Tags:
Journalism of Courage
• At 8:46 am on January 26, 2001, an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale rocked Gujarat
• The worst affected towns: Bhuj, Anjar, Rapar and Bachau
• Official death toll: 19,727
• Number of injured: 166,000
• At Ahmedabad, about 750 died
• Over 600,000 people were left homeless. 348,000 houses destroyed and 844,000 damaged
• Considered one of the deadliest earthquake, it affected over 15.9 million people directly or indirectly with economic losses as high as $ 5 billion, says the state government’s report on the 2001 earthquake
• National and international agencies were quick enough to respond. Help came from countries like Pakistan, Algeria, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Britain, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Kuwait, Malasiya, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE Ukraine and the US. Besides providing tents, food and medical aid, doctors and rescue teams from all over the world camped in Gujarat for several months to rebuild the state
• Total funds that came for relief, rehabilitation from other state governments, NGOs, corporate houses: Rs 400 crore
• The Gujarat government received a loan of Rs 8,000 crore from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Government of Netherlands and the European Commission
• The state government set up the Gujarat State Disaster
Management Authority (GSDMA) especially for quake reconstruction and rehabilitation. The GSDMA issued guidelines on construction of houses in quake-prone zones. Besides, it helped in developing an emergency response mechanisim, capacity building by training fire-brigade personnel and special rescue teams for such situations
