In cars, Jeeps, scooters and on foot, thousands of terrified survivors yesterday fled the towns at the epicenter of India’s massive earthquake as officials warned the death toll could reach 15,000.
Facing another night without water or power and living in persistent fear of aftershocks, the survivors desperately tried to get away from Bhuj, a city of 150,000 about 12 miles from the epicenter, and surrounding towns.
Many started walking, their belongings on their backs, when the quake struck the western state of Gujarat on Friday.
Another powerful tremor today shook the area.
“We have been walking since morning. We are fleeing for our lives,” said Harjivan Vyas, 37, a factory worker. “There is no drinking water, no food. All houses are destroyed.”
As the exodus continued, a 75-year-old woman was pulled out of her collapsed house with minor injuries 30 hours after the quake.
Hours later, army officials dug out two men and a girl, all three of them alive, from underneath the rubble of their homes in Bhuj. Encouraged by the recoveries, soldiers today began searching rubble where a man said he could hear his brother’s voice.
In nearby Anjar, a town of 30,000 flattened by the temblor, rescuers searched for 350 pupils and 50 teachers feared dead after they were buried in rubble during a school parade. Another 50 were pulled out alive.
The quake, which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and had 80 aftershocks, was the worst to strike India in half a century.
Police in Gujarat today said 6,072 bodies had been recovered and more than 14,000 people were injured.
Narendra Modi, secretary-general of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and Defense Minister George Fernandes said they believed 15,000 had died. Other officials predicted the death toll will reach 13,000.
The worst earthquake to occur in the 20th century took place on July 28, 1986, when 240,000 were killed in Tangshan, China.
Throughout Gujarat, the damage was immense.
More than 100 multistory buildings and thousands of smaller houses collapsed, and 30,000 were left homeless. Rescue workers scrambled atop mountains of debris and screamed into the crevices, hoping for signs of life.
Survivors slept in the open – around campfires set near the rubble of their homes.
Most had no water, food or medicine. Others refused to eat, keeping a tearful vigil as emergency workers’ drills dug into concrete in search of their buried loved ones.
In the commercial center of Ahmedabad, a city of 4.5 million people, 15 students were trapped in their high school, which collapsed soon after they arrived for a special class on their day off.With Post Wire Services