Ahmedabad’s hospital overwhelmed by quake victims

Three days after India’s strongest quake in 50 years, the open courtyard of Ahmedabad’s biggest hospital resembled a makeshift ward in a battle zone.

The hospital was overflowing, but was not turning away patients. The wounded lay in the courtyard on stretchers or on the ground, shaded by a few trees.

Anxious relatives, doctors and volunteers stepped around the patients. Bottles of intravenous fluid hung from bushes. Moans of the injured and orders shouted out by medical workers mingled in the frosty morning air.

In the three days since the earthquake, the hospital had registered 470 dead and 780 wounded, said Dr MH Makwana, the hospital’s director.

Inside, the scene was worse. Security guards tried vainly to clear out the groups of relatives that accompanied each patient. Harried doctors, some of whom had been working nonstop for 36 hours, moved from bed to bed.

The nursing staff were trying to maintain bed charts, but it was a losing battle, said Marykutty Joseph, a nurse, her weary face contrasting with her crisp uniform.

Outside, a jeep careered into the driveway. All heads turned toward the sudden movement. Young men rushed to the rear of the vehicle to pull out a wounded old man, his face covered with blood.

Rameshwar Jain, a grain merchant, had been pulled out of the ruins of his shop in western Ahmedabad. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead.

‘‘Three days in the rubble. It’s a miracle that he’s alive,’’ said the man’s son, Sanjeev Jain, his face wet with tears.

Sanjeev lost his brother, who was also in the shop. ‘‘I don’t know how to tell him,’’ Sanjeev sobbed as hospital workers wheeled his father into surgery.

Rescue workers have been using jeeps, cars or three-wheeled rickshaws to ferry the wounded and the dead to the hospital.

‘‘Now we are getting mostly dead bodies. Jain was the last injured victim to arrive in two hours,’’ said Navtej Mehta, a college student who has been helping out at the hospital since a few hours after the quake.

He wiped his face with the grimy handkerchief he had tied around his nose and mouth. ‘‘Sometimes the stench is unbearable,’’ he said.

At intervals, a volunteer lit up an incense stick and waved it around the courtyard to smoke out the smell of death.

After one quick look by the doctor on duty, new patients were assigned to the hospital’s outpatient department.

In the case of the dead, a number was assigned and the victim’s name gathered from those who brought in the body. Then it was sent to the mortuary.

‘‘We’ve decided to waive away the requirement that a post-mortem be conducted on every body that’s brought in. There are just too many,’’ Makwana said.