Quake Relief Effort Races Time
By Maria Abraham
Reuters
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Pawel Kopczynski / Reuters
An injured girl who survived Friday's massive earthquake in Bhuj in Gujarat state.
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BHUJ, India - Rescuers picking through the rubble of India's worst earthquake found a small boy trapped alive Monday, but three days after the quake many towns and villages struggled to cope without help from the outside. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee arrived in the ancient town of Bhuj in Gujarat state, western India, which bore the brunt of Friday's quake, and complained that villages in the region were not getting necessary help fast enough. "Relief work needs to be speeded up," he told reporters. "The government is surveying the villages. There is a lack of relief work in the villages." The disaster has killed an estimated 20,000 people. The World Bank said it would immediately release $300 million for quake relief. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said the government planned to ask for $1 billion from the World Bank and $500 million from the Asian Development Bank to help rebuild. Vajpayee announced federal aid of 5 billion rupees ($107.6 million) for Gujarat. Differences between India and its estranged neighbor Pakistan surfaced over the issue of aid. Pakistan's military ruler said India had declined its offer of aid. Indian officials denied specific aid had been offered. In Anjar, a town to the south east so far bypassed by the main rescue effort, the smell of decomposing bodies hung in the air. But Vajpayee said there had been no reports of disease breaking out thus far in Gujarat, which has grown prosperous as the nation's second most-industrialized state. Rescue teams from India and abroad raced against time to clear decomposing bodies in the major centers such as Bhuj and Gujarat's main city Ahmedabad. Fear of collapsing buildings, fresh tremors and disease hampered their every move. Rescue workers in Bhuj said Monday evening a three- or four-year-old boy had been found alive but they feared they would have to amputate a limb to get him out. "They have asked for surgeons for an amputation," Mike Thomas, a member of a British rescue team, told Reuters. The boy's brother was already dead and his mother died beside him soon after rescuers arrived. In New Delhi, people thronged a Red Cross building to donate blood for those injured in the quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey put at 7.9 on the Richter scale. Survivors of the disaster, which injured tens of thousands of people and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes, wavered between fear and numb resignation as the full impact of the tragedy unfolded. Jayantibhai, an automobile parts trader, had been waiting near his wrecked home in Bhuj since Friday to ensure a proper cremation for his mother, whose body was trapped under rubble. "That is all I want to do now," he said. Many people spent another night in the open around bonfires, some with white bundles next to them containing bodies of relatives and friends. Smaller tremors continued to hit parts of western India Monday evening. In Bhuj and in villages nearby, trucks ferried firewood for cremations. One television report said the air force was flying in wood for funerals as local supplies dwindled. Rebuilding after the quake was expected to cost billions of dollars. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry put building and construction losses across Gujarat at 150 billion rupees ($3.2 billion). "It's obviously a major, major earthquake comparable to Armenia in 1988 and Turkey in 1999," British rescuer Andy Burns told reporters.
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