Quake disaster: Second wave of deaths foreseen

Representatives of key donor nations were gathering today for a summit to raise money for quake-devastated Pakistan, as international relief officials warned that only weeks remained to reach hundreds of thousands of people before the winter snow cuts them off in remote Himalayan villages.

Despite fresh appeals and warnings of a second wave of deaths, the United Nations has said it has received less than 30% of the $312m (€257.9m) it needs to help the victims. Pakistan has said rebuilding the area will cost $5bn (€4.1bn).

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan invited officials to attend a high-level donor conference in Geneva today to mobilise additional financial support.

“It must be clear to everybody that many people could die if we do not move more quickly,” the UN World Food Program’s director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, Amir Abdulla, said in a statement yesterday.

”We must have much more funding, much sooner, to gain as much speed as humanly possible in the face of gigantic logistics difficulties.”

Aid workers have just five weeks to get six months’ worth of food supplies into the most remote areas of Pakistan before they are cut off, the statement said.

Yesterday, the European Union proposed that member nations come up with an additional $96m (€79.3m), on top of the $16.3m (€13.5m) already dispensed to Pakistan for emergency disaster release.

With temperatures already dipping below freezing, the world has come up with just a fraction of the tents needed to house the suffering.

An estimated 3.3 million people have been left homeless by the quake, and despite a huge international relief effort, fears are growing that vulnerable communities could face a new disaster when winter arrives in a few weeks.

Temperatures dropped as low as minus 1 degree Celsius (30 F) in the mountains yesterday, dangerous weather for those left outdoors.

A mobile headquarters from NATO’s elite response force arrived in Pakistan to help co-ordinate earthquake relief efforts, officials in Brussels, Belgium, said Tuesday.

Later this week, NATO is expected to send the first of up to 1,000 troops to help with the relief operation, including engineers, medics and support units for handling planes, helicopters and water-purification plants.

One of the main shortcomings of the relief effort so far has been tents. As many as 800,000 people are still believed to have no shelter at all, more than two weeks after the calamity.

“If you can sum it up in one word, it’s shelter,'" said John Moore, the head of aid in Pakistan for the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA.