-Caveat Lector- Massive earthquake kills thousands in India By NIRMALA GEORGE, Associated Press AHMEDABAD, India (January 26, 2001 3:55 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - The most powerful earthquake to strike India in more than a half-century shook the subcontinent Friday, killing more than 2,000 people, injuring 3,000 and leaving survivors spending the night by campfires near the rubble of their homes. The 7.9 magnitude temblor in western Gujarat state, close to the border with Pakistan, caused high-rise buildings to sway 600 miles away in the capital, New Delhi, and was felt 800 miles away in Nepal and 1,200 miles away in Bangladesh. All the deaths in India were recorded in Gujarat state, where buildings shook for more than two minutes. The quake struck at 8:50 a.m. as many cities were celebrating India's 51st Republic Day, which commemorates the adoption of the constitution. In Ahmedabad, Gujarat's commercial capital and a city of 4.5 million, as many as 50 multistory buildings collapsed and at least 270 people were killed. Hundreds of people besieged the fire station asking for help to dig out their relatives, fire chief Rajesh Bhat said. "This is an emergency. We are facing a riotous crowd," Bhat said. "A fear psychosis is developing in the city. People have fled their homes and are taking refuge in open fields." Helmeted rescue workers used iron rods to pry up slabs of concrete and metal, searching for survivors. Women wept and rocked back and forth, watching anxiously as the few available bulldozers and cranes pushed through the piles of stone that once had housed families and shops. Beds, children's toys and clothes lay abandoned in the debris. Lamp posts and electric pylons were twisted and many buildings were left leaning precariously. Rescuers stood atop the rubble of collapsed buildings, digging for survivors. Corpses were piled up on the verandah of the N.S. Hospital, while patients overflowing into the hallways wailed and screamed with broken limbs and bleeding wounds. Press Trust of India reported 70 people died while waiting to be treated. Bruised and bleeding bodies were laid in rows, covered with blankets as relatives sat by mourning. The death toll in India was 860 and was expected to climb, authorities said. Six people died in Pakistan when two houses collapsed, bringing the overall toll to 866. The epicenter was near Bhuj, a desert town of 150,000 people in Gujarat where authorities said 200 people were killed and 90 percent of the houses were damaged. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee held an emergency meeting and called on "all people to rally together at this time of national calamity." He made no appeal for international aid, saying the needs were still being assessed. Vajpayee sent federal Home Minister Lal Advani to Gujarat, where Advani said the death figure "could be 1,000 or more." Cabinet minister Pramod Mahajan said the government was flying 10,000 tents, 10,000 tons of grain, 20 doctors and surgeons, communications and seismology experts to Gujarat. The air force said it had landed two helicopters at its base in Bhuj and the government said the runway would be able to handle small planes by Saturday. The temblor caused high-rise buildings to sway from New Delhi in the north, to Bombay and Madras in the south and Calcutta in the west, many hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Reports of aftershocks came in from around the country. An apparent aftershock hit Bangladesh, where hundreds of panicked residents flooded into the streets of Satkhira, on the border with India. The quake was the most powerful to strike India since Aug. 15, 1950, when an 8.5 magnitude temblor killed 1,538 people in northeastern Assam state. On June 16, 1819, a quake in western India killed between 1,500 and 2,000 people. Mahajan insisted that Friday's quake measured 6.9, according to a preliminary figure given by the Indian Meteorological Institute. However, the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., taking an average of seismograph measurements from around the world, said it was 7.9. There was no damage to the two 220-megawatt nuclear plants in Gujarat, authorities said. But gas pipelines, most power supply stations, phone lines and water service were knocked out in the arid state, which is prone to drought. "The whole state has been affected. Communications have been disrupted all over the state," said Gujarat's home minister, Haren Pandya. In Ahmedabad, a center of India's textile industry, about 70 children and some teachers were feared dead in the debris of their school building, while 19 engineering students were believed trapped in a collapsed college elsewhere in the city. Baijubahi, an Ahmedabad man who uses only one name, said his wife was killed in the earthquake and six members of his family were still trapped in their building. "The police are trying to persuade me to go to the hospital for my wife's post-mortem," he said. "I'm more concerned about the rest, who could have survived." A bulldozer worked near one collapsed building to clear the rubble as people stood around dazed, a few pulling at pieces of wood and stone. In the town of Surat - where police reported at least 31 dead - three people were killed in a stampede at a diamond factory. In most of the country, there was no damage or injuries. In the desert state of Rajasthan, the eighth-century Jaisalmer Fort, a popular tourist attraction, was damaged. Some of the distinctive yellow stones supporting the gate fell and the walls developed cracks. Millions of Hindus at the world's largest religious gathering in Allahabad, in Uttar Pradesh, more than 1,000 miles east of the epicenter, felt the ground sway under them. No injuries were reported. ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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