Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9310030189
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: HYDERABAD, INDIA LENGTH: Medium
Powerful storms lashed the earthquake zone overnight, leaving dirt roads impassable for relief operations, dousing hundreds of funeral pyres where victims were being burned and slowing efforts to extract more bodies from the rubble of villages left by the Thursday morning quake in the southwestern state of Maharashtra.
Government officials said Saturday that 9,400 bodies have been recovered from the mounds of rock and dirt in the towns and villages affected by one of India's worst disasters of this century. About 5,400 bodies were being burned atop wooden funeral pyres built amidst the rubble and in surrounding fields while hundreds of others were being bulldozed into mass graves.
Authorities are increasing their estimates of the death toll daily, saying Saturday that as many as 30,000 people could be dead or missing as they survey the extent of the damage in villages where excavation efforts have barely begun. But local leaders and government officials, who said recovery efforts could take weeks in areas where entire villages collapsed, concede there is no accurate measure of the total number of dead.
"The devastation is so great that even now full reports have not been received," Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao said in an address to the nation, his first since the earthquake.
Although the Indian government initially rejected offers of international assistance, senior officials announced Saturday that they will begin accepting foreign aid, including $3 million from the United States.
An Indian spokesman said two U.S. Air Force C-5 cargo planes are expected to arrive in Bombay today with supplies. Rao, in his address to the nation, thanked President Clinton and the American people for the money and supplies.
by CNB