It was a miracle. Now he has a second life. Nikunch was rushed to an army field hospital, where he lay, trembling violently from shock, as doctors pumped fluids into his arm and tried to soothe him. The boy complied weakly, but then his eyes fluttered shut. Although the destruction of Bhuj was dramatic, with thousands of concrete house walls crumbled into the ground, the devastation in the surrounding towns and villages was even worse.
Some remote villages have yet to be heard from.
Along the roads branching out from Bhuj, village after village was a sea of low, mangled rubble. Residents crowded around visiting journalists, complaining that no official help had come and that most rescue work was being done by local volunteers. Families camped on cots outside their ruined farmhouses, fearing another tremor, and sorted half-heartedly through the ruins, salvaging a bicycle here, a sewing machine there. In Anjur, a town of 90,000 about 30 miles from Bhuj, one entire district had collapsed, and residents and officials said several thousand people were still buried inside the impenetrable maze of ruins. We imagine we are so great with all our technology, but in 30 seconds, God has destroyed all the technical calculations of man.