Agents put dam toll at 25,000

Press, 17 August 1979, Page 6

Agents put dam toll at 25,000

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi Unofficial estimates of the possible death toll in the western India flood disaster ranged yesterday between 15,000 and more than 25,000. Agents at Bombay for Lloyd’s insurance interests said the number of dead was expected to exceed 25,000, with colossal damage also reported. Official figures say about 1000 died when a towering wall of water from a breached dam rushed down on the industrial town of Morvi in the state of Gujurat last Saturday. The town itself was reduced to a virtual heap of mud. Gujarat’s Chief Minister (Mr Babubhai Patel) yesterday said the dam burst had been caused by the state’s heaviest rains in 100 years. Local political leaders said the death toll might reach 15,000. Rescue workers were still digging through the mud for bodies. Mr Patel said a siren warning had been given the night before the dam burst, and some people in lowlying areas had been removed to safer places. He said the warnings had not continued later because the power had failed. State officials said 650 bodies had been recovered by yesterday, and these were being cremated, according to Hindu tradition.

But a macabre dispute flared between volunteer rescue workers and the police over the pace of body disposal. The volunteers wanted to carry out swift mass cremations to prevent disease, but the police insisted on completing the legal procedures on each body before handing it over for disposal. One press photographer who visited Morvi said: “Wherever you put your foot in the mud you strike a body.” Informed sources in the Gujarat state capital, of Ahmedabad, said the disaster had occurred because sluice gates at the earthwork dam had not been used for a number of years. They said that when water began spilling over the dam top. engineers and workers had tried to open the gates, but they had not moved. The sources said that one engineer, sensing the coming disaster, had raced to warn nearby village officials, who had evacuated people in time to higher ground.