Quake relief flights resume

A halt in heavy rains today allowed helicopter relief flights to resume across Pakistan’s quake zone, but fresh landslides hampered efforts to move supplies by road and officials estimated the death toll could now be more than 54,000.

Eight international medical teams took off from Muzaffarabad to outlying villages, as fears grew for millions of survivors without healthcare and shelter in the isolated mountains of Kashmir. A US diplomat estimated that about one-fifth of populated areas had yet to be reached.

“There are serious patients with infected wounds and gangrene,” said Sebastian Nouak of the International Committee of the Red Cross, after a team of its doctors landed in Chekar, 40 miles east of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan’s part of the divided Himalayan region.

He said about 200 people in the town had not received any medical help since the 7.6 magnitude quake struck on October 8, and landing helicopters there was dangerous because desperate villagers rushed into the landing area.

In the town of Bagh, the bodies of six soldiers killed when their MI-17 transport helicopter crashed in bad weather on Saturday were lain into simple wooden coffins for transport back to Islamabad. The remains were located yesterday but could not be flown back immediately because of the downpours.

Two strong aftershocks struck the region early today, including one with a magnitude of 4.5, but there were no immediate reports of damage. There have been hundreds of aftershocks, and experts say they could continue for months.

Officials yesterday sharply raised estimates of the dead. Abdul Khaliq Wasi, a spokesman for the local government of Pakistani Kashmir, which bore the brunt of the quake, said at least 40,000 people died there and that the toll could go much higher. Not all the bodies had been counted and the figure represented the “closest estimate,” he said.

That pushed estimates of the total death toll to more than 54,000, including more than 13,000 in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and about 1,350 in the part of divided Kashmir that India controls.

Confirmation of a final toll will be difficult because many bodies are buried beneath rubble. UN officials said that, so far, they were adhering to the Pakistani government’s confirmed casualty toll, which was 39,422 dead and 65,038 injured.

The United Nations has estimated that two million are homeless.

Helicopter missions resumed today after being grounded for most of yesterday because of heavy rain and thunderstorms, which piled on the distress for the homeless across the quake zone.

Yesterday, an aid worker with Pakistan’s SUNGI Development Foundation was killed when he accidentally walked into a helicopter’s tail rotor while trying to drive away a crowd as it prepared to leave Balakot, state news agency APP reported.

Nouak of the Red Cross said one of its relief flights to Chekar had to turn back at the weekend because villagers were fighting each other for the supplies.

“They had sticks and they were fighting for relief goods. There was no perimeter security and we felt threatened. There must be a perimeter security while helicopters land,” he said.

Dozens of trucks have rolled into Muzaffarabad over the past day or so, but road access further afield remains difficult. The Pakistani military said it could take several weeks to clear landslides blocking routes to several valleys.

Army spokesman Col. Rana Sajjad said recent rains had caused a mudslide that blocked a key road that had only just reopened from Muzaffarabad toward Chakothi on the militarised border with India. The army hoped to reopen it again later today.

“We are sending trucks wherever the roads are open. The helicopter sorties all depend on the weather,” Sajjad said.

US diplomat Geoffrey Krassy said about 20% of the populated areas in the quake zone have yet to be reached.

Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmed Khan, the country’s relief commissioner, said 29,000 tents and 118,000 blankets had been distributed in the quake zone. Khan had said earlier that 100,000 tents were needed.

The army said medical supplies such as syringes, painkillers and antibiotics also were needed, but asked donors to stop sending fresh water because most affected areas had enough.

In cooperation between two long-time rivals, India gave Pakistan permission to send relief helicopters into the one mile-wide no-fly-zone on the Pakistani side of the cease-fire line that divides Kashmir.

India’s Foreign Ministry said its third shipment of aid to Pakistan, some 170 tons of supplies including 100 tons of fortified biscuits, would arrive by train today.

Though aftershocks have caused little new damage, people have been too scared to go back into houses that survived the initial earthquake.

“My house is full of cracks, and I won’t go inside,” said Bagh resident Mumtaz Rathore, huddled under a plastic sheet with his wife and four children.