Pakistan’s epicenter of death, despair
Since the earthquake Saturday that pulverized this town, Nurullah Khan has been caring for an injured nephew under a leaky canvas tarp stretched over the concrete bleacher of a soccer field. Still, he is a lucky man.
“Praise God, my family all survived” the quake, he said. And, “we have gotten some food and water from a charity group,” as well as first-aid treatment for his nephew, Khan said. The nephew, Munirullah, 18, was struck by a falling house that broke bones in his limbs and left bruises on his head.
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Four days after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake, the largest city at its epicenter was starting to get help — some from other countries, some organized, but much of it chaotic. “Help is coming to our city, but it is not getting distributed to people who need it,” said Khan.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in a nationally televised address that there had been delays, but relief operations were now under way.
Not unlike the United States after Hurricane Katrina, Pakistan has erupted with charitable zeal. Mosques, civic groups and individuals have emptied their markets of beds, blankets, sacks of rice and bottled water to send to communities like Muzaffarabad, whose suffering has been shown prominently on television. Radio stations and banners appeal for donations.
Yesterday, hundreds of trucks and cars drove the mountain road north from Islamabad, the capital, carrying aid for Muzaffarabad. The fleet of charity was halted repeatedly as it ran into columns of refugees fleeing the city in buses and cars. The 83-mile trip took six hours.
As about 60 vehicles headed into Muzaffarabad stalled in a traffic jam alongside a similar line headed south, Iqbal Basharat could wait no longer. He got out of his truck and began handing the water and cookies being sent by his charitable group in Lahore to Muzaffarabad women in a bus waiting to drive on toward Islamabad.
“Our Islamic religious faith requires us to be charitable, especially to people in trouble,” Basharat said. “Every Pakistani feels this, and so the aid is coming spontaneously.”
Volunteer aid donors had crowded around to listen to Basharat. Adil Yaqub, one of a team of medical students from Rwalpindi, voiced concern at how some donors have been mobbed and looted. “Some people, if we don’t give them our supplies, throw stones and attack us,” he said. “It happened last night at
“Oh! Did you report this to [the military] forces?” asked another young man.
“A lot of us have informed forces about it, but they say they can do nothing,” Yaqub replied. “We want to offer our help to people, but now we are not feeling safe.”
As hope wanes for survivors trapped in the rubble of Muzaffarabad and other smashed towns, organized relief agencies are shifting their attention to preventing outbreaks of disease. The United Nations estimated Tuesday that as many as 2 million people were left homeless, and many could be living without shelter as the weather in Pakistan’s northern mountains turns cold. The death toll is believed to be 35,000 — mostly in Kashmir, which is divided by a cease-fire line between Pakistani and Indian territories — with tens of thousands injured.
At the soccer stadium, Khan said he and other refugees have been soaked with rain or hail three times since the quake. “People are getting sick with coughing and colds,” he said.
In the ruins of the Combined Military Hospital, Col. Hanif Iqbal Aurangzai said the city’s top priority has become the disposal of bodies.
On the large campus of his hospital alone, about 60 bodies still must be dug out of destroyed buildings, he said.
“Now, we are shifting to mass graves,” Aurangzai said. “That is difficult in our culture” because of traditions that demand a respectful, ritualized burial of the dead, he said. “But we have no choice. … We can no longer afford even take time to identify the bodies.”
The earthquake destroyed what was a 400-bed hospital, but Aurangzai has tried to maintain rudimentary first aid and triage. “Our main building fell into its basement, where all our medical stores were,” he said. He has had to assign his male nurses to guard duty at the gates, but last night a French military field hospital was due to reinforce his staff.
At the soccer field, Nurullah Khan still hoped to get better shelter for his nephew. But as with many people here, he can no more imagine where he might be in a week or a month than he could have envisioned an earthquake razing much of his city. No organized refugee camps have been set up.
While some residents are fleeing to the homes of relatives in other parts of Pakistan, Khan’s family is from Lipa, a village in the earthquake zone. “We heard that the damage there is bad, that 95 people died,” he said. And even if he could find shelter elsewhere, “it costs money to leave,” he said. Prices for everything, including fuel and bus tickets, have shot up since the quake. The price of seats to Islamabad has more than doubled.
As Khan and his relatives speculated about their futures, shouted arguments broke out across the soccer field. A crowd of men pressed and shoved around a truck that had driven into the stadium with something to offer.
“God knows what will happen to us,” Khan said, “but the signs are that it’s not going to be very good.”
Source: Newsday.com
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