Small border towns like Kashmir’s Pahal among districts hit hardest by quake
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
SONYA FATAH AND MASSOUD ANSARI
Special to The Globe and Mail ISLAMABAD, BAGH — The body of Mir Hasan’s 11-year-old daughter was pulled from the crumpled heap of what was left of the building where she was learning to read and write.
Mr. Hasan joined others in Pahal — a tiny village of about 1,000 people, straddling the boundary of the Pakistani and Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir — in the frantic search through the rubble of what had once been a school but became, in the violent seconds after the earthquake shook this mountainous region last weekend, a mass grave for the countless young children caught inside.
By one of those fickle tricks of fate, Mr. Hasan’s six-year-old son, Owais, survived. He was outside the school, filling up a bottle with water from a tap when the earthquake tore through Pahal.
But his little boy’s survival was the tragic exception in the village, where an entire generation has largely been wiped out. “All the children in our village are gone,” Mr. Hasan wept, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Four hundred people, about 40 per cent of his town’s population, died, he said.
There are many little towns like Pahal spread across the mountainous landscape of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, which bore the brunt of the earthquake’s wrath and where, in many places, help has yet to arrive.
School buildings appear to have been particularly vulnerable. Tariq Mahmood, minister of works and communication, estimates that between 1,500 and 2,000 primary, high-school and college buildings were destroyed in the Kashmir region and school-aged children represent a disproportionately high part of the death toll, now approaching 23,000.
Without proper equipment, many grieving residents have been forced to dig with shovels or by hand through the heavy debris, in an effort to rescue trapped loved ones, or recover bodies for burial.
Shahida Mughul, 40, doesn’t have a shovel, but has been scooping out the wreckage with her hands, uninterrupted for the past three days. Silently, she lifts concrete slabs one by one, shoving them aside, searching for her two daughters who, along with their schoolmates, were trapped under the building here.
For a while, after the building’s collapse, they could hear crying from deep within: “Mai Hamain Bacaho [O mother save us].” But for the past day or so, the cries for help have been replaced by an eerie silence. Mad with grief, survivors in the town can be seen beating their heads and chests, the air broken by haunting sobs of mourning.
The bloodied head scarves of the schoolgirls can be seen in the rubble, as well as books and school bags. Some bodies can be seen, eyes and mouths open. The stench of decomposing flesh fills the air.
“It’s the biggest natural disaster. It has totally paralyzed Kashmir,” Sikandar Hayat, the Prime Minister of the disputed Kashmir region under Pakistani control, told Reuters in a tent on the lawn of his official residence in Muzzafarabad. “For the first two days, we have been either digging ground to recover bodies or digging to bury them. . . . Kashmir has turned into a graveyard.”
Fifteen members of Mr. Hasan’s family in Pahal lost their lives in the earthquake. But among those of his family and neighbours who survived, several have waited for days to receive treatment and aid.
When Mr. Hasan heard the sounds of rotor blades slicing the thin mountain air on Sunday, the day after the earthquake, he thought rescuers had arrived to bring relief to Pahal’s residents. But on closer inspection, Mr. Hasan realized the helicopters weren’t headed in his direction. The helicopters he sighted were Indian ones on their way to provide relief on the Indian side of the line of control. It would be two more days before a rescue operation would reach his town.
Brought to Islamabad by Chinook helicopters, about 20 residents of Mr. Hasan’s town lay under an army tent on multicoloured makeshift bedding, awaiting transportation to local hospitals. Among them was Sabina, 15, Mr. Hasan’s niece, who wanted to walk even though her right leg had just been amputated below the knee. Six-year-old Owais sipped slowly on a carton of apple juice as flies clung to the blood-clotted wound on his forehead. His left leg, injured when the school collapsed, had swollen to three times its size. But he was one of the few children alive.
“No one knows the extent of the damage,” Mr. Hasan said. “Ours is only one town. We saw them. They are all destroyed.”
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