Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 1, 1993 TAG: 9310010260
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: UMARGA, INDIA LENGTH: Medium
Authorities feared the death toll would rise substantially in India's worst quake in a half-century.
Many villages were leveled so quickly as the earth shook violently and opened crevices that people were crushed inside their homes while sleeping, news agencies reported.
"The rising sun created darkness for us this morning, swallowed up our villages, and made our houses into tombs," a survivor told a reporter.
Some survived when frantic rescuers heard them shouting for help beneath toppled walls and roofs or saw a hand reaching out from the wreckage.
Friends, neighbors and police strained to lift stone, brick and wood by hand to free victims.
Soldiers and policemen rushed to the remote area of southwestern India, bringing stretchers, tents, medical supplies, earthmovers, bulldozers and mobile hospitals. But relief workers had trouble reaching some villages that recently lost their roads and bridges to heavy monsoon rains.
The quake, which measured at least 6 on the Richter scale, ripped through southwest India at 3:56 a.m. It was felt at least 400 miles from the epicenter and caused a wide swath of damage.
The death tolls given by state officials and news reports varied from 6,200 to 16,000, and all appeared to be based on confirmed statistics and estimates.
By nightfall the death toll was more than 6,200, said N. Raghunathan, chief secretary of Maharashtra, the hardest-hit state, adding that more than 2,000 bodies had been recovered.
State-run Doordarshan TV raised the toll to more than 10,000 and said more than 12,000 people could still be trapped. The United News of India news agency later put the death toll at as many as 16,000.
About 10,000 people were injured, said Raghunathan. Telephone, electricity and water lines were cut in many areas.
The epicenter was near Maharashtra's southeastern border with Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh states.
Only after dawn broke hours later did survivors realize the magnitude of the quake and the number of people it had killed or maimed and left stranded in the rubble.
One of the worst-hit towns was Umarga, 270 miles southeast of Bombay. Some 3,000 people died and 60 percent of the town's buildings were destroyed, Raghunathan said.
"Those few seconds seemed to last forever," said Solani Bhagwat, 35. "I didn't know how it happened. It was dark and I could hear people shrieking and howling. Only when the sun came out did I realize they were all trapped in their houses."
Inside the town's small, overcrowded hospital, hundreds of injured people lay wailing on floors or in a tent set up in a courtyard.
"We don't have enough drugs and bandages," Dr. Ahiwin Solekar said as he rushed from one patient to another.
About 80 percent of the village of Killari, which has 18,000 people, was flattened, said senior police officer S.P. Wathore in Bombay, the capital of Maharashtra. About 3,000 people died in Killari, 50 miles north of the epicenter.
Keywords:
INFOLINE
by CNB