By the time Nalin Bhatt, chairman of Gujarat Electricity Board woke up on the 10th day of the earthquake in his car parked in Bhuj, electricity had been restored to all the nine affected towns and 750 of the 925 villages. With electricity came water, flour mills, security and above all it helped reduce the pall that had descended on Kutch.

Bhatt recalls January 26 when he left Baroda and visited all his sub-stations one after the other: ``From Ahmedabad, Rajkot to Samaykahali, Bachau and Anjar, everything was gone.''

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The first thing he did was to call a meeting at Jambua of all the officials and explain to them the gravity of the situation. Reports were still pouring in. It would only be later when they would come to know that the losses ran into Rs 300 crore as 45 sub-stations were completely destroyed.

To make matters worse, 19 GEB employees were dead and 40 others had lost their relatives. ``We decided to immediately bring in men and material from outside,'' said Bhatt. As many as 800 men landed at Bhuj with their food-packets and water to start work.

A core team headed by Chief Engineer technical, G. T. Bkashi, chief engineer distribution, Kansara and administration, J. N. Singh was set up. The work took off on war-footing.

Money was never the problem -- agencies like Power Finance Corporation, Rural Electrification Corporation and National Thermal Power Corporation had already promised loans. Motivating the team was. ``I used to eat, work and sleep with them,'' explained Bhatt.

The new hospital coming up in the Jubilee grounds of Bhuj could well be the first doddering steps which the city is taking towards rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure. It was in this ground that make-shift OTs were set up within minutes of the quake.

Now that the initial trauma is over, what is worrying the residents of Bhuj is that if somebody has fever, there is no hospital to go to. There are not many doctors in the city either -- 90 per cent of them have left the town saying that there is no infrastructure available for them.

One doctor in the city, who stayed back and did crisis management in those crucial hours, has initiated this hospital. He says it is a temporary hospital but it could well be an asset for the city. It will have 20 rooms and amenities of a modern hospital and will be financed by voluntary groups. One room is already ready which is being constructed by Sintex.

``For now, we have the Israeli 70-bed hospital, but once they leave in a week, we need to have some hospital for the residents,'' said Dr Gyaneshwar Rao, a prominent general surgeon. In a rare show of advance planning, health minister Ashok Bhatt approved the plans for this hospital bypassing all red-tapism.

For now, the Israeli mobile hospital and the Military Hospital are the only two places which are functioning.

The air in the Air Traffic Control (ATC) room at the Bhuj airport is filled with nervous energy -- three Air Force officers sit tight on their chairs and ensure a safe landing almost every minute of the day and night. In just the first four days, the otherwise sleepy Bhuj airport handled 800 landing and departures, which is more than what they do at the Delhi and Mumbai airports. This ATC was activated within hours to get the airport working after the earthquake destroyed the ATC tower completely.

Today it is the nerve centre of the entire operation -- men, machine, patients and relief equipment are flying in and out every minute. Those manning this ATC are working 12 hours at a stretch with only cups of tea and cigarettes to go by.

As one plane hovers above, there is another waiting outside. The entire runway is filled chock-a-block with seven aircraft. ``The only solution is to make these planes unload as fast as possible and take off quickly. We sometimes call them to unload fast because the there are aircraft waiting above,'' said Squadron leader M.A. Kumar.

This time it is not just different accents which foxes these people but also the fact that till today, there were no basic navigational aids which are a must for every ATC. Even the radar and beacons had been completely destroyed.

So what has ensured the smooth movement of traffic? ``We depend on just plain principles of landing and departure in the absence of these instruments,'' said Squadron Leader R. Vishwanath. The principle being that no aircraft should cross each other without a minimum of 20 miles difference between the two.

On one table, the three men have divided their work -- one official is on the radio clearing departures. The second coordinates movement with air defence and regulates climb and descent and the third obtains clearances from various agencies for flights to enter the airspace.

For them it is almost like war time, at night when electric lights on the runway fails, they use goosenecks (containers filled with kerosene and wick) to light up the side of the runway. According to them, the traffic is expected to go up because many more foreign agencies are flying in.

Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.