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DEATHQUAKE;
RESCUE AND RELIEF
Surviving
The Government
It
was the administration that was knocked
out by the earthquake.
By
V. Shankar Aiyar, Uday Mahurkar
and Sayantan Chakravarty
Sometime
in December 2000, Gujarat Principal Secretary (Revenue) C.K. Koshy wrote
to all 25 district collectors. His memo: take out the Inmarsat satellite
phones, dust them, check if they are working and report back. A week later,
Koshy found that only four collectors had got back. A second letter with
a stern warning was dispatched, asking them to acknowledge and report
back immediately. This time round, without exception all the collectors
responded positively.
Despite
their claims, these satellite phones didn't seem to work when the earthquake
ripped through the state on January 26. A lethargic approach, of course,
is not unique to the Gujarat Government. It is difficult to digest though
that casualness characterised the quality and manner of rescue and relief
work in the face of the great Gujarat earthquake. This, while society
was more than up to the challenge.
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| UNIFORM
ZEAL: While the army did a great job, it was hamstrung by a confused
civilian response |
Consider
the flow of events. At around 8.45 a.m. on January 26, Koshy was late
for the flag hoisting ceremony at the Gandhinagar secretariat. He rushed
through his cornflakes when he felt the tremors. He realised it was an
earthquake. He was not alone. When Koshy reached the parade ground, Chief
Secretary L.N.S. Mukundan asked him to immediately take charge of the
state control room.
At 9.05
a.m. Mukundan and his team tried to reach officials in Ahmedabad and elsewhere
in the state but the cell phones were dead. Their first calls were to
the Met chief in Ahmedabad but they couldn't reach him.
At around
9.35 a.m., as news of building collapses and deaths filtered through,
the officials knew that the quake was massive and it was imperative to
reach other parts of Gujarat. By 9.45 a.m. the control room was set up.
At around
10 a.m., having failed to reach the local Met office on phone, the officials
tried to find out the epicentre and magnitude of the quake from Delhi
but couldn't due to the breakdown of telecommunications. Meanwhile, some
district collectors called Gandhinagar with reports of tremors, destruction
and death. An hour later, around noon, collectors of Surat and Navsari
established contact.
By now the
officials had a fair idea that the quake had been severe, as well as that
large parts of the state had dropped out of the power grid and the telecom
network. But there was no news about the epicentre. Desperate, an official
was sent by car to the Ahmedabad Met office.
Six hours
after the quake, at around 3 p.m., the officials learnt-not from the Met
office in Ahmedabad but from the Met office in Delhi-that the quake measured
6.9 on the Richter scale and that its epicentre was 20 km north-east of
Bhuj in Kutch district. However, there had been no contact with Kutch
as yet.
Tension
mounted. The officials feared large-scale damage around the epicentre.
They had to contact Bhuj. At around 4 p.m., the control room (realising
the presence of the IAF base at Bhuj) tried to make contact through the
Ministry of Defence (MoD). Curiously, Koshy reveals, "the MoD couldn't
reach the IAF base either".
January
27. At around 2 a.m. on Saturday, the satellite phone at the Gandhinagar
control room rang. On the other end of the line was Kutch Collector Kamal
Dayani from Bhuj. Over 16 hours after the quake the Government of Gujarat
was informed that the barren landscape of Kutch district was strewn with
rubble and death. But the long holiday weekend certainly seemed to have
slowed down Dayani's reflexes. Consequently, the first trucks bearing
relief material left Gandhinagar for Bhuj only around mid-morning on Saturday.
There was,
of course, a human side to the tragic delay. Almost every official working
in the Bhuj collectorate suffered destruction and death among kith and
kin. It is also possible that they were drawn into the immediate task
of rescue. But placed in the perspective of the well-established fact
that the first 48 hours after any quake are critical in saving lives,
it could be argued that Dayani's failure to contact his seniors, in spite
of the satellite phone, or the inability of the state machinery to reach
Kutch district robbed many of those who died trapped under the debris
the chance of being rescued. Indeed, an amateur video shot within four
minutes of the quake by Bhuj resident Jaisukhbhai Patel shows that if
the Government had been visible and active the people of Bhuj town-who
managed to extricate many trapped under the rubble without too much panic-may
have succeeded in saving more lives.
It was not
just delay. The rescue and relief effort was also crippled by a mechanical
approach. Sure, the fire brigade in Ahmedabad was out within an hour and
the Government had activated the Rapid Action Force (RAF) to aid rescue
effort. It had also approached the army (apparently triggered by bands
of citizens rushing into the barracks) by noon. But while both the army
and the RAF had committed manpower they didn't have the expertise or the
equipment to deal with the situation. In several places residents used
rudimentary tools like household hammers to chip away debris for rescuing
those trapped under rubble.
Nearly 36
hours after the quake, the Government was struggling to get together cranes
and earthmoving equipment to clear the rubble and pull out survivors.
This in the second most industrialised state in the country.
It was not
just in Bhuj or Anjar in Kutch that the Government couldn't direct available
resources. Despite being in the vicinity of the Kandla Port Trust, residents
of Gandhidham had to wait endlessly for heavy machinery to clear the debris.
Contd
Pg 2
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