Author: B. Krishnakumar
Publication: The Week
Date: February 18, 2001
On February 4, a team from the 12
Engineering Regiment was at work in Bhuj struggling to pull down a five-storey
building that seemed to be leaning on thin air. Implosion was not feasible
given its precarious tilt.
Engineer-in-chief Brig. Kiran Krishan
and Col. Gurdip Singh were supervising the operation. The building withstood
the pull of the massive military crane and the banging of the heavy earthmover
from morn till sunset. It was finally felled the next day, bringing to
an end just one of the many difficult jobs assigned to the unit. Another
team from the unit is declogging the lanes in an old enclave of Bhuj. It
is close to meeting up with a group from the 108 Engineering Regiment that
had cut and bulldozed its way through the Soni (Gold) Market.
The 12 Engineering Regiment is also
at work at Jain Bhavan, a residential complex in Bhuj, which collapsed.
The first building in the complex housed the largest number of people and
the army mounted its biggest operation there. It retrieved 70 bodies from
the Bhavan. There were about 500 families in the complex and it was a challenging
task to look for survivors. "At great risk to their lives, our men have
gone in search of survivors wherever we found a cavity," says Col. Gurdip
Singh, commandant of the unit better known as the Sappers.
The colonel, who has commanded a
unit in Angola, says the devastation here is much more than what he has
witnessed elsewhere. With Maj. Y.S. Rao, he moves from site to site and
reports progress to Brig. Krishan. His regiment is also at work at the
collapsed Syndicate Bank and civil hospital buildings, from where they
retrieved 80 bodies.
There are more than 25,000 men and
officers from the elite Army regimentsÑSikh Light Infantry, the
Sappers, 6 Marathas, 2 MarathasÑbacked by men from the BSF, CRPF,
SSB (Special Services Bureau, which operates around the border), state
police and the Home Guard at work in Kutch today. The army has the toughest
assignments.
If Bhuj and other quake-hit areas
are wobbling back to normalcy, the nation has to salute these gallant men.
