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Rescue teams pack up as hopes of finding survivors dim

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February 2, 2001 

BHUJ, India-- (AP) - International rescue teams packed to leave this devastated town Thursday and reports of people being found alive ceased six days after an earthquake ravaged India's western Gujarat state.

The 67-member British search and rescue squad left on Thursday. Turkish and Japanese crews who arrived in the wake of Friday's 7.7-magnitude quake have also gone.

Spanish rescuer Fidel Suarez Flores arrived Wednesday in a team of 14 men and several sniffer dogs, and planned to stay awhile. "You can't lose hope. There's always a chance after 10 days you can still find someone," he said. A French team with sniffer dogs also arrived Wednesday.

Officials in charge of the British contingent say it is time to draw a line under rescue operations and concentrate on bringing relief to the survivors. Rescuers are exhausted after days of tunneling into rubble in the hope of finding living victims - and, more often, uncovering only bodies.

At least five people were pulled alive from the rubble in three towns on Wednesday, but there were no such reports Thursday.

"There has to be a cutoff point, and it's hard to say where it is," said John Miller, 48, from Lane End, Buckinghamshire. "We know it's not a month, but is it a week, or 10 days?

"At a certain point you have to shut down and detach."

In the Aug. 17, 1999 earthquake in Turkey, Ismail Cimen, a 4-year-old boy, was the last person found alive after surviving six days without food or water under the rubble.

Rescue workers concede there are likely still a few people trapped alive under ruined buildings, but say they have exhausted their resources.

"It's not an easy decision," said James Brown, the British search and rescue coordinator in Bhuj. "The guys have big hearts, they'd carry on forever, but the body can only take so much.

"If we'd stayed a couple more days we'd rescue one or two more people," he said. "Now we'll move into relief and save thousands of lives."

For the longer term relief effort, the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance sent a team of seven people to Bhuj on Thursday. They came with three planes carrying four water treatment tankers, each one big enough for a village. There were also four truckloads of tarpaulins and blankets. The Americans plan to stay two to three weeks, said the leader, William S. Berger.

The British rapid-response rescue team left England on a Royal Air Force plane on Friday night, within hours of the quake, and was at work 15 minutes after arriving in Bhuj on Sunday morning. Since then, British rescuers and British-funded Russian teams have dug 23 people out alive.

"It doesn't sound a lot, but it is an absolutely brilliant effort," said Miller. "Sometimes you don't find anyone at all."

Efforts to coordinate the work of the international teams, however, have been beset by disorganization. In the chaotic days after the disaster, rescue efforts were hampered by a lack of vehicles, translators and communications equipment.

"Over the last few days our camp has been up and running really well," said Mike Thomas, team leader for the British effort. "But we still didn't know where the Germans were. We'd like to have seen relief rescue teams coming in."

Mukesh Kapila, head of humanitarian aid for Britain's Department for International Development, also was critical of the international effort Thursday.

"Unless the international community tries to act together in a disciplined manner, they could become part of the problem, because resources will not go where they are needed," he said during a trip to Bhuj to oversee the allocation of Britain's 10-million-pound (dlrs 15 million) aid package.

"The important thing is to make sure assistance reaches those who need it most, rather than just spraying it around."

Ken Maclean, the west India representative for Catholic Relief Services of Baltimore, Maryland, praised the private and government agencies for getting aid to the area quickly, but said, "It's beginning to clog up the system, because there is no coordination. In some cases you have people just throwing stuff off of trucks. And that is not a good way to distribute relief supplies."

The departing rescuers leave Bhuj with mixed emotions.

"In a way I'm sad to go," said Barry Sharland, a 45-year-old firefighter from Lincolnshire in the English Midlands. "There have been some heart-rending moments.

"There was a lady who wanted us to look for her 12-year-old son," he said. "One wall of her apartment was still standing, and her son's photograph was still hanging on the wall. The first person we found was her son. It was obvious he'd been killed almost instantly. That was pretty hard to take."