India Trembles

By John Cloud

There is nothing left between the sky and the earth anymore," said Dawod Ismail Siddhi of Pachchao, India, a town near the epicenter of the earthquake that has left an estimated 15,000 people dead and thousands more injured or homeless. "Everything has been demolished." Nearby his sister Banu knelt beside a cot bearing the corpses of her two children.

Earthquakes usually strike without warning, but the timing of last week's temblor, a powerhouse registering 7.9 on the Richter scale, was particularly heartless. It hit the western state of Gujarat, near the Pakistan border, shortly before 9 a.m. on Republic Day, which honors the Indian constitution. Many Indians had just poured a cup of tea and turned on the TV to watch the annual military parade.

Then the earth bucked and shuddered. Local officials in India are notorious for not enforcing building codes. As many apartment blocks began to teeter, the desperate leaped from balconies. Bhuj, the hardest-hit city, lost its main hospital, and 4% of its 150,000 residents are dead. Elsewhere in Gujarat, 400 schoolchildren were buried alive as they marched in a Republic Day parade.

There was not much time for grief. Mattresses lined the sidewalks of Ahmadabad, a city of some 5 million, where people were too scared of aftershocks to sleep indoors. Many were having trouble finding drinking water and food. Doctors were overwhelmed. Roads and bridges were damaged, slowing relief efforts. Many volunteers were forced to dig barehanded for survivors.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared a state of emergency and ordered thousands of troops to help during the aftermath. "We will rebuild the broken homes," he said. "We will resettle the shattered neighborhoods. And we will pray for those that died." --By John Cloud. Reported by Rukmini Maria Callimachi/Ahmadabad and Meenakshi Ganguly/Bombay

With reporting by Rukmini Maria Callimachi/Ahmadabad and Meenakshi Ganguly/Bombay