Rawalakot: city of the homeless
Saturday’s devastating earthquake has hit the residents of Azad Kashmir in many ways. Unlike Muzzafarabad and Bagh districts, the disaster has stolen shelter virtually from every single inhabitant of Rawalakot city.
Named by a British traveller in the late 19th century as the Pearly Valley, Rawalakot city does not seem to wear the look of a devastated place at the outset. However, the destruction is not as dramatic and obvious as it is in Muzaffarabad district or elsewhere in northern Pakistan. But a visit to the city centre and the residential areas testifies that the tremors were as deadly as they could be, regardless of the fact that the impact came in a different shape.
The concrete-and-brick buildings are still standing but are unliveable. There is no stench from the decaying bodies buried in the rubble but the entire district population, like most of the disaster-hit areas, has become homeless. Those rendered shelterless are sleeping in the courtyard of their own homes. The people here tremble with fear just to consider entering after the dark the structure once called their home.
Those who survived the earthquake and over 200 aftershocks, estimate some 300 dead in the city with 200 bodies evacuated manually while the death toll is likely to be alarmingly higher in the district.
The disaster has hit northern Pakistan in many ways. The destruction in Rawlakot is not so compact that photographs can be splashed in newspapers. The death toll in the city also does not make sensational headlines. Rawalakot was home to over 50,000 people.
People living on the hill slopes with their rooftops plastered with mud where grass has grown over the weeks could not withstand the 7.8 Richter scale jolts. Even on day four, the dead are still buried in the rubble but the reporters and relief teams could not see the damage overhead from the car windows while driving on the road.
To see this damage they have to scale the mighty mountains, slope by slope. The district’s 475,000 inhabitants live on these slippery slopes, some of which are now slipping with landsides. The News surveyed various villages on the mountain slopes to verify the estimate. Heavy rains with frosty winds Tuesday revisited the disaster zone. Nature would have been stunned to see the victims still lying helplessly under the sky with no assistance from the world.
Since Monday, the youth from various villages living in the open for days have descended on Lehtrar Road. The shelter-less, hungry youth are not burning vehicles in rage but stopping them and respectfully explaining their agony and seeking modest help. Waqar from Hajira union council told The News, “They don’t believe us or advise us to go to Muzzafarabad or Rawalpindi.”
Be it Rawalakot city or district, everywhere the demand is the same, tents. The night brings cold and the day brings in rain. The food was destroyed with the homes and in most cases the kitchen normally separated from the main residential block, was the first to collapse.
Sami-ul-Haq, a villager from Rawalakot, said, “We put stacks of grass around our two nephews and also some beneath their beds on the floor thinking that this may save them from cold.”
The district and city population alike needs blankets, warm clothes, flour, rice, sugar and tea. Most people The News spoke to said they would exhaust their stock in a day or two as they have already started rationing the food. Remember, unlike other months, they are fasting which means consuming less food than normal.
The dilapidated and cracked roads to Rawalakot were finally opened Monday evening and now they are back to life. The countrymen are keeping their tradition of generously helping the brethren in need. The relief goods, however, are focused on the cities while the devastated but scattered villages still are not a priority of the local donors. Like media teams and foreign aid agencies, they also tend to underestimate, if not ignore, the population waiting on the mountain slopes starting from Tahian and Paniola to Kel and Chikothi.
The CMH, again the city’s lone medical facility, was the first victim of Saturday morning tremors leaving over 100 buried in the rubble. Hussain Shaheed Government Degree College makes a good news photo with its crumbled blocks and collapsed roof. The collapse of the building claimed seven lives, at the least. The government employees housing area, Jinnah Private Hospital, Ayaz Market, district courts and Kasai Gali have been razed to the ground.
Doctors are desperately needed here. Until Tuesday’s heavy rainfall, the injured were hospitalised in the tents pegged in the college ground but without considerable medical assistance. Again, the medical staff is not equipped to do more than inject antibiotics and do simple wound dressing.
Sardar Abid, former head of Pearl Valley Development Authority who provided his still-standing hotel premises to the sick, says, “I have brought these patients under this roof during the rain but they are without proper treatment.” He said they are renting the local passenger vans to transport patients to Rawalpindi and Islamabad in which they have to sit like normal persons and suffer the pains. “But that is the best we can do in the given circumstance at least as long the international or national medical relief supplies don’t reach us,” he says.
Some sympathizers have sent medicines to the city’s only 25-patient makeshift dispensary or medical camp. Here the patients are lying with spine fractures, head injuries, limb fracture etc but they are only getting painkillers and first aid treatment. The city has no blood bank as the infrastructure is not intact any moreto keep the donated blood fresh.
Sardar Khalid Ibrahim and his elder brother Javaid Ibrahim are consoling the people besides mobilizing the donors for quick relief assistance. The army, however, is not visible with the excavation or medical assistance activities. The college ground helipad has also not been generating much activity in terms of transporting the sick and wounded to Rawalpindi.
The government structure which became dysfunctional after the earthquake on Saturday is still not operating even at its routine pace. The commissioner’s wife died in the house collapse while the deputy commissioner lost his daughter the same way. The SP office partially collapsed.
Four days after the disaster, only the police is back in the streets, but not equipped to make any difference. Although power supply is partly restored, the shaken and fractured city markets are completely shut down. Grocery shops, vegetable vendors and PCOs are open for business. Restaurants are short of food with more customers in the queue.
Source: The News
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