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leapfrog development and long term stability there is no doubt that the infrastructure is very different today from what it was in 1950 in nepal too it is far easier to bring food supplies warm cloths to those affected by the tragedy in 1950 lhasa without speaking of metok or zayul located north of the mcmahon line had never an iron birds helicopters or planes but to compare the rescue operations during the recent tragedy and the ones 65 years ago is unbecoming of a former senior communist cadre mr raidi should have kept quiet he probably does not realize that the progress in infrastructure roads airfields transportation have been planetary and due to the communist party only by the way the chinese panchen lama also a nagchu native has personally donated 200 000 yuan 32 300 us dollars for the quake affected areas to show his sympathy for the needy people i am wondering how under a communist dispensation lamas can become rich like their predecessors in old tibet how do they get richly endowed labrangs estates like in the past buddha too must be wondering is what i thought my monks the 1950 earthquake to give an idea of the devastating 1950 earthquake known in india as the assam earthquake i post the report of the famous british botanist kingdon ward the earthquake august 15 1950 by f kingdon ward a vividly written account of an unforgettable experience the author is a well known himalayan explorer and describes how while camping near the tibetan frontier he and his wife narrowly escaped with their lives from the havoc wrought by one of the most violent earthquakes on record finishing an entry in my diary i shut it and lay back in the deck chair near the entrance to our tent on the camp table beside me the hurricane lamp burnt dimly my wife was already in her cot half asleep i told myself i must soon put out the light and turn in we were due to start off again early the following morning and a good night s rest was essential first of all however i wanted to lie back and relax for ten minutes enjoying the comparatively cool night air the date was august 15th 1950 the time about 8 p m and the place the wilds of upper assam everything seemed very quiet now and then a dog barked in the village of rima away behind us and i could just detect the muffled echo of the river as it entered a narrow part of the deep gorge occasionally an owl shrieked somewhere close by suddenly as i reclined there in a semi doze the chair on which i sat the table and finally the tent itself began to shiver aroused my wife sat up in her cot a split second later the whole valley appeared to be convulsed and the air was filled with a loud roaring involuntarily i sprang to my feet what on earth s that i asked startled and thrust my head out between the tent flaps the high mountains were silhouetted against a riband of clear star flecked sky but their outlines instead of being sharp and hard were strangely fuzzy meanwhile noise continued becoming louder even as i stared about me in bewilderment then the dread truth dawned on both of us but it was my wife who put it into words an earthquake the cried now thoroughly awake and forth with leaped from her bed outside quick i seized the lantern with some vague idea of a fire risk and together we rushed out into the most awful pandemonium the turmoil was terrifying mingled with the dreadful sound of the tearing and shearing of the earth s crust came the roar of mountains that were apparently tumbling downing every direction it appeared as though the very arch of heaven was falling directly we left the tent a violent tremor threw us to the ground and we felt the earth beneath us bucking and heaving madly every moment i expected it to split open and precipitate us into some yawning figure great rocks were crashing from the mountainsides dust rose like the smoke of some vast conflagration blotting out the stars meanwhile a rain of gigantic hammer blows thundered on the ground below it seemed that it must soon be pulverized into fragments too frightened to move we lay where we had fallen with the familiar world around us breaking up bodily for quite five minutes minutes as long as years mountains and valleys shook shivered and trembled to the accompaniment of ear splitting sounds of destruction it is impossible to convey an adequate idea of our sensations or the impression of overmastering terror and utter helplessness in the face of stupendous disaster at last however the earth tremors began to die away then quite suddenly there came a series of five explosions high in the sky they followed one another loud and distinct at equal intervals of a few seconds the detonations reminded me of anti aircraft shells bursting round enemy planes but their effect was very different abruptly the shaking of the ground ceased the last boulders rumbled down the mountains the splintering trees stood firm even the river which had roared like a wild beast in pain throughout the cataclysm became quieter there could be no doubt the earthquake was over what caused that extraordinary gunfire is a complete mystery the explosions were heard on the plains of assam two hundred miles away where the soft earth wobbled like a jelly during the worst phases of the quake we rose slowly to our feet thanked to be alive and unhurt but not yet quite sure that we were had we passed through some terrible nightmare or had it all really happened it seemed hard to believe it was an actual experience but there was the dust which filled the air and now began to settle silently and impalpably it was in our eyes our ears our mouths already it was lining our lungs and forming a grey film on our faces for days thereafter we were eating dust as well as breathing it the quake was mercifully over but its dread aftermath was only just beginning from the village came no sound of barking dogs no shouting of men had all those poor souls been killed fortunately this was not the case for presently there strolled into our camp the familiar figure of a villager of our acquaintance and he had a broad grin on his face i envied his stolidity in the midst of this tremendous calamity he still contrived to remain cheerful the sight of that simple hillman put new life and confidence into us and especially into our two sherpa boys who had been badly frightened our friend told us that the village had been badly damaged despite the fact that the houses massively built of logs resting on solid stone foundations were only one storey high by great good luck however nobody had been killed let s have some tea suggested my wife there was no thought of going back to bed again after such an awakening the wood fire was still burning and we re lit the lanterns the stream from which we drew our water was only a dozen yards from the cook house and boys tent and one of the sherpas took the kettle and went off next moment he gave a shout of dismay and we all rushed towards him to see what had happened the brook which two hours previously had flowed swiftly along its bed was now nothing but a trickle even as we watched it grew smaller and smaller quick i shouted bring buckets saucepans anything we filled a couple of kettles and a pail but only with difficulty for the trickle soon died away to a mere thread and finally intermittent drops our water supply had vanished and there was nothing we could do about it we sat around sipping tea and talking for an hour we still felt slightly dazed it seemed incredible that these mighty mountains rising ten or twelve thousand feet above our heads the village in the gorge was itself 5000 feet above sea level should have been in the grip of a force which shook them as a terrier shakes a rat the previous day they had looked as solid and immovable as the rock of gibraltar now they were riven and shattered their rocky slopes disintegrating like sand dunes in a breeze inside our tent curiously enough everything appeared exactly as it had done before the quake nothing was broken nothing disarranged even the aluminium tent poles had not shifted the knoll on which our little camp was pitched had withstood the terrific shaking and battering unharmed moreover very fortunately for us it had not been in the line of descent of the falling rocks thousands of huge boulders dislodged from the mountainsides by the violent tremors had leaped bounced and rolled down the steep slopes snapping off stout trees like match sticks any one of these flying masses could have demolished our tents and swept them away leaving nothing but rags and shattered corpses to mark the site yet we had emerged scatheless though the disturbance was over there was as yet no reassuring restfulness about our surroundings those adjustments of the earth s crust which inevitably follow a severe earthquake especially in regions so notoriously unstable as the mountains on the assam frontier had still to come we were blissfully unaware of the fact at the moment but these minor movements were destined to continue for months in our state of nervous tension in the dust and darkness of that night of terror it was enough for us that practically every half hour the tortured ground gave a convulsive shudder each of these tremors some of hall a minute s duration was accompanied by a roaring sound like a great wind and by fresh rock falls close at hand either on the opposite side of the big lohit river or on our own bank close to the village and camp not knowing the ways of major earthquakes indeed we were ignorant as yet that it was a major earthquake we feared a repetition of the major shock and before venturing to lie down on our beds again we made careful preparations for a rapid get out if necessary there was no sleep for any of us during the remainder of the night although i believe i dozed off once or twice for half an hour meanwhile in england california south africa and almost every modern city in the world seismographs had been registering the greatest upheaval of the earth s crust since these delicate instruments were invented as a matter of fact seismographs thousands of miles distant had been thrown off balance they either ceased to record or the tremendous oscillations extended beyond the limits of the graph paper within a few hours scientists were hard at work trying to decide in what part of the globe this terrific cataclysm had occurred and later the newspapers announced that there had been an earthquake of great intensity somewhere in north east india not for several days was the real magnitude of the disaster realized its epicenter according to american physicists was in the south eastern corner of tibet about twenty five miles from the frontier with assam the quake shook the whole of upper assam two hundred miles away and must also have done the same with a large area in tibet but as this region is almost uninhabited no record of what happened there has come to hand dawn arrived at last and we got up and looked outside once more things appeared more or less normal a bird was singing sweetly in a nearby field a small boy was shouting to scare birds off the ripening crops presently from the village there emerged a file of old women and young girls plodding out to work as they had done every morning for months we felt very thankful evidently the world was nor completely topsy turvy nevertheless the sun rose on a scene very different from that on which it had set the previous evening the flanks of the mountains were mutilated and torn asunder the wounds gleaming white as snow against the prevailing green of summer the broad terraces that led step by step down to the river many of them cultivated were now corrugated and fissured with deep cracks sometimes raised sometimes downwards the high river bank itself had slipped in a hundred places piling up mounds of gravel the village in its bower of trees appeared to be in ruins it was true that the stout main timbers of the twelve or fifteen log houses still held firm but every roof had gone and flimsier erections lay flat many of the hapless cattle and pigs shut up in pens that had collapsed lay dead or dying a sad loss to their owners the monastery building lay on its side hurried clean off its foundations and a bottle shaped chorten religious memorial had been stripped to its core the most amazing sight of all perhaps was the lohit river now a wildly tossing sea of liquid mud which had suddenly risen several feet on its turbulent bosom it carried innumerable great tree trunks plunging and tossing amidst huge waves dancing madly in the swirling eddies and rushing headlong through the gorge literally millions of big trees must have been uprooted or smashed they passed in endless procession the stench of the mud was horrible no less wonderful though on a smaller scale was the spectacle presented by the minor tributary which swept swiftly down from the burma border to join the lohit at rima the previous afternoon it had been crystal clear carefully choosing the right place one could easily have waded across it now like the lohit it was just liquid mud the colour of coffee laced with froth and considerably deeper three mills housed to timber cabins along its bank in ruins the primitive cantilever bridge that spanned it was in grave danger of collapse and shaking like a leaf i shouldn t have cared to essay a crossing we learned later that on the plains of assam two or three hundred miles from where we were the earth had swayed sickeningly and sagged in many places over a wide area several buildings had fallen railway lines had snapped bridges had been shattered and roads had sunk on the whole however direct damage had been comparatively slight but the damage had been comparatively slight but the floods resulting from the damming of rivers far away back in the mountains long after the earthquake was over eventually caused the death of hundreds of people by drowning so much for external matters i will now return to our own position once it was fully light we were able to get a better idea of the havoc the quake had wrought but we still had no idea of its extent and intensity as the sun rose over the mountain ridge the air began to heat up and the usual daily wind swept through the river gorge loosened rocks started to fall again and soon the shaken mountains were disgorging avalanches of gravel and boulders which swept down their slopes to the accompaniment to rise from these rock slides spread far and wide by the wind until the sun was veiled and the mountains across the river only a mile away appeared dimly outlined through the choking fog meanwhile every hour or so there was a terrifying subterranean rumble after which the ground shook for several seconds these earth tremors felt and sounded exactly as though an enourmous train were rushing through a tunnel just beneath our feet you will already have gathered that when all this happened my wife and i were far away from anything representing civilization it was three weeks before we were able to cross the ...
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