Yellow bulldozers and huge piles of firewood for mass cremations sit poised outside this quake-devastated Indian town to clear away the rubble and dispose of bodies now that the search for survivors is all but over.

The smoke from isolated funeral pyres wafts into the sky from several spots in the debris-cluttered and eerily quiet streets of Bachao, a town of 50,000 in Gujarat state which was one of the worst-hit by the January 26 quake.

But the biggest funerals are expected when the bulldozers and heavy cranes move in and begin smashing through the tons of concrete, brick and stone from col-

lapsed houses and buildings clogging the streets.

Officials and residents estimate that thousands of residents of this town of salt merchants and traditional handicraft artisans remain entombed, six days after the powerful quake rocked Gujarat's droughtgripped Kutch region.

"No one knows exactly how many bodies are still trapped," said Ashok Bhai, a rescue worker who was trying to account for the 90 members of a Bachao home for the blind.

The overall death toll from the quake, India's worst in five decades, has been placed at potentially more than 100,000.

Bhai and other relief workers said it would take weeks to clear

away the rubble in Bachao and months, if not years, to repair the damage to the town's infrastructure.

"I think in the end they will have to burn down certain parts of the city," said Sukhbhai Patel, a medical assistant in a private clinic set up to help injured victims.

Fears are growing that unless the buried corpses are dealt with quickly, their decomposition will contaminate water supplies and trigger an epidemic.

Before the quake, one of the major attractions of Bachao was a Mughal fort situated strategically on a hilltop overlooking the town of predominantly green-and-white whitewashed houses.

The stone walls of the fort stood for centuries but they could not

withstand the force of the 7.9-degree quake and came crashing down.

From atop the jumbled stones of the fort walls, there is a panoramic view of the town below allowing observers to digest the full extent of the devastation.

Aside from the bleating of a goat trapped in a courtyard, there is little sound on the ghostly streets and virtually no movement.

Everywhere there are piles and piles of rubble. Some homes have collapsed neatly into compact knee-high mounds while others have scattered debris out into the streets.

Buildings which did not collapse tilt crazily. Of several houses, only the green wooden doors remain standing upright.