Aid workers fear second wave of quake deaths

Thousands of injured people languished without shelter and medical care in villages across the earthquake-stricken region of Kashmir today, as authorities warned that exposure and infections could drive the death toll up from 54,000 as the harsh Himalayan winter loomed.

The Pakistani military, civilian volunteers and international aid groups are rushing aid and doctors to the region as fast as the logistical challenges allow. Landslides caused by the earthquake cut off many roads, which will take several weeks to clear.

Helicopters resumed flying relief missions yesterday after heavy rains forced the suspension of most flights, and the weather was expected to remain good today.

In addition to those killed, 80,000 people were injured in the October 8 quake and many are in desperate need of medical care.

The United Nations has estimated 3.3 million were also left without homes and need food and shelter ahead of the winter, which was moving in rapidly with snow having already fallen in some of the affected areas.

In the village of Kanur, survivors standing on the rubble of their homes waved coloured clothes to attract the attention of a Pakistani military helicopter flying through the mountains, then begged its crew to take on board injured villagers.

“Please take my daughter! Please take my daughter!” pleaded Tanvir Hussain, who lost two sons, two daughters and his wife in the disaster. His remaining daughter, six-year-old Razila, suffered two broken legs.

Razila, sobbing in pain, was among six badly hurt girls and women who boarded the helicopter and were shifted to a makeshift hospital in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan’s part of Kashmir. About 30 other seriously injured people were left behind.

It was the first time that a relief flight had reached Kanur, 6,040 miles north of Muzaffarabad.

At the helicopter’s next stop, Kel Garam, a village where 250 died in the quake, villagers fashioned a helipad in a clearing in hopes that a chopper would bring supplies. It landed near the local mosque, whose walls had been cracked by the earthquake.

Soldiers handed out relief goods, including blankets and food – but no tents, the most badly needed item in these hills. There was only room for one of the village’s 30 seriously injured people to catch the flight out.

Major General Farooq Ahmed Khan, Pakistan’s top relief official, said 33,000 tents and 130,000 blankets had been distributed to quake survivors. He said 260,000 tents and two million blankets were needed.

Packages of food and blankets had been dropped to more than 580 remote villages in the Muzaffarabad district, army spokesman Colonel Rana Sajjad said.

“It’s very difficult to reach each and every place,” he said, adding many people had walked into the bigger settlements from the mountains seeking aid.

Eighty Pakistani soldiers were flown by helicopter into the Neelum Valley, about 15 miles north-east of Muzaffarabad, to carry emergency rations and other relief supplies on foot to those in need, the army said.

Soldiers also drove mule teams with relief supplies to some of the region’s steep-sided villages, crossing people with bundles on their shoulders carefully walking down to lower elevations.

Patients with infected wounds and gangrene were languishing in remote areas, Red Cross official Sebastian Nowak said after a team of the group’s doctors landed in Chekar, 40 miles east of Muzaffarabad.

In the part of divided Kashmir that India controls, torrential rain and snow hampered relief operations as roads to the badly-hit Uri and Tangdhar areas were cut off from the rest of the region.

Trucks loaded with supplies were stranded on mountain roads, and survivors huddled in rain-sodden tents and lit fires to keep warm.

In Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, authorities said the death toll from a collapsed apartment block – the city’s only building destroyed in the quake - rose to 62 as more bodies were found. Nineteen other people were missing.

The local government of Pakistani-held Kashmir estimated that at least 40,000 people died there.

Officials reported another 13,000 deaths in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, and India said 1,360 people died in its portion of Kashmir.