Nothing to salvage, let's rebuild: Govt.

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD, FEB. 1. The massive scale of destruction in many towns and villages in the earthquake-ravaged Kutch district may compel the Gujarat Government to abandon rescue operations, even leaving unaccounted bodies underneath, and try to rebuild the shattered habitats afresh.

Some senior Government officials in charge of the rescue and relief operations feel that nothing further could be salvaged from the mass of rubble that was left of Bhachau or old Anjar towns and it would be more advisable to rebuild the towns afresh.

Bhachau, with a population of over 25,000, was perhaps one of the worst affected with almost the entire town wiped out. Ruling out chances of any more survivors, the officials said it would take about six months to clear the debris and this could cost a lot. ``It will be better to leave the debris as it is and rebuild the town with the money and time required for the salvage operations,'' a senior official said.

The situation was similar in the walled areas of Anjar town, which constituted more than 40 per cent of the 35,000-odd population of the historic city, which experienced a similar quake in 1956, after which the entire town was built anew.

The Minister of State for Urban Development, Mr. Parmanand Khattar, in charge of the rescue operations in Anjar, informed the Chief Minister, Mr. Keshubhai Patel, who is camping in Kutch district to oversee salvage operations, that the entire old Anjar town had been wiped out.

At least a dozen villages on the Bhachau-Bhuj belt are also feared to have met with a similar fate. The actual body count in Bhachau, where the salvage operations began only yesterday, has jumped to 7,350, which accounted for more than half of the total ``confirmed deaths'' reported from the entire Kutch district at 14,241.

In Bhuj, the authorities today managed to break open three of the four gates leading to the walled city area with a population of about 75,000; the fate of most of them is still unknown.

The Minister of State for Home, Mr. Haren Pandya, and the Principal Secretary, Mr. P.K. Lehri, while claiming that contacts had been re-established with all the 884 villages in the district with an estimated population of 11 lakh people, admitted that the actual toll could jump rapidly when the debris was cleared and bodies extricated.

Mr. Lehri, however, maintained that many of those feared trapped inside Bhuj had actually been able to escape and had left the district alive. So far, 1,450 casualties had been recorded in Bhuj from actual body count.

The Government, however, had ``no idea'' as to how many families had actually been killed in rural Kutch but believed that it should not be very high considering that most of the houses in the villages were hutments and the casualty was unlikely to be heavy.

Outside Kutch district, the death toll through actual body count has increased to 1,498 with 20 more bodies recovered today. The rescue teams also succeeded in rescuing three more persons alive, one each in Ahmedabad, Bhuj and Anjar, nearly a week after the devastation but the conditions of all of them were ``very critical'' and the chances of survival remote.

All banks under one roof

In view of the total destruction of the buildings in Kutch, the nationalised banks have decided to start ``container complex'' with all the banks sitting under one roof to help account holders and depositors. Mr. Pandya claimed that the currency chest of all the banks were ``intact'' in Bhuj.

Mr. Pandya said steps were also being taken to check the outbreak of epidemics and to maintain law and order. While denying the reports in a section of the press, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Dr. V.V. Rama Subba Rao, denied that the Kutch district had been handed over to the Army or there was large-scale looting of relief vehicles or of valuables from under the debris.

He said nearly 3,000 State Reserve police, border home guards and other para-military forces had been deployed in Kutch to assist the local police to maintain the law and order. He also denied that security on the International Border with Pakistan had been slackened and said security had actually been further tightened.

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