Nothing Between Earth and Sky.(Gujarat, India - earthquakes)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

On almost any other Friday, the students would have been sitting comfortably in school at 8:46 in the morning. But Jan. 26 was Republic Day in India, a national holiday commemorating the country's independence 51 years ago. So 400 secondary-school students, ages 8 to 14, were walking in a happy procession through the old, narrow streets of Anjar, a small town in western India near the border with Pakistan. The students, from local schools, were singing patriotic songs when, suddenly, the ground started to shake violently. Houses and high-rise buildings on both sides of the street began collapsing like cardboard boxes--tumbling down on the helpless children. Roughly 45 seconds later, the busy street was a smoky ruin.

Anjar was devastated--and so would be its families. The 400 students were buried under a huge and horrifying pile of rubble. "There is no possibility of anyone surviving," said Narendra Modi, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader who visited the scene.

The massive earthquake that struck the industrial state of Gujarat was India's worst in half a century. It turned what was supposed to be a joyous celebration into a nationwide day of mourning. At the weekend the death toll had surpassed 13,000, according to federal emergency officials, with more than 33,000 people injured. Those are rough estimates; it could take weeks to assess the full scope of the disaster. Almost certainly, the death count will rise. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, after an emergency cabinet meeting, put the Gujarat relief effort on a "war footing." The central government-- criticized for its handling of the 1999 Orissa cyclone--flew in 10,000 tents and 10,000 tons of grain for food. Army battalions were diverted to the quake zone, bringing cranes and listening devices capable of locating survivors. Teams of foreign rescue experts rushed to Gujarat. Pakistan put aside its bitter rivalary with India and offered financial aid.

The city of Bhuj (population: more than 150,000), on Gujarat's western flank, was the hardest hit. It is just 12 miles from the epicenter of the quake--which measured 7.9 on the scale. Nearly every building in Bhuj was destroyed or seriously damaged. Power and telephone lines were out, as were road, bridge and rail links, preventing large-scale emergency relief. Military transport planes carried doctors and medical supplies into the city, where an estimated 6,000 people were killed, and airlifted out the injured. It was a precarious business: with power, radio transmitters and telephones down, the planes were guided by a solitary radio operator hovering in a helicopter above a military airfield. Bhuj's only civilian hospital was ...