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UP quake toll touches 100

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

A high-intensity earthquake that rocked parts of north India late last night has taken a heavy toll in northern Uttar Pradesh. The toll in Chamoli and Rudraprayag districts has gone up to 95, according to official reports. However, sources said the toll has touched 100.

According to Chamoli Superintendent of Police Sridhar Pathak, "Fifty-nine bodies have been recovered, and medical teams spreading out in the hilly district have attended to over 100 injured people."

In Rudraprayag, District Magistrate Dharam Singh reported 29 deaths and about the same number as being injured.

All the injured have been admitted to the Chamoli hospital and the district hospital in adjoining Gopeshwar town. The condition of 10 injured persons is said to be serious.

The rescue work has been hampered by reports of three major forest fires in the upper reaches, Pathak said. This had caused more panic in the neighbouring villages. Air force pilots involved in rescue operations have reported cracks in the upper mountains.

Major damage has been caused to houses in Chamoli where, according to Chief Secretary Yogendra Narain, "nearly 80 per cent of the houses have collapsed". The toll is not likely to shoot up sharply, Narain said. According to him, houses in Chamoli had tin roofs while the houses in Uttarkashi, where a few hundred people died in a 1992 quake of higher intensity, had roofs of heavy slate.

He said the clattering of the tin roofs warned the people who ran out; at Rudraprayag, where the roofs were made of slate, the residents heard nothing and stayed indoors. The SP fears many more deaths could be reported from there.

Meanwhile, five relief teams have gone in different directions to reach villages not accessible by road. Since these teams are yet to report back, the damage there is yet to be assessed. Air force helicopters have been pressed into service and two army columns have moved in to assist the civil administration to rescue people.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police and personnel from the Border Roads Organisation have moved in to repair the breaches on several major roads connecting different towns in the region.

Measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, this was the strongest quake in the seismically sensitive Himalayan foothills in 94 years. The last earthquake in Chamoli in 1996 measured 4.5 on the Richter scale while the one that rocked neighbouring Uttarkashi five years ago had registered 6.5.

"Fortunately, this is not the pilgrim season. Otherwise Hindu devotees who throng the Badrinath and Kedarnath shrines in the upper reaches of Chamoli district would have died in large numbers," Narain said.

The first tremor was felt across north India, including Lucknow and New Delhi, at about 1240 hours IST.

But Chamoli has experienced many shocks thereafter. Pathak told Rediff On The NeT, "I have myself counted as many as 22 tremors." But the chief secretary said the later tremors were milder, measuring between 2 and 4.9 on the Richter scale.

Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, who convened a meeting of top officials at his residence in Lucknow, said, "We have ordered that relief measures be taken up on a war-footing; cash compensation has also been ordered.''

Experts felt the devastating earthquake was not unexpected. ''After all, Chamoli falls in the seismic Himalayan zone,'' said Dr A K Tangri, senior scientist at the Lucknow-based Remote Sensing Application Centre.

"The affected area falls exactly along the main central thrust area that runs from Uttarkashi in north-western Garhwal and drifts south-eastwards via Joshimath and Helang right up to Pithoragarh in the Kumaon Himalayas."

Attributing the earthquake to the geological movements inside the earth's crust, he explained how the northward movement of the Indian Plate under the Eurasian Plate has been causing earthquakes in the region. "It was this movement, which began nearly 200 million years ago as a result of the collision between the two plates, that gave rise to the Himalayas some 40 million years ago," he pointed out.

The quake was apparently caused by a fracture in the Indian Plate some 10 million years ago. "While seismic movements north of this thrust have stabilised over the centuries, pressure is still being exerted from the southern side, making this one of the weakest zones in the Himalayas," he said.

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