Quake toll in Pakistan could double without swift help   
By KB Khan - PakistanTimes.net AJK Special Correspondent

MUZAFFARABAD (AJK): More people could die of hunger, cold and injuries after Pakistan’s earthquake than during it unless rich countries meeting in Geneva on Wednesday come up with more money fast, a top UN aid official said.

“What we need from donors is that the time between pledge and disbursement should be one hour,” UN chief aid coordinator Rashid Khalikov said.

“This disaster may have the number of people who died after the disaster bigger than those killed by the earthquake,” Khalikov said outside his tent office in Muzaffarabad.

Underscoring the physical difficulties, bad weather in the mountains grounded the vital helicopter fleet at the main airbase near Islamabad on Wednesday and made life for people living in the rubble of their villages even more miserable.

With the known death toll in the October 8 quake at more than 54,000, relief workers had until the end of November to provide shelter, treat countless injured still untended and supply food, Khalikov said.

“What these communities will have by December 1 is what they will have to live with,” he said amid a chorus of complaints that the world was not acting fast enough to tackle a relief operation more difficult than that after the Indian Ocean tsunami.

“It’s not much time. We basically have four weeks to deliver,” he said.

Meanwhile, four aftershocks measuring up to 5.2 on the Richter scale shook northern Pakistan early on Wednesday, sparking fears of more landslides after the devastating October 8 earthquake, an official said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the tremors.

The heaviest aftershock, with a magnitude of 5.2, came at 6:43am and there were three weaker tremors between 5:00am and 9:00am, Qamaruzzaman, chief of the country’s seismological department, said.

Witnesses said the biggest shock woke people from their sleep in the capital Islamabad and the devastated city of Muzaffarabad.

“An aftershock with a magnitude of more than five can cause landslides in the hilly terrain,” Zaman said.

Pakistan has suffered 978 aftershocks since the giant 7.6-magnitude quake, which killed more than 53,000 people in Pakistan. The biggest was on October-8 and measured 6.2 on Richter scale. “The fear is that landslides will further hamper our operations,” World Food Programme spokesman David Orr said in Muzaffarabad.

Window fast Closing

Pakistan and international relief agencies scrambled to deliver much-needed aid to remote parts of quake-hit Pakistan as experts said a narrow fair weather window was closing rapidly.

With winter approaching and rain predicted in coming days, authorities are still racing to reach thousands of people cut off by the deadly October-8 quake.

Pakistan meteorological department officials said winter was expected in around three weeks, leaving Pakistan army engineers and aid workers racing to clear distribution lines, re-open roads and provide shelter for hundreds of thousands of homeless people.

“There is a three week window of opportunity to deliver assistance to mountainous areas before the first snowfall,” the United Nations humanitarian office said in a statement.

Rain was also expected later today, creating more misery for quake survivors and likely to ground relief helicopters.

Weak Spell

“It is a weak spell and weather is expected to remain clear for rest of the week,” senior meteorologist Mohammad Hanif told 'PakistanTimes.net' on Wednesday.

Army engineers are working around the clock to reopen roads destroyed in the quake, which killed at least 60,000 people and left more than 75,000 seriously injured.

Only when the roads are rebuilt, and in some cases this could take weeks, can aid be delivered in sufficient quantities to an estimated 2,000 still inaccessible villages to allow hundreds of thousands of people to survive the rapidly approaching winter.

Despite best efforts, the fleet of aid helicopters, although growing, cannot reach them all, or deliver enough supplies to the worst-hit areas.●