Remote communities 'may need greatest aid'
Destruction in the two Pakistan valleys leading out of Muzaffarabad may be worse than in the town itself, the international Red Cross said today after its first helicopter flight over the area devastated by Saturday’s earthquake.
The overflight “confirmed what has been kind of speculation. These areas are as much destroyed as Muzaffarabad or more,” said Vincent Lusser, spokesman at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“The areas’ needs in terms of aid may be even larger than those of Muzaffarabad.”
To get a better picture of the situation, the Red Cross will try to land in the area in the coming days.
The agency said it could not estimate the number of inhabitants in the two valleys because in the past access has been severely restricted for political reasons.
“This whole area was a closed area. It was not accessible … and used to be one of the hot spots” of the political tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, said Reto Meister, ICRC delegate-general for Asia and the Pacific.
Logistics remains one of the key problems for international agencies after the earthquake and resulting mudslides cut off entire areas. There is also a lack of helicopters.
As harried relief workers held mass burials and some tried to reach remote areas on foot, the UN emergency relief chief warned that time was running out for many survivors of the earthquake, and urged aid agencies to speed up their efforts.
An aftershock jolted parts of Pakistan early today, panicking survivors, and forcing a rescue team to suspend efforts to save a trapped woman. She died before the rescuers returned to the precarious rubble.
UN Under-secretary General and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator Jan Egeland flew by helicopter to Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where he said millions of people urgently needed food, medicine, shelter and blankets.
The UN estimates two million people are homeless ahead of the Himalayan region’s fierce winter. Snow has begun to fall in some parts of Kashmir.
The death toll was more than 35,000, and tens of thousands were injured. India has reported more than 1,350 deaths in the part of disputed Kashmir that it controls.
“I fear we are losing the race against the clock in the small villages” cut off by blocked roads, Egeland said. ”I’ve never seen such devastation before. We are in the sixth day of operation, and every day the scale of devastation is getting wider.”
Carrying water, juice and milk, a relief team from Britain-based Plan International flew in a helicopter to villages in northern Mansehra district in North West Frontier Province and found death and misery.
Dr Irfan Ahmed, the aid group’s health adviser, said: “People were hungry and panicking.
“Conditions are going from bad to worse. These people don’t have any shelter. Also the school has collapsed, and the children were in those classrooms,” he said.
Ahmed said one elderly survivor was evacuated with a semi-conscious three-year-old boy who was barely moving, his skin cold and clammy.
Another Britain-based group, ActionAid International, said its workers tried to reach remote mountainous areas, but hadto get out of their truck and walk in one area because of bad roads and traffic jams.
“The problem is that people are facing a shortage of time,” said Shafqat Munir, a spokesman for the group. “It’s cold, raining. People are without shelter. They have food, clothes, blankets, but tents are a problem.”
The 5.6-magnitude aftershock was centred 85 miles north of Islamabad, near the epicentre of Saturday’s 7.6-magnitude quake that demolished whole towns, mostly in Kashmir and northwestern Pakistan. It shook buildings, but there was no significant damage in an already demolished region.
A 22-year-old woman detected by a sniffer dog in the rubble in Muzaffarabad died after the aftershock disrupted efforts to rescue her, rescuers and witnesses said.
British, German and Turkish teams had tried to extract her but were forced to suspend their efforts for their own safety when the aftershock shifted the building.
When the rescuers returned after daybreak, the sniffer dog whined, indicating it had detected the smell of a corpse. Some rescue workers wept.
“It was a very difficult decision to leave a living person and I had a responsibility to my team. It could have meant their death,” said Steff Hopkins, a British team leader.
There have been dozens of aftershocks since the main quake. Experts said they could go on for months.
In Muzaffarabad, relief workers wrapped 35 bodies in shrouds and carried out a mass burial. The burial was co-ordinated by Jamat-e-Dawad, a group linked to Islamic militants that is operating dozens of ambulances in the city and running a camp for quake victims.
There were no reports of survivors being found in the rubble today, and international teams that have staged extraordinary rescues in recent days said chances of saving more lives were remote.
Some prepared to pull out.
“No one is giving up, but it is the acceptance that the actual real chances of finding someone alive are almost nil,” said Rob Holden, the team leader for UN disaster assessment and co-ordination.
Meanwhile, the UN said today that countries have pledged some £94 million to aid the victims of the earthquake in South Asia.
“We are in a hurry; we should all be in a hurry to rush assistance to victims,” said Yvette Stevens, an emergency relief co-ordinator of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“They should not be allowed to go through yet another traumatic experience.”
Stevens said €137.6m is the amount pledged to the disaster relief effort generally, not specifically committed to a UN appeal that was made earlier this week. The figure includes direct pledges to the affected countries, she said.
On Tuesday, the United Nations appealed to the international community for €226.8m to provide emergency supplies such as tents, medical aid and helicopters for six months.
