PART II. NATURAL DISASTERS
Chapter 1. An Earthquake
Key words and terms:
| Earthquake, tremor, temblor Debris Survive Collapse Trap Devastation Relief Relief agency Fly in Sniffer dogs Toll | Topple Rescue teams Equipment Escape Injure Purification kits Distribution kits Fatality Rubble Aftershocks Concrete-cutting |
Text 5. 16.000 Feared Dead
as India Quake Toll Rises
AHMADABAD, India. The Press Trust of India reported the estimate of 16,000 fatalities. Meanwhile, frantic rescue teams dug through rubble with shovels and bare hands. Emergency crews waiting for additional equipment strong enough to lift slabs of concrete rubble weighing more than 40 tons were struggling to do the best they could in their search for survivors.
About 350 schoolchildren and 50 teachers were feared to be killed as they marched in a parade. They were buried under collapsed buildings in the town of Anjar, close to the earthquake's epicentre near Bhuj.
The earthquake struck at 8.46 a.m., Friday. Houses on both sides of a narrow alley toppled onto the students, and only a few managed to escape.
In Ahmadabad, Gujarat's largest city, an estimated 7,000 people died in the quake, and local officials said they had recovered more than 3,000 bodies by Saturday night. An additional 14,502 people were known to be injured. At least 150 of the city's buildings had collapsed. With the help of cranes able to lift 50 tons, rescuers had saved 50 people trapped in the debris. But at least 100 people were still thought to be trapped in the ruins, and no one could be sure whether they were alive.
The first foreign rescue equipment arrived in Ahmadabad from Europe about midnight Saturday and was up and working in the early hours. The equipment, which can scan for people trapped about 25 yards under rubble, was concentrated on the sites where the 100 victims were thought to be.
In the city hit worst by the quake, Bhuj - with a population of 150,000 -hundreds of people spent several nights huddling around bonfires, too terrified to go back into buildings even as temperature dropped to about 45 degrees F. Over 90% of the houses had developed cracks, and many aftershocks had been reported.
Relief agencies sent, at least 30,000 blankets and tents to the quake zone, and a number of countries - including the United States, Russia, Germany and Turkey - promised to fly in heavy cranes, concrete-cutting equipment and sniffer dogs. Officials at the US Agency for International Development in Washington said $1 million in emergency supplies, including plastic sheeting, blankets, water containers, purification and distribution kits, and generators, would arrive in India on Monday.
The devastation caused by the quake proved a lucky break for 188 convicts who escaped through the destroyed walls of a prison in Bhuj. The escapees included hard-core criminals,
Elsewhere, overstretched emergency crews had to deal with a huge oil spill at the port of Kandla, where the quake shock waves ruptured an oil tanker's hull. Indian Prime Minister ordered the country's armed forces to mobilise as if they were at war in order to aid the rescue and relief effort. About 5,000 soldiers were assisting in rescue operations.
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In Bhuj, where a strategic air force base was badly damaged, two Indian air force transport planes landed with relief supplies on Saturday. The quake also cut phone lines into Bhuj and the surrounding region and cracked roads, but the government was able to get a limited number of phone links established and to send in surgical teams with mobile operating rooms.
The quake, centred in the west of Gujarat state, had a magnitude of 7.9, according to U.S. and Chinese experts. But Indian seismologists insisted that it was a 6.9. Whatever seismographs measured, the temblor was so powerful that it sent tremors across the Indian subcontinent, leaving people as far south as the financial centre of Bombay feeling dizzy. It also rocked neighbouring Pakistan, and the ripples were felt as far as China.
The next day, non-stop coverage of the devastation continued to rivet India, a nation of more than 1 billion people, many living in fear of more tremors. More than 180 rolling aftershocks had been recorded by Saturday morning, including five tremors that registered greater than magnitude 6, according to the Atomic Research Centre in Bombay. The pattern analysis of the earthquake showed it was oscillating in nature and still continuing. As a result more tremors were expected to affect the region.
Exercise 1. Answer the following questions.
1) What happened in India in the morning on Friday?
2) What was the impact of this earthquake on two large cities of India?
3) What was the damage to the environment?
4) How did-local rescue teams try to help survivors?
5) Why did hundreds of people spend several nights around bonfires?
6) What countries helped India? What aid did they provide?
7) In what way did military forces help the rescue brigades?
8) What was the nature of this earthquake and what was its magnitude?
9) What other seismologically active regions do you know?
10) What regions of our country can be dangerous from the seismological point of view?
