By Sunil Kataria
Reuters
Monday, March 29, 1999; 9:43 a.m. EST

CHAMOLI, India, March 29 — Virendra Rawat thought there were people running on the roof of his house when the earthquake struck deep in the Indian Himalayas.

"We were all sleeping. Suddenly we heard loud noises, as if people were running on our roofs. My children started screaming," recounted the 28-year-old Rawat as he stared at the ruins of his house destroyed by the most powerful quake in 94 years in the seismically sensitive Himalayan foothills.

Amidst wailing, Rawat and scores of villagers in worst-effected Chamoli district prepared to cremate the dead.

At least 76 people, including 53 in Chamoli nestled deep in Himalayas, were killed when the tremors measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck several hours before dawn on Monday.

Men and women huddled in a government-run dispensary around bodies wrapped in bloodstained white sheets.

"We were all sleeping, we did not realize anything at all...when I regained consciousness, villagers were pulling us out of the rubble," said Madan Rai, holding the body of his six-year-old daughter.

Rai's wife and three other children were in hospital with serious injuries.

Villagers in Chamoli said no help had arrived hours after the disaster. "There is no water, there is no food, it is 12 hours now," said Geet Devi.

The lights went out, telephones lines were dead and there were stones falling down the mountains, witnesses said.

"We ran in one direction, stones were falling down the mountains. We ran in another direction, the roofs of our houses were falling," said Geet Devi.

It was the second time in eight years the Himalayan region in the northern Uttar Pradesh state had been hit by a severe earthquake but officials said the toll could be lower this time round.

At least 1600 people were killed in 1991 when an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale hit the hilly Uttarkashi region.

"Casualties would be relatively low because the houses had tin roofs unlike Uttarkashi where roofs were made of rocks and cement," an official in the state capital Lucknow said.

Stone houses in Chamoli crumbled, only the doors and window frames remained. About 170 houses had collapsed in Chamoli and the walls of a local hospital had caved in, officials said.

A police constable in nearby Nandprayag village broke his legs as he jumped from his police post. "I tried to get out but the door would not open. I jumped down," constable Mahipal Singh said.