Students collect for victims
By Dave Stephens
Assistant
Campus Editor
The bodies piled outside of the hospitals fill
the air with stench. The piles grow so high that there is a concern
about not having enough wood to cremate them all.
High-rise buildings, once tall and proud, are now
just piles of dust, monuments to the dead and dying they entomb.
People are so terrified of the ground shaking beneath
them and their roofs falling in that they spend their nights in the
street.
These are just some of the images that students
Payal Vora and Vishal Aslot have heard from their relatives in Ahmedabad,
India.
The 7.9 magnitude tremor, which crumbled India's
fifth largest city, is still being felt a week later and half a world
away.
"I first found out about the earthquake online,
about two hours after it happened," said Vora, a senior in the Schools
of Engineering. "I spent the next several hours trying to call home.
They were the worst hours of my life. I finally got a hold of my brother
who told me that he was alright."
But not everyone was so lucky. The earthquake,
which happened in the Indian State of Gujarat, left 50,000 people feared
dead, 100,000 injured and millions homeless.
"My father and my brother are sleeping outside
because they are afraid of the aftershocks," said Amit Acharya, a graduate
student in the Schools of Engineering.
Acharya said that he and his mother, who is visiting
in the United States, have been unable to contact his father but did
learn from a friend that he is still alive.
"My grandfather is 86 years old and lives on the
second floor of a high-rise apartment," said Aslot, a graduate student
in the Schools of Engineering. "He had been through an earthquake some
40 years before, so he knew to get out of the building when it started
shaking."
Vora, who first learned her father was alive by
hearing him speak on CNN, said that the stories she hears from home
make it hard to concentrate on what is going on around her.
"My family's fine, but a lot of family friends
and friends from high school were killed," said Vora. "A woman my family
knows had to move down 10 flights of stairs with a broken leg. Everyone
you talk to is just very depressed; it's just beyond words."
To help aid the relief effort, the Indian Classical
Musical Association of Purdue and the Indian Student Association are
collecting money that will go to provide for the basic needs of the
people.
"People there don't have food, water, blankets
or medicine," said Ganesh Ramakrishna, a graduate student. "There is
now a fear that epidemics will spread throughout the camps of people."
Ramakrishna said there are several local places
where people can donate money, including all of the residence halls,
the Stripe Shop in the Union and outside the Class of 1950 lecture hall.
Donation boxes are set up in many local stores
and religious centers as well. Indian students are also planning to
show a movie on Friday night and proceeds will go to aid in relief.
All the collected money will be donated to the
American Red Cross India Earthquake relief and the India Development
and Relief Fund.
"This relief will help these people survive," said
Ramakrishna. "It's like they've been thrown into the desert with no
help at all."
The students' goal is to raise at least $10,000
but they hope for much more.
"If every student at Purdue gave just $1, we'd
be able to help so many," said Vora. "The exchange rate is so high that
$10 can feed 25 people."
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