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Below are some updated news reports since 7:30am IST, Sept 21st.

MSN Photoblog – Himalayan earthquake survivors evacuated (Images)

People sift through the rubble of a church, which was destroyed by Sunday’s 6.9 magnitude earthquake, at Rangrang village north of the northeastern Indian city of Gangtok September 20.

BBC – Workers at Sikkim power unit killed by quake landslides

The spokesman for Teesta Urja Limited, which runs the power plant, told the BBC that as well as those killed one worker was missing and 10 others were injured. About 1,000 people work at the plant.

He said that the victims were returning to the plant after their shift when they were hit by rocks falling from mountain roads which surround the plant.

“We are trying to ascertain the number of people who are missing, but it is difficult because some local workers have returned home after the quake,” Teesta Urja executive PP Baby told the AP news agency.

Hindustan Times – 400 foreign tourists stranded in Sikkim, toll now 73

In Lalchung, injured and stranded passengers of a bus were rescued in an army helicopter in a daring operation as there was no place to land.

Two Brigadiers jumped down nearly seven to 10 feet from the chopper to make for the passengers, one of whom was seriously injured while another had died. The passengers were helped into the hovering aircraft.

India Today – Rahul Gandhi visits earthquake-hit Sikkim

Accompanied by Minister of State for Home Affairs Jitendra Singh, the young MP conducted an aerial survey of the quake affected areas. Later he took the road route to meet the quake victims.

Zeenews.com – Sikkim quake caused loss of nearly 1L crores: CM

Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling on Wednesday said that the relief and rescue operation in the earthquake-affected parts of Sikkim will be completed in the next two to three days.

India Today – Sikkim earthquake: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assures help for victims

As the extent of damage caused by the quake unfolded gradually, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling again on Tuesday to assure him the Centre would do everything needed to deal with the situation.

He also called a meeting of the cabinet committee on political affairs to discuss ways to help the state, PMO sources said.

Mid-day – 10 doctors treating over 300 victims

…two rescue teams from the army had “air dropped” in Sikkim and a team of 10 doctors from Delhi had reached the spot.

Business Standard – 5,500 Armymen in rescue and relief job in Sikkim

The Army has deployed nearly 5,500 personnel drawn from all across Sikkim and adjoining regions under the Eastern Command in the rescue and relief work in the Himalayan state.

GoC-in-C Eastern Command Lt Gen Bikram Singh visited several ‘quake-hit areas in North Sikkim, including Chatten, Mangan, Tung, Chungthang and Gangtok, to survey the damage, besides taking stock of the Army’s rescue and relief operations since Sunday night.

Times of India – Sikkim quake: Nine villages still inaccessible, damages estimated at Rs 1 lakh crore

“Nine villages are still totally inaccessible,” he said.
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Though the road from the Sikkim capital to Mangan, the epicentre of the quake located 55 km from here, has been reopened, roads further north are still closed owing to landslides from Mangan to Chungthang.

Deccan Chronicle – No trace of 120 people at a North Sikkim village; quake toll rises

According to reports, there is still no trace of 120 residents of Bay village in North Sikkim, located between Lachung and Chungthang, after Sunday’s powerful quake even as a flash flood at Lachung poses a fresh threat of landslides.

“We find no trace as yet of 120 people living in 14 huts at Bay village as the area is totally devastated. There is a lot of debris … and the residents have gone missing,” National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team in-charge Nisith Upadhyay said.

He said four NDRF teams have fanned out to worst-hit Lingu, Sakyang, Pentong and Bay villages in North Sikkim which have been rendered almost inaccessible after the quake.

“We are afraid some bodies may have been trapped under the flattened houses as boulders are lying strewn all over,” he added. According to S.R. Bhutia, Deputy Director of Horticultural Society of Sikkim, who led the four teams, ‘we haven’t found any person in the village. We are searching for them’.

DNA
Published: Wednesday, Sep 21, 2011, 18:15 IST
Place: Darjeeling | Agency: PTI

Two houses in Kalimpong and Mongpo in the Darjeeling hills, where Nobel laureate and poet Rabindranath Tagore penned some of his memorable poems, were damaged during the earthquake that rocked Sikkim and other parts of northeast India.

Official sources said here today that the ground floor at the back side of “Gauripur Niwas” in Kalimpong, where Tagore lived in mid-1930s, collapsed during the temblor while several cracks have appeared in many other parts of the building.

The house, bearing a marble tablet about the Nobel laureate’s stay, is in bad shape in the absence of proper maintenance.

The single-storey “Rabindra Bhavan” at Mongpo, where Tagore stayed for several months towards the end of his life, also developed cracks in the right frontal portion due to the quake, they said.

The roof and chimney suffered major damage when a tree fell on it during a storm in May last, they added.

Tagore penned some of his great poems here between 1938 and 1940 including Janmadin (Birthday).

Priceless Tagore memorabilia is preserved in the house which is now a museum, including a mahogany desk and his bed.

GJM president Bimal Gurung said the damages would be brought to the notice of the state government for proper action as the house is a heritage building.
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The Times of India
PTI | Sep 19, 2011, 10.08PM IST

GANGTOK: Twenty-two people, travelling in a bus, went missing since last evening in north Sikkim where the epicentre of the 6.8 magnitude earthquake lay.

They were believed to be travelling in a GREF bus which is still to be traced by the rescue teams.

A spokesman of the 17 Mountain Division said the army was still not able to find the missing bus which could be anywhere between a radius of 10 and 15 km along Mangan and Chungthang in North Sikkim.

The official death toll in the North district now stands at 24 excluding the 22 in the missing bus.

The road from Gangtok to Mangan the North district headquarters has been opened for the time being with rescue operations in full swing.

Meanwhile a total of 100 families were rescued and evacuated to safer locations in the West district by the district administration and local people. All the families have been shifted to safer locations.

With four deaths in the district, the number of the injured in the district has exceeded 120.

The army rescue team has still not been able to make their way into the district because of the district highway giving way at many locations.

However, District Collector, West, Santa Pradhan says that the roads to Geyzing which is the West district headquarters will be open by tonight.

In the West district apart from the casualties, two major monasteries Pemayangtse and Tashiding Monastery built in the late 1700s have been damaged.

These monasteries have historical significance for mainly the Buddhists. Ancient stupas in the monastery complex have also been destroyed in the earthquake.

School buildings in the district have also been abandoned along with many government office buildings in the district.
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RAJEEV RAVIDAS

(From top) A crack on the main entrance of the chapel at Dr Graham’s Homes; a boarders’ cottage that was damaged in the earthquake; the infirmary. Pictures by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, Sept. 20: Sunday’s earthquake has caused extensive damage to the 111-year-old Dr. Graham’s Homes, forcing authorities of the premier educational institution in the hill town to suspend classes from nursery to Class VIII till October 10.

The school will remain open for students of Classes IX, X, XI and XII.

The quake has damaged 19 of the 22 cottages that house the co-ed school’s 900-odd boarders. Some classrooms, too, have developed cracks. The Katherine Memorial Chapel and the Steele Memorial Centre, the school’s infirmary, have also developed multiple cracks.

Seven of the 19 damaged cottages have been evacuated. “We have accommodated the boarders from the seven cottages in other cottages and the KG section,” headmaster S.L. Banerjee said.

Most of the damaged cottages are over 100 years old.

Spread over 500 acres, the school, founded in 1900 by Scottish missionary Dr John A. Graham, also has a workshop, a bakery, three playgrounds and a farm.

The headmaster said some of the 11 staff quarters, including his, had suffered structural damage. “Initially we thought we would carry out repairs during the Puja holidays (scheduled from October 2 to 10). However, engineers advised us that given the widespread damage, it would take more time to repair the structures. That is why we decided to suspend classes from nursery to Class VIII from today till October 10,” he added.

The school has a student strength of 1,460, of whom 920 are boarders.

The boarders whose classes have been suspended have started leaving for their homes. “They will return on October 11 and, normally, classes will resume the next day,” Banerjee said.

The headmaster said the damaged structures didn’t appear to be beyond repair. “We have not estimated the damage caused to our property. We will have to look at the comparative costs of restoration and of rebuilding the damaged properties,” he added.

The seven other ICSE schools in the town resumed classes from today after a day’s holiday following the quake.

“The other schools have not suffered much damage,” said E.B. Sherpa, the president of the Kalimpong unit of the Janmukti Secondary Teachers’ Organisation’s ICSE/CBSE wing.

Sherpa said his organisation would soon hold a meeting to discuss the damage caused to Dr. Graham’s Homes.

“Homes is a heritage school of not just Kalimpong but the entire hills,” he said. “We will all come together to help Homes recover from the destruction.”

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Siliguri, Sept. 20: The state government today decided to stop the registration of buildings in Siliguri and Jalpaiguri for a fortnight even as the authorities repaired most of the roads damaged in the earthquake in the hills.

The order to restrict the registration came from north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb. He today toured Siliguri, along with mayor Gangotri Datta, to check the buildings which had developed cracks.

“The mayor will ask the registrars not to allow the registration of any building in the next 15 days, during which the total damage would be ascertained. I will also talk to the municipal affairs department to ensure that the rules to regulate the construction of buildings in seismic zones like Siliguri are followed,” Deb told journalists.

The minister said the government would call in technical experts from IIT, Roorkee, to inspect the damaged buildings. “We would obtain the chief minister’s assent and bring in the experts here to study the damaged buildings and recommend necessary measures.”

Siliguri College, Baradakanta Vidyapith and the hostel of Siliguri Girls’ High School were among the buildings the minister visited today. The boarders of the hostel have been provided with alternative accommodation after the tremor.

A building was tilted towards the adjacent structure at Bidhan Road. Both Deb and Datta inspected the building.

“Engineers of our PWD cell have inspected the inclined building. The chances of an immediate collapse are remote,” said the mayor.

In the Darjeeling hills, the administration has started repairing roads wide opened by the tremor on Sunday evening. A number of roads were hit by landslides and the boulders blocking traffic have already been cleared.

“Minor landslides had hit the road between Kurseong and Darjeeling at many points. But the road has been restored for traffic now,” said an administrative official, who is closely co-ordinating the restoration with local bodies and NGOs.

The official said a status report would be prepared on the damage caused to buildings, roads and others structures by the quake as directed by the chief minister. He said most buildings in Kurseong had developed cracks and their repair would commence soon.

In Kalimpong subdivision, NH31A has been opened and the treasury office has been shifted to Town Hall. The traffic on the highway had been disrupted by boulders that rolled down from the hillside in the tremor. Several buildings, including the one where treasury office used to function.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has also started the assessment of the damage. “Our local committees have been asked to prepare a list of structures struck by the quake. The report will be sent to the state government for necessary help. I will also request the Centre to set up a disaster management cell in Darjeeling,” said Morcha president Bimal Gurung.

State minister for jails Shankar Chakraborty also made rounds in Siliguri. He is visiting jails in north Bengal to see whether the earthquake has caused any damage to prisons.
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AVIJIT SINHA

Siliguri, Sept. 20: The tremor has taken its toll on the tourism sector with a good number of foreigners cancelling their trips to Sikkim.

The tour operators hope that domestic tourists will stick to their travel plans for the festive season and are keeping their fingers crossed.

The cancellation of bookings has come as a double whammy for the tour operators as many hotels in Sikkim have been damaged in the quake.

“It would take time for the situation to turn normal in Sikkim. Cracks and crevices have appeared in hotels, which need repairs. Thousands of tourists flock to our state during Durga Puja and Diwali. But a large number of foreigners cancelled their bookings after the tremor,” said Lukendra Rasaily, the secretary of the Travel Agents’ Association of Sikkim.

“There have been no cancellations by domestic tourists yet; so, we are banking on them now.”

Rasaily said 50-odd tourists, including two Norwegian women, were left stranded at Lachung in North Sikkim after the earthquake. “We have no information about a group who had gone for a trek to Dzongri. Tourists in Lachung are safe and in good health.”

The quake has come as a major jolt to the tourism sector which had just started recovering in north Bengal and Sikkim after years of tumult in the Darjeeling hills.

“The tourism industry was affected by strikes and road blockades in the hills in the past three-four years. After the signing of the GTA agreement, things had started to look up and we had expected a brisk business during the Puja holidays. There were indications that thousands would pour in with reservations full on trains and buses and almost no rooms lying vacant in destinations like Gangtok, Darjeeling and Lataguri,” said a Siliguri-based tour operator.

“But the tourists are apprehensive after the natural disaster that claimed many lives and maimed many people and caused immense damage to properties. We don’t know what is there in store for us.”

The hoteliers now hope the domestic tourists would save their day.

“We are flooded with inquiries from domestic visitors. Fortunately, there have been no cancellations by them so far,” Samrat Sanyal, the president of the Eastern Himalaya Travel and Tour Operators’ Association, told The Telegraph over the phone from Ahmedabad.

The association is doing its bit to keep people posted of the situation after the quake.

“We have a two-fold task now. First, we will collect updates on roads and other developments and post them on the Internet. Second, our members will visit destinations like Lava, Kalimpong and Darjeeling and assess the damage caused by the earthquake,” said Raj Basu, an adviser to the association.
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Boulders kill BRO engineer
BIJOY GURUNG

Mangan (North Sikkim), Sept. 20: An engineer with the Border Roads Organisation was killed on Sunday when an avalanche of boulders triggered by the quake crashed into their bus.

A senior BRO official identified the deceased as Vijay Kumar from Punjab. Kumar was in his fifties.

According to a BRO official, 17 junior engineers were returning to their base at Manuel near Mangan, the district headquarters of North Sikkim, when the boulders came hurtling down between Pegong and Thung.

“The junior engineers along with the driver, his helper and a couple of other passengers were returning to their base in a BRO bus. Boulders crashed into the bus when the quake occurred,” the official said.

An engineer, identified as S.P. Singh from Uttar Pradesh, suffered serious injuries. The others scampered to safety.

As Singh couldn’t be moved, the others left him under the crumpled bus. They reached the BRO base, 13km away, at night. Rescue workers reached Singh this morning. The engineer was later airlifted to Siliguri in an army helicopter.
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VIVEK CHHETRI

Gangtok, Sept. 20: The earth beneath their feet gave away in almost the literal sense for many, and some have been forced to think of starting life afresh.

Keema Sherpa is one of them. The 56-year-old woman from Baluwakhani in Gangtok has not been talking for the past three days. She has recovered and her condition is stable but her right leg has been amputated.

“She used to work as a labourer and used to stay with her husband. Both used to eke out a living, working at a construction site,” said Sanu Kami, a neighbour who had come to visit her at Sir Thutob Namgyal Memorial Hospital, a government facility here.

When the tremor hit on Sunday, Keema was preparing dinner. “The tin wall of her house collapsed. Her husband was not around and the tin severely cut her right leg, which had to be amputated,” said a nurse.

Neighbours brought Keema to the hospital but they are not sure if the couple have children or if they live elsewhere. “Just two of us used to stay in the shack,” said Keema finally, going back into her silence.

While Keema was struck even before she realised what was happening, a young monk jumped from a two-storied building in the belief that it was better than being buried alive.

Zangpo Chumpasng, the 18-year-old student monk at Takshe Sheda monastery in Gangtok, was preparing to enter the dinning hall for dinner when the earth shook.

“I feared for my life and I jumped from above two floors,” one of his relatives Choying Rangdom translated what the young monk murmured.

Chumpsang hails from Tashiding in West Sikkim and he had suffered deep cuts on both his legs. His body is also bruised. While Chumpsang can pursue his studies, Nepal Barman, 34, a resident of Damdim in Jalpaiguri district is not sure whether he can keep working.

“I work as a bar bender (bending and installing steel bars) at the construction site at Pakyong airport and I slipped while running. Both my legs seem to be badly damaged,” said Barman. The airport is 30km from Gangtok.

Barman is still waiting for an X-ray report to confirm the severity of his injury. “I just hope, I can work once again. I have a family of four to look after,” he said.
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BIJOY GURUNG IN MANGAN AND G.S. MUDUR IN NEW DELHI

Sept. 20: Mangan town, which many consider the epicentre of the quake, does not show extensive damage and only one death has been reported there so far.

The relatively unscathed appearance of Mangan has revived suggestions that epicentres of quakes are safe-haven oases that escape the brunt of the fury.

However, seismologists and earthquake engineers have cautioned that the strongest ground movements should be expected at the epicentre of the earthquake, quite unlike an atmospheric cyclone where the eye of the storm is calm relative to the high-speed winds around it.

The damage to buildings and other structures during an earthquake depends not just on their distance from the epicentre but also on the type of ground they stand on and the design and quality of construction, the earthquake engineers added.

Mangan town cannot be conclusively termed the epicentre, either. According to data available so far, the town falls within 50km of the epicentre of Sunday’s first — and the day’s biggest — earthquake of 6.8 magnitude. Seismologists have concluded that the epicentre of the 6.8 event was somewhere beneath the Kanchenjungha mountain, not Mangan.

But there is disagreement among seismologists over the location of epicentres of two subsequent events — 5.3 and 4.6 — both east of the primary shock.

Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Engineering and Research, Calcutta, hope to pinpoint the epicentres after studying data on instruments at three sites — Yumthang, 20km north of Mangan, Rabangla, 15km south of Mangan, and Pangthang, 5km west of Gangtok.

“These instruments are closest to the events — we’re waiting for the data,” said Shyam Sunder Rai, a geophysicist at the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad.
Army personnel on a rescue mission at Pegong in North Sikkim. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is expected to land in Bagdogra on Wednesday and take a helicopter to Chungthang, about 5km away, which till Tuesday was cut off for rescuers. Picture taken by Prabin Khaling aboard an IAF chopper

The lone death on the outskirts of Mangan town took place when a church collapsed on Nirmala Tamang, the 27-year-old wife of a pastor. The buildings in the town are intact with minor cracks here and there.

“People here are religious and resilient. They have not panicked,” North Sikkim district collector S.K. Pradhan said.

Entrepreneur Sonam Paljor added: “People are doing their normal duties. We are more worried about the road and power. We need to charge our mobile phones so we can call our near and dear ones.”

A lady running a restaurant in Mangan said: “We were serving food to our customers at our restaurant when the quake took place. Immediately, all the people rushed out into the streets. The lights also went off.”

“Almost everyone in the town spent Sunday night in the school playground and other open spaces. The number of people staying out in the night has come down though some people are spending the night in trucks and vehicles,” the restaurant owner in Mangan said.

The lady said she did not close her restaurant and resumed normal business the next day.

A seismologist explained how local effects play a role in the devastation that follows a quake. “The earthquake energy always weakens with distance from the epicentre — if we discount local effects,” said Hans Raj Wason, a seismologist and head of the earthquake engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

Local effects can dramatically amplify waves, depending on the type of ground where structures are located. Buildings standing on hard bedrock are relatively safer than those built on soft ground such as alluvial soils, he said.

An 8.1-magnitude temblor that shook Mexico in 1985 provides a classic example of destruction from amplification, Wason said. The epicentre was about 370km from Mexico City but over 200 buildings collapsed in the city. Scientists determined that many of these buildings were located on a reclaimed lakebed where layers of soft soil and clay amplified the ground-shaking 8-50 times relative to shaking over hard rock, he said.

But poor design and construction are also likely to have contributed to the damage elsewhere, according to structural engineers.

“I’ve seen some scary buildings — in Gangtok and in other places,” said Sudhir Jain, a civil engineer and director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, who has long been arguing for strict enforcement of building codes by state authorities across the country.

“The Gujarat earthquake in 2001 was a wake-up call — India made the earthquake safety codes in buildings mandatory after that,” Jain told The Telegraph. “But they need to be enforced uniformly across the country — we don’t think this is happening.”

The codes specify rules for the design of structures as well as construction material to be used to ensure that buildings do not crumble when they experience strong ground motion.

“The philosophy is: no loss of life despite damage to buildings,” said Shailesh Agarwal, director of the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council, a government agency involved in earthquake-proofing efforts.

Structural engineers say poor design and construction had led to the collapse of several buildings in Ahmedabad during the 2001 Gujarat earthquake although there may have been some local site amplification.
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AVIJIT SINHA AND BIJOY GURUNG

Sept. 20: Vinod Marandi gingerly lifted his head and peered out of the IAF Mi-17 chopper window at the lofty mountains encircling him. His left leg lay battered in the stretcher, victim to the barrage of boulders unleashed by Sunday’s quake.

The mountains looked majestic and serene to Marandi. But the rain of boulders – a fearsome burst from up above that followed the ferocious growl from deep below on Sunday evening — had left their mark, cutting a swathe through the lush greenery, leaving it stripped bare and crushing several lives.

“It seems as though someone has shaved a section of the mountain with a razor from the top to the bottom,” said a member of the IAF rescue team, capturing through an everyday description the intensity of the power nature had unleashed, seemingly with the same ease that the removal of facial hair requires.

“The trees and greenery have been wiped off the face of the mountain, bringing the rock and soil to the surface,” the team member added, the sight unfolding before him and the impact sinking in.

Several denuded patches could be spotted dotting the mountains as the chopper flew past, carrying Marandi and his injured colleagues to safety. The Mi-17 had set out from the Bagdogra IAF base at 8.45am for remote Thung in North Sikkim with food packets, medicines and other relief materials.

“It’s tough to forget that evening when we faced Nature’s fury,” said Marandi, one of four construction workers and two Sikkim police personnel who had come on board. The workers, from Jharkhand’s Ramgarh, had been working on a project near Chungthang in North Sikkim.

“The hills were trembling and the houses were shaking like toys. I ran for my life but I slipped and fell when a boulder hit my leg. Later, my colleagues rescued me,” Marandi said.

The foursome had been relaxing after work inside their makeshift concrete-and-tin shed in the mountains when the quake struck on Sunday evening. Within minutes, rocks and boulders of all shapes and sizes had begun their deadly roll of devastation.

A huge boulder crushed the tin roof their shed, sending the workers scampering outside. “We somehow ran out because everything was shaking violently,” said Asheswar Munda, one of Marandi’s colleagues who was hurt in the scramble.

“Rocks, pebbles, stones and debris were chasing us down from all sides. We had no clue where to hide or how to escape Nature’s wrath. We simply prayed to God to save us.”

Charan Munda, also injured, echoed Asheswar. “It was horrifying. As we ran out, the ground was still shaking. On top of that, rocks and stones of all sizes were rolling down towards us from the mountaintops.

“We could not shelter behind walls for fear they would collapse. The stones just kept coming at us even after the tremors ended.”

The last member of the quartet who was lucky to escape unhurt painted an equally scary picture. “Imagine that you are standing in the darkness and rocks are hurtling down with a deafening rumble, hitting houses, people, everything in their way. It was a nightmare,” he said.

This morning, when the copter began dropping food packets, the people of Thung had been restrained. Not a single person had run to grab the packets as the chopper hovered over their heads. A while later, a few people had carried Marandi out in a stretcher, prompting the pilot to touch down.

“We had no option but to draw the attention of the IAF crew so they could take the injured away for treatment,” said policeman Mahesh Dungel, who was unhurt. His colleague Man Bahadur Gurung, however, broke his jaw.

An IAF official said the force had been engaged in relief work since Monday morning. “We have engaged two C-330 and two IL-76 aircraft, two An-32s and one Avro aircraft to bring in relief material and doctors,” he said. “From Bagdogra, four Mi-17 and four Cheetah helicopters have been pressed into service.”

The boulders accounted for the largest casualties reported so far from a single incident. Nine employees of company working on a Teesta hydel project were crushed to death at Salim Payel, 20km from Mangan, when the stones fell on their vehicle. A 63-year-old assistant general manager, D. Gupta, on the project was also killed in a separate incident.

The beehive of craters caused by the landslides has mounted hurdles before the army and the national disaster response force (NDRF) that are making stuttered progress towards the marooned Chungthang in North Sikkim, some 100km away from Gangtok.

Of the 53 deaths confirmed in Sikkim till this evening, as many as 40 have occurred in North Sikkim alone. Most of the casualties were traced to areas in and around Chungthang subdivision, where road links were not restored till late this evening.

Six hundred personnel the Border Roads Organisation’s (BRO) Project Swastik are trying to clear the 30 major and minor slides along the 18-km stretch between Meyong and Chungthang. Meyong, 8km from Mangan, was the last accessible point for road traffic this afternoon.

Closely following the BRO task force are a dozen army trucks filled with plastic water tanks and other relief material and five buses carrying NDRF team from New Delhi. Sikkim’s sole lifeline — NH 31A — was cleared yesterday afternoon and Mangan, the North district headquarters, was made accessible this morning.

“The road towards Chungthang is blocked here by boulders which have slipped from the hill side. We are targeting to clear this hurdle in a couple of hours,” Project Swastik director K.P. Purushottaman said at Meyong in the afternoon.

The toughest hurdle awaiting the task force is at Theeng on the way to Chungthang, where some 200 metres of road had been completely swept off. “There is basically no road at that point. We have to cut inside the hill to make a path for allowing traffic movement,” Purushottaman added.

“Roads to other parts of the district through Mangan is closed. Dzongu and Chunthang, the largest populated areas in the district, are also cut off. The army and district officials are reaching these areas on foot,” said North district collector S.K. Pradhan. Dzongu is a protected area of Lepchas, the indigenous tribal community of Sikkim.

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Vivek Chhetri and Bijoy Gurung\

Gangtok, Sept. 20: The earthquake that devastated large swathes of Sikkim has underlined the need for an alternative route to the land-locked mountainous state now entirely dependent on National Highway 31A, its sole link with the rest of the country.

The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) had proposed to build an alternative road through Khunia More, Kumai, Jaldhaka, Todey and Tangta in Kalimpong and Aritar in East Sikkim district, but the plan has been stalled following environment concerns.

A senior official with the BRO today confirmed to The Telegraph that the proposal for the suggested route had almost been shelved.

“Since it was passing through some wildlife reserves like the Neora Valley National Park and Chapramari, objections had been raised by environmentalists and also by the forest department of Bengal,” the official said.

The Bengal government has come up with a suggestion of its own — a road from Bagrakote, Bengal, through Ranipul in Sikkim.

“We have been asked to explore the Bagrakote-Kafer-Reshi-Rhenok-Ranipul route,” the BRO official said. “But that would be an interim solution till a way is worked out to set up an alternative route close to the Khunia More-Jaldhaka route, as this is of strategic importance for us.”

Had it not been shelved, the Khunia More-Jaldhaka route — for which the BRO had already started a survey — would have passed along the borders with Bhutan and China.

Apart from upgrading the existing 25km road from Kunia More to Jaldakha, the BRO had proposed building a 50-56km road, from Todey to Rachela in Bengal, which would have then entered Sikkim.

Now, no one is sure how long it would take before Sikkim gets an alternative road.

Government officials said dependence on one road could pose major problems for Sikkim if another calamity were to cut off the lone link for a long period. “Sending patients out of the state for treatment has always been a problem when NH31A is blocked. Thankfully, the highway could be opened for traffic within 12 hours of the landslide,” said an official.

“If the arterial link is snapped somewhere between Rangpo and Melli, border towns in Sikkim and Bengal, respectively, Sikkim will have to face unimaginable problems,” said Rohit Sharma, a businessman in Gangtok.

Mountainous Darjeeling, too, isn’t free of the danger of landslips cutting off roads, but the queen of the hills has a number of alternative routes that connect it with the rest of the country.

If National Highway 55, which connects Darjeeling with Siliguri, is closed for some reason, there are roads through Mirik, Mungpoo, Pankhabari, Rohini and the 27th Mile-Takdah route.

The search for an alternative route isn’t Sikkim’s only headache. Widening of the existing NH31A has also run into rough weather with environmental concerns being raised over the Rs 73.9-crore project.

“There are some environmental issues along the Sevoke stretch which borders the Mahananda wildlife sanctuary, but we have been assured by the Bengal forest department that it would soon provide the required clearance,” the BRO official said.
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“We have never experienced anything like this in Darjeeling before…” the voice at the end of the line said to me. “The ground just shook and shook and would not stop shaking and we were simply terrified.”

The jolt at Richter 6.8 that shook much of the Indo-Gangetic plain and the eastern Himalaya on the evening of September 18 was grim. But it could well have been stronger, lasted longer, caused great tormenting miseries. For seismicity is awake in the region and ‘the mother of all earthquakes’ is gestating an offspring for which we are unprepared.

To alarm and to get alarmed is wrong. And it does not help.

To alert and to be alert can never be. And it always pays.

We, as a people, a society and a techno-political system are not half as alert as we should be to the seismic challenge caused by India’s unsleeping push into Asia. That is one of the most real, tactile, devastating challenges ahead of us. We can do nothing to prevent it. But we can do something to minimize its impact.

To return to Darjeeling.

The famous ‘Bihar earthquake’ of 1934 had its epicentre not in Bihar itself but near where the September 18 epicentre in Sikkim lay. It was of magnitude 8.4. As many as 30,000 people perished in it. Darjeeling was badly hit. The Governor’s House in Darjeeling was among those structures that were irretrievably damaged. It had to be pulled down and a new structure, the present Raj Bhavan, was constructed on the site, the then governor, John Anderson, personally supervising the work. Like every hill town in India, Darjeeling has over the years had high-rise buildings coming up. Today, these overlook some of its most congested localities. It also has a giant water-tank in the middle of the town. An assessment needs to be made of the danger these giantisms pose to themselves and to others around them in an earthquake situation.

Today, if we are to be hit by anything around, not to say above, Richter 7, the results would be too terrible to contemplate. With buildings having come up as they have, the thickening of arterial roads being what it is, and congestion being the name of the urban game, post-quake rescue and relief operations in our towns and cities, especially those in the hills, would take superhuman effort.

But anticipating the contingency and planning for cushioning its impact do not require superhuman effort. They require cool and commonsensical thinking ahead of the crisis. De-populating and even demolishing vulnerable structures, having in readiness plans for landing helicopters and light-wing aircraft even at night-time and in adverse conditions like winter rains and fog, requisitioning public spaces for shelter, equipping hospitals and dispensaries in risk-zones for trauma care, and above all, raising public awareness of earthquake risk, are things that cannot be avoided.

Of these tasks, the last and most important, namely, raising public awareness, has been done for us, albeit unwittingly, by the earthquake of September 18.

The ground having shaken and shaken as never before, the people of the region now know exactly what to expect, what to face with calm preparedness. It is up to the administrations of the areas concerned now to utilize the prevailing sensitization and, taking time by the forelock, act betimes.

The National Disaster Management Authority has been functioning in the area of seismic disasters with speed and alacrity. But administrations across the country, confronted with many scorchingly ‘real’ problems at hand, find it difficult to concentrate on what seems like a hypothetical problem. And yet, a Richter 7 or 8 is not theory ; it lies just underfoot.

Earthquakes have a great ally — public forgetfulness. Few remember the facts of even recent earthquakes in our country. The 1993 Latur earthquake at magnitude 7.4 killed 20,000, the 2001 in Kutch at magnitude 7.7 also killed 20,000, the Indian Ocean tsunami (8+, December 26, 2004) that shook the whole planet from Indonesia to Africa, and Indonesia to Alaska, killed numbers and annihilated settlements beyond belief. Geopolitics being more compelling a subject than geography, few in India remember that the brutal one of Moment Magnitude 7.5 on October 8, 2005 left 79,000 officially dead in Pakistan occupied Kashmir and 1,500 in Jammu and Kashmir. These are statistics from a yesterday that does not seem to belong to us. They are also indicators of a tomorrow that we are going to have to deal with.

After being concurrently accredited to our diplomatic mission in Iceland (2003-4), duty required me to convey my first impressions to the then president, Abdul Kalam. I told him of Iceland’s geothermal reserves and volcanic landscape. He came straight to the point. “Please ask if Iceland has done any new work on earthquake-prediction.” This was of course, for me, a mandate and an order. “The earth is like the human brain,” an Icelandic scientist explained to me. “Prior to a stroke, mini-strokes are known to occur. They generally go unnoticed for they are very, very minor. We try to find out through sensors how many mini-quakes have occurred and within what frequency and where and then, from the data pattern of mini-quake densities and intensities, we are able to conclude if a quake is on its way, like a major stroke …”

India and Iceland have, since, collaborated in the matter of earthquake anticipation. Sensors have been put into the ground at some sites, including our Northeast. We owe it to ourselves to know if these installations forewarned us about any increased activity prior to the September 18 experience.

We have lost time. We can lose no more. We must attempt the following:

1. An urgent and officially issued seismic zonation of India, either confirming or updating the existing four zones,which is as much in the public domain and in the people’s consciousness as the boundaries of our states and Union territories. This zonation should remind us of the areas of very high risk, high risk, low risk and little risk. This should appear in geography text books in schools and be part of the documentation used by all local bodies within their jurisdictions. Land records are public property and public knowledge. The proven risk of earthquakes to the very physical integrity of land should likewise be made part of land use management, protection and policy. The public knows the market values of land, it knows the high-end from the low-end rates, depending on the land’s pluses and minuses. Why should it not know what the seismic values of those lands are, what the MSK (Medvedev-Sponheuer-Karnik) seismic intensities are and how they apply to the sites they live in?

2. The setting up of a seismological agency, independent of the meteorological department which keeps us informed of seismicities as regularly as the met office does about the weather. And, even more pertinently, keeps the various administrative stakeholders informed, alerted, advised.

3. The drawing up of a plan for the East and the Northeast, in which rescue and relief operations can be conducted by air, land and on water, in the foulest of weather conditions and the most elusive of terrain conditions. And the training and equipping of personnel specially earmarked for earthquake duty like, for instance, the fire services.

4. The calibration of structures as being at very high risk, high risk and low risk so that their residents can be forewarned and also made responsible to protect themselves and those in the vicinity by securing the concerned buildings against seismic risk. Likewise, the inauguration of a new architecture regime to assist the phased replacement of the vulnerable buildings. Public buildings have to come under priority scrutiny for their seismic-safety. No collaboration with Japan can be as germane to our needs as an Indo-Japanese plan for earthquake-efficient architecture.

5. The minimizing of the impact of a ‘seismic- stroke’ which cannot be prevented but, by conjoint planning and action in good time, have its blow softened.

Terror and seismic action come without warning and disappear without trace, leaving innocents dead and dying in the debris they create. We cannot allow them to demolish our collective equipoise, but we cannot afford to remain unvigilant, unprepared and uneducated about their propensities.
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