ANGER GROWS AS SURVIVORS AWAIT RELIEF
One man tries to dig out family with a hacksaw
MUZAFFARABAD, PAKISTAN • In the “city of death” that is now the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir people say they are hearing voices — desperate cries from beneath the ruins where up to 10,000 bodies lie.
But time and again when a search and rescue team of British firefighters arrives at the scene in the ruins of Muzaffarabad, there is only silence.
“ Perhaps the people do believe they are hearing sounds, but more often they really want help recovering the bodies,” said Pete Stevenson, the operational commander of the British rescue teams.
The hopes of amazing rescues that buoyed the bereaved in the days after Saturday’s earthquake are fading by the hour. In its place there is growing anger at a lack of medical and relief supplies and the nauseating smell of corpses.
At Rizwan public school, in the heart of the city, a team of Russian mine rescue workers arrived yesterday to begin the slow work of chiselling through the layers of smashed concrete.
In the rubble, ensnared in webs of buckled steel rods, it was estimated there were the bodies of more than 200 children who were in class when the quake struck.
Nobody in the crowd thought any could have survived, but one old man with a stick refused to be deterred, pushing to the front of a gathering crowd.
Ali Asghar bent to turn back the corner of a piece of greenbaize cloth in which the body of a small girl was wrapped but he did not recognize the lifeless face.
“ Asghar had five children,” said the man next to him. “ Three were saved, and he has already received the body of Ali, his sevenNow he seeks to bring the last one home.”
Everywhere there is a growing sense of helplessness. Fifty metres up the road, Ismail was attempting to dig his wife, son and daughter out of the ruins of his radio shop.
But without the hydraulic cutters and masonry saws of the Russians, tackling the steel with a hacksaw blade was proving impossible.
“ That is my daughter, Nadia,” said Ismail, pointing at the slender hand of a teenager protruding from the dust. “I cannot leave her there, I cannot.”
Out of grief, frustration is growing. The road from the Pakistan capital Islamabad is open, but still the relief trucks with the tents, food and medicine do not seem to be coming.
UN agencies and major charities are having little impact. Instead, individuals are delivering aid, arriving in pickup trucks from Karachi and Lahore.
Imran Zaidi, a field worker with Islamic Relief, said tensions were rising. “ There is nothing here. No bulldozers, no food, no tents. The government is doing nothing for the people. You can see it for yourself,” he said.
Beyond Muzaffarabad, in the villages and hills that can be reached only by helicopter, the stories of suffering multiply.
One man, Ahmed, who had walked for nine hours to reach the city, said “hundreds” of casualties were still sitting in the open, waiting in hope for a helicopter evacuation.
But survivors who arrived at Neelum stadium in Muzaffarabad, where a stream of helicopters disgorged casualties, were greeted by a scene that was scarcely better.
The main casualty- clearing station is a badly lit room with four crude tables where the injured are operated on in conditions that could have come from the Crimean War in the mid- 19th century.
Dr. Zubair, a surgeon from Lahore, could not hide his despair. “ We do not have proper surgical instruments for cutting bone, or adequate lighting to work by.”
With winter imminent, even the most fortunate survivors are losing hope.
Jan Mohammed, a professor of English at Jammu & Kashmir University, was spared by a few seconds.
“I was walking into my class,” he said. “The boys all stood out of respect as I entered and the quake struck. I leaped back but the roof came in. All the boys were killed on the spot. Not one of them has survived.
“ If the world does not bring us food, tents and medicines soon, some of the living will be joining them.”