Bru refugees burn in inferno aftermath

AGARTALA: Windy and searing March has always been a cruel month for the Brus living in the Gachhirampara-Naisingpara refugee camp in North Tripura, about 185 km from Agartala. A sudden fire had broken out there last year, reducing a part of the camps to ashes. Fortunately there was no death.
But Saturday's raging inferno at the camp, that left 16 dead, was of unprecedented intensity."It was like a hell fire of Biblical proportions. The flames devoured huts after huts; acrid smoke billowed up and then covered the area. And then there was the stench of burnt human flesh," said local resident Rjendra Reang.
The devastating fire charred to death 16 and injured over 100. Officials said the fire left 3,500 people homeless and gutted the thickly-populated camp to the ground.
All houses and huts in an about 1-km radius were destroyed. "We have recovered 16 charred bodies. But more bodies could be buried under the debris. Recovery operations are on," said DIG (operations) Nepal Chandra Das.
It was a nightmare coming true even as fire services, police, camp inmates and locals stood helpless in the absence of water on Saturday. At least 500 huts were reduced to ashes.
"Even hens and pigs could not escape the fire. There would've been more deaths had the youth not gone for jhum cultivation," said a camp inmate. So many deaths in a fire incident in the region is unheard of.
All that is left of the camp now is a stretch of scorched earth, smoky debris, blackened trees and dark sobbing faces. The images speak a story of horror and helplessness.
On Sunday afternoon, the sun beat down mercilessly on the smoke and stench-filled 1.5 km acres of wasteland that the camp was built on. The faces that were seen huddling in groups bore the silent manifestation of buried hopes. An eerie silence pervaded the camp in the aftermath of the catastrophe, only shattered by the sporadic wailing by women who had lost not only their near and dear ones, but all their material possessions in the world 24 hours ago in the raging fire.
As the acrid smoke carried the stench of burnt human and cattle flesh from the ashes, hundreds of Brus wailed while many others sobbed, calmer, more resigned to their fate.
Sadrung Reang, a female inmate at the camp, howled in fits and bursts, with her scrawny, little baby crawling nearby. She had a providential escape but was certainly not over the horror. "I was just settling down to take a nap when I smelt smoke. I looked up and saw the camp was on fire and so was our hut. I picked up my baby and ran out. I managed to save our lives but lost everything I had in the fire," she told reporters.
A team of seven specialist doctors rushed to Gachhirampara-Naisingpara from Agartala on Sunday to assist the local physicians on the spot just before Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar, DGP K Saleem Ali, principal secretary S K Roy and other top brass of the administration descended on the inferno-ravaged hamlets to console the bereaved and the affected.
Saturday, March 19, 2011, however, would always be a grave reminder of the Brus' saga of perpetual haplessness.