BIJOY GURUNG IN GANGTOK
Sept 19 : A 6.9-magnitude earthquake epicentred 68km northwest of Gangtok struck at 6.11pm today, killing 14 people in India and four in Nepal and sending people rushing out of buildings from Calcutta to Delhi.
Nine died in worst-hit Sikkim, one each in Siliguri, Kalimpong and Jalpaiguri, and two minor children in Bihar, including a boy crushed in a stampede. Several houses collapsed and walls developed cracks in Gangtok, where many tall buildings have come up recently.
In Calcutta, the tremors that lasted nearly a minute were felt most strongly in high-rises, largely sparing the peak-hour crowd of Puja shoppers in stores and malls from the sort of panic that gripped some hospitals and apartment blocks.
“It was visiting hour. I saw patients being dragged out of the wards by their relatives,” said Deepak Balmiki, pantry manager on CMRI Hospital’s sixth floor. Calm returned soon, though.
Dr Tapan Ghosh suddenly felt his head “spinning” as he and his wife sipped tea on a 28th-floor flat in Tower 4 of South City. “My teacup was shaking. We heard the South City public address system announce an earthquake and ask all to evacuate immediately. We rushed to the elevator with my bed-ridden 74-year-old mother and stayed out in the open for 40 minutes,” he said.
A neighbour, though, got trapped in a lift that “swung like a pendulum” several floors above the ground.
People grappled with bigger tragedies elsewhere. The lone victim identified in Sikkim, where the shaking mountains shook a minor girl off a slope to her death, is Cipla employee Sandeepan Banerjee. He was buried under a wall in Rango, 41km from Gangtok, but it’s not clear if he was from Bengal.
Bengal’s dead were Binod Agarwal, 48, crushed by a wall that caved in on seven people in Siliguri’s Khalpara; Pushpa Agarwal, 37, killed by a shower of bricks while cooking in Kalimpong’s Thakurbari; and an 18-year-old boy in Jalpaiguri district’s Malbazar.
Power and mobile links were knocked out across Sikkim and parts of north Bengal as the quake, followed by two milder ones, snapped overhead lines and damaged cellphone towers. Houses were damaged in Siliguri, Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong.
More than 100 people arrived at Siliguri district hospital and 30 were admitted. “Falling bricks caused most of the injuries but some got hurt jumping off balconies and rooftops,” a doctor said.
Tremors were felt also in Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan but apparently had no effect on the nuclear power stations at Rajasthan’s Narora and Rawatbhata.
In Kathmandu, MPs debating the national budget ran out of the legislature to a parking area but returned after 15 minutes to resume the session. Families scrambled out of homes in Dhaka too but Bangladesh got through without fatalities.
On Sikkim’s winding highways, a falling boulder smashed a car and killed two men on the Nathula road and another trapped a woman in a car 5km from Gangtok.
Football star Bhaichung Bhutia was fortunate. “I had just driven down to my village Tinkitam from Gangtok, where my wife and kids are staying, and was sipping tea when the earthquake hit,” he told The Telegraph.
“My village is fine but Gangtok has been badly affected. My wife and kids are safe.”
Panicky tourists in Gangtok huddled among the crowds on MG Marg. “We’ll spend the night in the open and try to reach Siliguri early tomorrow,” said Abhishek Srivastava of Patna.
The full extent of damage in Sikkim was unclear because remote areas were cut off by quake-triggered mudslides. Four IAF aircraft left for Bagdogra with National Disaster Rescue Force teams.
Army rescuers and medics were spreading out across Sikkim while army engineers moved uphill from Siliguri to clear the Gangtok road, blocked at four places.
