Passengers from Port Blair narrate tale of devastation

Passengers arriving at the NSC Bose International Airport here from Port Blair today narrated a tale of devastation in the andamans, hit by tremor and tidal waves.

Shyamali Ganguly, an advocate based in Port Blair, who arrived by the Indian Airlines flight IC-288 three hours behind schedule said she was yet to recover from the shock.

"I was preparing to leave for the airport around 6.30 AM When I felt the tremors. The entire house rattled and two bookshelves in my chamber came crashing down. Within no time, books and shards of glass were strewn all over the floor," she said.

She said that the road leading to the airport from her residence in the heart of Port Blair, had developed cracks for long stretches, while in some places, craters made motoring difficult.

There were cracks in the airport building at Port Blair, according to Ganguly.

MS Rao, a coast guard official, said the tremors were felt sporadically from 6.40 AM.

Till around 9.00 AM. "I was in the coast guard mess when i felt the first tremor. I and my roommates ran out and saw chaos all around us. Some old buildings had collapsed. At the airport, we found hairline cracks on the runway".

According to airport sources here, an aircraft had been sent to embark stranded passengers from Port Blair where about 6,000 feet of runway space was now available.

Santosh Kumar Palai, a tourist from Rourkela visiting Port Blair along with his family, said that he felt the tremor around 6.35 A.M.

"There was a thud and two walls came crashing down. The electricity went off. I could not even get my mobile to work". Palai said he had heard of large-scale devastations in the Ross Islands and North Bay areas which were hit by massive tidal waves.

Another tourist Soumitra Banerjee, who had stayed in the Marina Park area of Port Blair, said that a nearby dairy farm was inundated after water gushed out from the ground following the tremors.

"There is water in the Phoenix Bay and the Ramakrishna Mission". The cancellation of air service to Port Blair has put tourists like Sumanta Ghosh in a spot.

"I was to travel to Port Blair with my family. I learnt of the earthquake only when I arrived at the airport. Now, no one is able to say when normal services will be resumed."