief. Many other national Red Cross societies are sending money and supplies.

As attention shifted to the devastation in Bhuj and environs, families in Ahmedabad continued to dig through the rubble of crumbled buildings. The quake affected the city in pockets: One apartment building dissolved while the building next to it, sometimes virtually identical, remained intact.

Apartment buildings on stilts — housing ground-level parking garages — collapsed as the pillars crumbled. Rickety staircases overrun with frightened residents collapsed, crushing dozens. Shops, offices and restaurants, often located on the ground floor of high-rise buildings, were flattened.

In one of the worst of Ahmedabad's tragic stories, a new 10-floor building, containing 40 apartments, completely collapsed — killing nearly everyone inside. On the day of the earthquake, 11 people were pulled out alive. Since then, 75 bodies have been pulled out of the mountain of concrete and debris, and workers are still digging.

"A special Swiss team came here with trained dogs — they determined that there was no one left alive inside," said H. Limbachia, an Indian Army official in charge of the building's recovery project. "They said that this is the worst incident of the city. But we are not giving up hope. We continue to look for the living." Neighbors, friends and families surrounded the roped-off area, watching bulldozers and military workers. Most wore handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to protect their lungs from dust in the air.

Even in the face of so much death and suffering in Ahmedabad, Police Commissioner Pande said that his city is fortunate compared to other parts of the state. Bhuj and surrounding villages are far less prosperous than Ahmedabad, and they are suffering from far worse destruction. "They had so little to begin with. Now they have nothing." Pande said, "They need assistance. We should focus our resources on them. Our city will live on. What else can we do?"