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The highway to hell

Josy Joseph in Bhuj

Thousands of vehicles carrying relief material, rescue workers, security personnel, media teams and fleeing residents have created massive traffic chaos on the highway connecting Bhuj, Anjaar, Bachchau and other devastated towns and villages to the outside world.

The usual four and half hour journey from Rajkot to Bhuj now takes almost eight hours. The damaged Surajbari bridge, the important link from the highway to Bachchau, the first devastated town of Kutch, is a major bottleneck. For hours, vehicles wait on either side as paramilitary forces allow only one-way traffic of light vehicles.

Getting to Bachchau town, completely destroyed with thousands buried, too is difficult. There are traffic snarls lasting hours. The same is the case with other Kutch towns, which have turned into stinking mass graves.

Adding to the chaos are thousands of trucks from several parts of the country carrying firewood. Kutch is facing a frightening shortage of firewood as hundreds of bodies are being pulled out of the debris every hour. At numerous places along the highway, residents can be seen cutting trees for funerals.

The highway is also clogged with vehicles carrying residents of these devastated townships, either fleeing or returning to collect their valuables. Aimless and frightened, some of them have given up hopes of things improving after five days of waiting. "If we stay here any further we will die of an epidemic. We are unable to eat anything here," says Dawar, a Bhuj resident, as he drives out of the city.

Numerous people are also returning to the ghost cities to pull out whatever they own, and flee again. While my car was passing an isolated stretch between Bachchau and Anjaar, late in the night, a family of mostly women and children were stranded on the highway. Their Maruti van had developed some technical snag. One of the youngsters took a lift with us to Anjaar, where he hoped to find a mechanic. It was midnight.

"We need to get to a safer place soon," he said as he sat anxiously, hoping to find a mechanic at that time of the night in the devastated city of Anjaar.

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