June 29, 1998

The port town of Kandla where the cyclone killed over 4,000 people comes to terms with the tragedy as voluntary organisations and government agencies provide much-needed succour.

By Uday Mahurkar

Adam Jusab, 30, a port worker of Kandla, sits huddled amidst the debris dappling the devastated landscape. There is a glimmer of hope in his eyes as he runs his fingers in frenzied motion through the wreckage. Two of his children were among the more than 4,000 people who perished in the cyclone that left a trail of destruction through the Gujarat coast last week. His third child is missing and Jusab hopes to find him alive somewhere beneath the debris. He himself had survived the ravaging cyclone by clinging on to a pole and had since shifted to a village near Kandla like thousands of others. He comes back every day to the town searching for his child or to get food at the relief camps. "But for these angels of succour we would have died of starvation," Jusab says of the relief workers.

Nearby, the workers are setting fire to a body dug out from the debris. Hundreds of decayed bodies have been burnt en masse along the streets, which makes it all the more difficult to calculate the loss in human lives. Says Yashesh Pande, a local security guard: "On that fateful day, several were consumed by the swirling waters in this shanty town of 3,000 fishermen. Around 400 could save themselves only after they climbed the upper floor of our building. Distraught mothers still keep coming here looking for their missing children."

Not many who are missing will be found. As Kandla and other ravaged coastal towns like Jamnagar and Porbander come to terms with the magnitude of the havoc, what is holding together a traumatised populace is the help from people living in other parts of the state. "I couldn't control my emotions. This enormous human tragedy will bring tears to anybody's eyes," says BJP MP Ratilal Varma while distributing clothes in Kandla.

But tears offer little consolation. At the RSS control room in the heart of Gandhidham, 14 km from Kandla, people from all over the state, from Surat in the south to central Kheda, come in droves to offer help. Like Pankaj Raval and Naresh Solanki, two Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) employees who have come all the way from Dhuvaran, 450 km away. Moved by the enormity of the tragedy which they saw on television, they collected a truckload of foodgrains, clothes, made drinking water bags and headed for Kandla, 18 hours after the cyclone. From the RSS control room they were directed to a village near Kandla in dire need of relief. Says Dinesh Pathak who mans the control room: "The tragedy seems to have brought out the best in the people of Gujarat. It has revealed that the bond of humanity has not been lost." Adds Bhavesh Acharya, a local Congress leader and chief of Gandhidham's Red Cross Society: "None of us managing the relief camps here are spending on relief items. It's all pouring in as if from the skies. The groundswell of help and sympathy for the affected is simply unimaginable."

The scene is similar at Navlakhi, an intermediate port facing Kandla. As the water receded on that fateful day leaving nearly 80 people dead in the nearby salt pans, Jaideep Private Ltd, a company operating at the port, took over the relief operations, feeding at least 2,500 to 3,000 homeless people at its expense for almost a week. Says Dilubha Jadeja of the company, which lost salt worth Rs 70 lakh: "We couldn't have left them at the mercy of nature."

Prompt voluntary help could be the reason why any epidemic has been prevented. After a few cases of cholera were detected, over 100 private doctors apart from health workers from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation landed in Kandla cleaning the entire town of its filth and giving preventive inoculations. Admitted Kutch Collector Mukesh Puri: "But for the role of the voluntary agencies, things could have been worse in Kandla."

One government agency which worked with efficiency was the GEB which suffered a loss of Rs 313 crore in the cyclone. Though the entire GEB network was in a mess, it was able to restore power supply in Gandhidham on the eighth day after the tragedy and much earlier in other less affected regions. Says Ramesh Shah, a garment manufacturer from Gandhidham: "When we saw the uprooted electric poles after the cyclone, we thought we wouldn't get power for at least six months. The GEB's work has been exceptional."

Kandla, even after a week of relief and clearing operations, reminds one of the scenes from a disaster movie. Over a dozen vessels are perched precariously on the roads near the town, courtesy the raging winds which blew at a whistling velocity of 170 to 200 kmph. The owners of these tugs and huge barges are waiting for the high tide slated for June 24 to push them into the sea again. Sixteen of the 20 vessels berthed at the port were swept away and are now stuck in or around the Satsaida island facing the port. The vessels weighed between 20,000 and 35,000 tonne. "At least some of these would have to be abandoned because retrieving them is virtually impossible," says Captain A.N.M. Kishore, chairman, KPT.

The real challenge is not just the reconstruction of the port but also of the huge Kandla mart associated with the port, which supplies many essential commodities for the entire north and north-west India. The total loss to business including the damage to the port town is now estimated at Rs 2,500 crore. The KPT has undertaken the laudable effort of clearing the channel to the port within a week of the disaster with help from the Indian Navy base near Jamnagar and has started cargo handling operations. But the complete resumption of activity in the port could take up to six months or more. Says KPT Deputy Chairman Vipul Mitra: "We are working day and night to ensure that the port is fully operational soon."

However, it is the damage to the computerised installations in leading public sector undertakings that is causing worry. The LPG filling plant of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), one of the only three in India, is closed today because of the severe damage to its dock pipeline and computerised control room. It will take at least four months to resume operations, which translated into monetary loss amounts to over Rs 500 crore. Worse, acute shortage of domestic LPG gas may grip north and north-west India in the coming days. The IOC has stocks of diesel and kerosene which will last for not more than 10 days. The control room of the Kandla-Bhatinda Pipeline of the IOC has also been severely damaged by gushing sea water. More than Rs 80 crore worth of urea stocked in the port has been destroyed.

The loss suffered by private companies is equally mindboggling. The cyclone-hit area produces almost 40 per cent of the total salt in the country. According to salt industry captains, this could lead to the shortage of salt in the country and the possible shooting up of salt prices in the next few months. Greater restoration efforts by the Government would be required in the private sector. Sukhraj Singhvi, a leading industrialist of Gandhidham, says, "If the Government doesn't come up with an effective restoration scheme we would be nowhere."

The private industry has demanded income tax holiday for some years to companies engaged in financial operations at the port besides a two-year moratorium on the banks' cash credit limit to salt units against the salt stocks washed away. They have also asked for differential of interests on term loans and a housing scheme for the homeless labourers.

But more than the loss of money or dear ones, it is the sense of fear that is disturbing the survivors. Says Isabhai Sodha, a fisherman of Lavanpur near Navlakhi: "We fishermen virtually live in the sea which is like a mother to us. But after seeing tides rising as high as 25 ft on that fateful day I now feel scared of the sea, perhaps for the first time in my life." Sodha and his family survived miraculously but his seven-year-old daughter Zubeda cannot sleep at night. She sees huge tidal waves coming to devour them all and wakes up screaming. Like Zubeda, Kandla will not easily forget that day for a long, long time.

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