ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512270067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW DELHI, INDIA
SOURCE: The New York Times
At least 365 people, about half of them schoolchildren, were burned or trampled to death Saturday when a tent erected for a school ceremony in a small northern Indian town caught fire, setting off a stampede in a walled courtyard, the police said.
Another 142 people were injured, many of them listed in critical condition with extensive burns, said a police spokesman. The fire occurred in the town of Mandi Dabwali, about 180 miles northwest of New Delhi in an area of Haryana state close to the Pakistan border.
Police originally feared as many as 415 people had died and 300 injured, but after hours of collecting bodies set the lower casualty figures early today.
``It's a terrible tragedy,'' said Dr. Anoop Kumar, 26, a physician in charge of the emergency department at the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana, 125 miles from the scene of the fire in Punjab state.
Reached by telephone during a break in treating survivors of the blaze, Kumar added, ``Mostly, it was the children who perished, and the adults who survived.''
One of those who escaped with minor injuries, Mukesh Kamra, 43, an auto parts dealer, said that he had been watching the ceremony with his wife when the tent erupted in flames.
Kamra said he got out of the tent, then returned to help his wife, dragging her to safety.
``It was too sudden for anybody to do anything,'' he said. ``Everything was over in five minutes. Nothing anybody could have done would have saved the children.''
There were conflicting accounts of the cause of the blaze. The Haryana police chief, Kalyan Rudra, said an initial investigation indicated that the fire began with an electrical short circuit in the roof of the tent and spread to the nylon fabric covering the structure.
But a later account by the Press Trust of India news agency quoted survivors as saying it broke out during ``an acrobatic fire show'' put on by pupils at the ceremony, an end-of-semester event at which awards are handed out and entertainments are staged.
According to the survivors' accounts, the tent had been erected in the walled compound of a building normally used for weddings. When the tent erupted in flames, these accounts said, the fire quickly spread to the adjoining building, engulfing both and trapping many of the 1,500 people in attendance. Some accounts said there was only a single exit.
Rescue efforts were complicated by circumstances that underlined the inadequacy of essential public services in many parts of this nation of 900 million people.
With only a handful of ambulances in Mandi Dabwali, many victims had to be taken to hospitals in private cars or taxis. Because of the scarcity of local hospitals, many survivors were transported 125 miles over congested roads to hospitals in Ludhiana and Chandigarh in the Punjab.
The Associated Press contributed information to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by AP. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB