Pakistan Quake Victims: UN aver on Lack of Tents jolts Survivors
By Mumtaz Hamid Rao in Muzaffarabad [AJK] - Pakistan Times Editor & Special Correspondent

MUZAFFARABAD (AJK): While Pakistan has launched a major push in its pursuit to reach survivors of the titanic quake—the UN came out with a plea on Tuesday that there were not enough tents in the world to protect refugees from the coming winter—placing thousands of lovely lives at risks.

The effort to feed and shelter more than three million homeless people was also marred by a row between Pakistan and rival India, which turned down Islamabad's viewpoint for helicopters without crews for relief operations.

Choppers soared into clear blue skies for a second day running after vital aid flights to cut-off villages were disrupted over the weekend by heavy rain and low clouds over devastated Azad Kashmir and northern Pakistan.

"We are trying to have a massive distribution" on Tuesday, said an army spokesman in the razed Azad Kashmir capital of Muzaffarabad. "The aim is to creep forward."

Another army spokesman in the city, said there were 102 chopper sorties on Monday, the highest number since the quake, and that a similar number was carried out on Tuesday. "The weather is good again today and flights will be back in full swing," he said.

Three giant US Chinook heavy lift helicopters flew Tuesday out of the AJK capital.

Key Roads Opened

Pakistani army bulldozers also reopened two key roads -- one out of Muzaffarabad into parts of the devastated Jhelum Valley, and another out of the northwestern town of Balakot to the mountain town of Sanghar.

But there was a dire prediction from the United Nations that not enough winter weight tents existed to shelter survivors from the quake, which the government says killed more than 45,000 people in Pakistan alone.

"It is fair to say the indication is that there are not enough tents in the world available to support the requirements," Andrew MacLeod, chief operations officer in the UN emergency response centre in Islamabad, said.

Tents Supply Exhausted

UN spokeswoman Amanda Pitt said the supply of tents had been exhausted in Pakistan, which she said was the world's biggest producer of winter-weight tents.

Around 37,000 tents had been delivered as of Monday night and the government of Pakistan has contributed a further 100,000, she said. "We know that there are approximately another 150,000 in the pipeline but still we believe that it is not going to be enough," she said.

Pakistan has said that it was ready to buy tents from its neighbour India "on an urgent basis", putting aside rivalries for the sake of housing its huge population of destitute.

Bigger than Tsunami

There are not enough warm tents in the world to protect earthquake refugees from the coming winter in Pakistan, a top UN official has said. Andrew Macleod said that the emergency was so vast it was an even bigger challenge than the 2004 Tsunami.

He said the problem was growing every day, and was "outside the scope of any government to handle". Macleod, operations manager of the UN Emergency Response Team working out of Islamabad, said winter-weight tents were needed to protect people from the "cold and brutal winter" to come.

But he warned: "The need here is greater than the existence of tents in the world. We need more tents than exist." Macleod said while many refugees were converging on centres like Islamabad and Rawalpindi, many others could not make such a journey, over several mountain ranges, when roads had been blocked or swept away in landslides.

Relief Ops

The relief operation was "mobilising every possible resource" to reach such people, "from massive helicopters to feet", and including mules. But he said the challenge was bigger than after the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, or even the 2004 Tsunami.

"Here we've got over 15,000 villages spread out through the affected region," he said. "The affected areas are much larger in geographical size than the Tsunami, and rather than being in flat coastal areas, we are operating in some of the highest mountains and deepest valleys in the world."

Need for 100,000 Tents

Meanwhile the UNHCR said on Tuesday that the massive relief operation launched in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP is in danger of losing a race against time if more than 100,000 tents are not immediately airlifted to the weather-stricken survivors of the earthquake.

“Weather and logistical problems are seriously hampering the airlifting of tents and blankets to millions of homeless in the area and if something is not done in the shortest possible span of time, there is a danger of another tragedy to unfold,” Vivan Tan, the UNHCR communications manager, told Pakistan's E-daily 'PakistanTimes.net'.

The UN agency has been able to airlift 3,000 tents from its warehouses in Pakistan and Afghanistan with another consignment of 14,000 tents on the way. “The logistics stand in the way". The relief operation has choked the airports in Pakistan and Dubai and whatever we want to bring in immediately is getting delayed,” Tan said.

He said the UNHCR had brought 14,000 tents from its warehouses in the NWFP while 20,000 blankets, 50,000 plastic sheets, 10,000 jerry cans and 1,500 tents were being sent to Mansehra from warehouse in Afghanistan. A consignment of 4,000 tents from Dubai was expected to reach Islamabad on Tuesday evening.

The agency has another stock of 9,915 tents, 103,675 blankets and 2,000 stoves in Turkey which could be transported along with 35,000 blankets, 16,000 mattresses and 8,000 rolls of plastic sheets in stock from Iran.

The Main Problem

“The main problem is in carrying these things to the affected areas because most of the survivors are on hilltops which are becoming more inaccessible with every passing day due to bad weather,” Tan added.

The UNHCR spokesperson said the agency had few relief goods left in Afghanistan. “The majority of Afghan refugee villages have converted to mud houses and tents there have been worn out or taken to other areas.”

Second Wave of Deaths

Quake-hit areas face a second wave of deaths with thousands of injured in far off locales lying untreated in the remnants of remote mountain villages as winter closes in fast, doctors and aid officials said on Tuesday.

Authorities are launching a house-to-house survey in Azad Kashmir this week to try to determine the scale of the disaster, but aid and medial workers say the dying hasn’t stopped and it could accelerate unless more help arrives fast.

"There are going to be a lot more deaths from this earthquake," said Sean Keogh, a doctor at the British medical aid group Merlin with the confirmed death toll at over 45,000 and expected to rise substantially.

Plight of Neelum Valley

Keogh and a Pakistani colleague had just returned from a three-day trek down the badly hit Neelum valley north of Muzaffarabad. The road up the valley was swept away by landslides triggered by the 7.6 magnitude quake.

The Pakistan Army is struggling to cut a new road with all-out efforts and resources, day-and-night. Thousands of people injured in the earthquake remain stranded in the valley and in villages cut off by landslides, high up on the slopes, Keogh said.

"There are 1,000 to 2,000 significantly wounded that need surgical treatment. Nobody knows how many are up on the slopes," Keogh said of just one area at the top of the valley, Panjkot. He said he had seen numerous people with compound fractures, all getting infected.

Pakistan Army medical teams had been flown in by helicopter but was running out of supplies fast. Keogh said field hospitals had to be set up in the valley, which has a population of at least 150,000 people. "There are so many injured we’re not going to get them all out by helicopter," he said. "You go up into these hills, there are loads of them everywhere and it’s getting very cold. Shelter is a real problem." "There’s a big food issue, they’re starting to run out, but their urgent need is shelter," he said.

Recap

Helicopter operations, almost halted by weekend storms which dumped snow on the peaks, were resumed on Monday as the weather cleared. They began to clatter in and out of Muzaffarabad, the main staging area for the huge international relief effort.

"You can go in any direction and paint a dire picture," said Robert Holden, head of the UN disaster relief operation. "The scale seems to be growing and the humanitarian lifeline is very thin," he said. "Are we going to see further loss of life? Of course, let’s be realistic. What we’re trying to do now is massive prevention."

"The things going against us are the weather and the supplies not coming quickly enough," he said. Holden said hundreds of thousands of tents were needed. The United Nations has 67,000 in the pipeline and more are coming from elsewhere.

Collection of Bodies

Devastated Muzaffarabad is still collecting the dead. "There are still so many bodies," senior local official Liaquat Hussain told reporters. He estimated 30,000 had been killed in Muzaffarabad district alone but said the true picture would be determined only after the survey.

"It’s all hearsay up to now," he said of reports of much higher tolls. "We don’t know how many people are buried under the rubble, but I’m afraid there will be many, many never recovered." There are still not enough helicopters. Tents, despite a spate of contributions from abroad, are still in short supply.

Many of the survivors were under only the flimsiest of shelters two days ago, when heavy rain grounded most relief flights. Mules, horses and donkeys were also trying to get aid into areas of NWFP and the Neelum and Jhelum valleys.

A steady trickle of people, despairing of help reaching them and some carrying the injured, continued to emerge from the hills, sometimes after days of trekking, overwhelming hospitals where Civil snd Military doctors were working round-the-clock.

All too often, they are being obliged to amputate limbs after broken bones untreated for too long turned gangrenous and the confirmed death toll is expected to rise substantially.

Fears of Epidemics

There are also fears of disease from ruined sewage systems and drinking water sources, but Health Minister Mohammad Naseer Khan said; vaccination teams were fanning out to inoculate people against diseases such as cholera and tetanus.

There were no signs yet of epidemics, he said. "To date, I think, praise to God, we have, fortunately, no signs, but we are constantly monitoring because that is the key thing till we clear off the debris and bury the bodies."

Meanwhile, a crucial road from Muzaffarabad into the devastated Jhelum Valley was reopened on Tuesday as bulldozers of Pakistan Army cleared a massive landslide blocking the way to Garhi Dupatta, which had been supplied only by air.

Aid to Balakot

Balakot, a town razed to the ground north-west of Muzaffarabad, received its first trucks on Monday from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) bringing in badly needed wheat and beans for 700 people. But in a sign of how much relief work remains to be done, Mia Turner, a WFP spokeswoman, said that about 600 of the 900 villages in the Balakot area remain inaccessible.

And the clear skies also brought misery of a different sort to residents, with temperatures dropping overnight to near freezing point in Balakot and mountain villages in Azad Kashmir. A Red Cross worker said a team reached the village of Shikar southeast of Muzaffarabad where they found that five people who could have been saved had died just the day before. "The urgent medical phase is now winding down.

Structures are being put in place on the ground," said Olivier Moeckli of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Some signs of life were returning to Muzaffarabad, where dozens more shops reopened including a bakery, a barber and grocery stores. "The shop is all I have left and it’s open because I have to earn money," said shopkeeper Saqib Awan, whose sister died in the earthquake. "But I don’t know if we have any future."●