"I Thought I Had Seen Everything"

TIME New Delhi Bureau Chief Dean Brelis was among the first Western correspondents to arrive in Bhopal last week. His report:

There was something eerie about getting there 30 hours after the leak. At the airport there was an air of uncertainty and even fear. Only three taxis were available, and miraculously two photographers and I got one of them. When we told the driver where we wanted to go he uttered one word, "Danger," to justify doubling the fare we had agreed upon. We accepted instantly.

At the factory, dead bodies were still on the ground, being picked up and loaded aboard a waiting truck. Everywhere one turned, people were retching, bent over horribly, racked by violent coughing that brought a red froth to their lips.

All the shops in the city were closed, and on every street people were lying in the gutters. They were dead, humped in agonized frozen postures, like birds shot from the sky. In their midst were real birds, vultures flapping their wings and shrieking at the wild-looking dogs to keep their distance. The dogs growled and waited their chance; when the vultures swooped away, the dogs would charge in and tear off pieces of flesh. Roaming through the streets, rescuing the dead from the predators, were rifle-toting soldiers of the Indian army, who were joined by volunteer vigilantes carrying long staves.

Even so, there seemed to be no motion anywhere. There was a lifeless quiet, and it felt cold even though the sun was shining. It was impossible to escape from death and misery. Little children with haunted, running, swollen eyes told of scampering through the night, with no particular destination, knowing only that the gas was among them and would kill. They asked the soldiers where they could find their parents. The soldiers replied, "Wait here. A truck will be along and take you to the hospital. Everyone will be there. You will find Mummy and Daddy." The frightened children, violently coughing, their eyes swimming in tears, waited.

When the truck came, it took the children to Hamidia Hospital. More than 350 doctors, 1,000 nurses and 500 medical students were there to treat the people who came wandering in, suffering from the poisonous gas. All 750 beds were occupied, and the grounds looked like a vast, sad encampment, marked by everlasting misery and agony, spread far and wide.

Once they had reached the hospital grounds, the victims seemed to faint, collapsing to the ground as if they had walked their final mile. They looked exhausted, like soldiers at the end of a battle. After waiting patiently, often for up to six hours, the victims were treated with civility and tenderness by the doctors and nurses. The army was there too, keeping the human traffic flowing without the usual pushing and shoving. The troops had set up 60 tents, which became instant wards for 20 people each. Some distance away, the army had set up a morgue to which the patrols in the city brought the dead to be identified. Hindus were sent for cremation and Muslims for burial.

Yet for those who died, there was no solitude. The traditional Hindu rite of cremation is one body, one pyre. But there were too many dead, and not enough firewood. The only solution was to place the dead, wrapped in cotton shrouds and covered with flowers, as many as five or six corpses together, on one pyre. As a result, huge fires burned all night long, sending smoke and flames arching up the sky as if death had become a permanent part of the countryside.

Muslims were also buried in groups. Rescue workers dug graves six feet long and 15 feet wide, each holding eleven bodies. When there was no burial ground left, old tombs were opened and 100-year-old bones were displaced to make room for the victims. Even here the packs of dogs roamed about; if they found a grave that was not deep enough, they would haul out bodies and devour them. "I thought I had seen everything," said Subedar A.B. Bhosale, a soldier in the Indian army, "but this is worse than war."