Mother Nature has brutally struck again in a year when she has been deadly cranky: the death toll for South Asia’s earthquake is now 18,000 and rising, as is clear from this AP report:
A devastating earthquake triggered landslides, toppled an apartment building and flattened villages of mud-brick homes Saturday, killing more than 18,000 people across a mountainous swath touching Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
The casualty toll from the 7.6-magnitude tremor rose sharply Sunday as rescuers struggled to dig people from the wreckage, their work made more difficult as rain and hail turned dirt and debris into sticky muck. Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s chief army spokesman, told Pakistan’s Geo TV network early Sunday that more than 18,000 had been killed – 17,000 of them in Pakistani Kashmir, where the quake was centered. Some 41,000 people were injured, he said.
For hours, aftershocks rattled an area stretching from Afghanistan across northern Pakistan into India’s portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing tremors could cause more damage.
The earthquake, which struck just before 9 a.m. Saturday, caused buildings to sway for about a minute in the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, an area some 625 miles across. Panicked people ran from homes and offices, and communications were cut to many areas.
The death toll and extent of damage were expected to soar once remote areas of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir were accessed.
Poor communication with those outlying regions were adding to already-difficult logistics. Many roads were wiped out in landslides caused by the quake.
“In certain areas, the entire villages — they have collapsed. In certain areas, almost entire towns, they have vanished from the scene,” Pakistan’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, earlier told CNN. He described it as the largest relief operation the country has ever mobilized.
The military’s focus was on evacuating injured people, establishing forward bases and opening up communications, Sultan said. Helicopters still were being hindered by bad weather, he added.
In Islamabad, nearly 24 hours after the quake hit, rescue workers were trying to free as many as 100 people trapped beneath a collapsed apartment building in Islamabad. At least 25 bodies were pulled from the rubble, along with eight survivors.
And as the news filters out, reports from the scene are now all too familiar for 2005 — a year in which tidal waves, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes have dominated the headlines. The LA Times:
A woman who gave her name only as Saira sat in the ruins next to her child’s body. “I have lost everything,” she said. “This is God’s wrath.”
“Where are the rescuers? No one has reached us,” teacher Junaid Ahmed said. “Do they think that Islamabad is more important than Balakot?”
In the town of Garhi Habibullah, residents said that about 300 bodies had been recovered from the ruins of a girls school there. Five hundred other students were injured.
“Many villages have been wiped out in the earthquake-hit areas of the province,” a witness, Abdul Makjeed, said by phone from Mansehra, near Garhi Habibullah, and the worst-affected area.
Reuters reports whole villages being wiped out in a flash. Rescue teams work to recover the dead bodies of children buried under school rubble:
Teams laboured with cranes and earth-moving equipment or used their bare hands in hopes of finding survivors trapped beneath shattered masonry from Saturday’s quake.
Striking out from the forest clad mountains of Pakistani Kashmir near the border with India, the quake was the strongest to hit south Asia in a century.
“When the earthquake came it was like Judgment Day,” said villager Fazal Elahi, recalling the horror of houses collapsing around him as he grieved quietly next to the body of his 14-year-old daughter.
Meanwhile, local weblogs flesh out some of the tragic details and communicate the horror of the experience:
—Metroblogging Lahore’s Balloon Purple wrote:
I woke up, the bed was trembling. I thought it was just me, for some reason. But the windows, they wouldn’t stop rattling and rattling….I got of bed, still in a daze, and started walking towards the door. The ground wouldn’t stop trembling and I was completely confused and disoriented – I hadn’t slept properly for three days. I couldn’t figure anything out, so I went back to sleep.
Woke up half an hour later to find out THIS. it was a 7.6!
I thought Lahore never got earthquakes! Karachi’s meant to! Living in Karachi, I remember many earthquake drills, and usually being very scared but also very very thrilled at the idea of one. But man…Now, the maasi (maid) just got here, and is telling tales of how people started praying when it happened and wouldn’t stop wouldn’t stop.
Everyone’s completely confused and worried – I’m getting messages just proclaiming – EARTHQUAKE, and people are startling me on msn. Hope everyone’s ok.
–Yet another compelling story, on the same blog, by Punk Devish, underlines the local terror — and how interconnected the world is these days, not just via the Internet but by a kind of cable-tv created international culture:
Having slept the morning after Sehri and watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on CNN and Hard Talk Extra on BBC simultaneously, the day had started on a very intellectually delighting note.
I was jolted out of deep slumber by the tremors. I jumped on my feet at once fighting off the giddiness while coping with the trembling ground and the furniture around me. I quickly rushed outdoors along with my mother, whom I had spotted in front of the TV frozen with shock.
The recurring thoughts about damage caused to the people I know was quite disturbing. More disturbing were the thoughts about people having to rebuild their lives from scratch in a country already hit by increasing energy prices and corrupt and ineffective administrations. With a disturbed mindset we went back indoors to experience some minimal tremors which I dismissed as my imagination more than anything else….
As I write this I just experienced the ground shaking beneath my feat and I can see the chandeliers quivering. I hope that we escape through this calamity unscathed. Some questions however still linger.
Why wasn’t the quake forecasted by the met department? What is the forecast for the next few days?
—Mubeen Abjab in Lahore:
It was extremely terrifying. Was sleeping at around 8:45 when suddenly heard a strange sound, ‘gaunj’ which woke me up for a while but just as I was about to close my eyes for sleep something shook my bed totally. It was the quake. In sleep I failed to recognise it at first and tried sleeping again but the second shock was the worst. the whole structure seemed to move for a while. I ran outside trying to go in the street when our maid shouted me to stay where i am and sit down immediately. I didn’t know what was going on I tried to run again but was again asked to sit down where i stood. I sat on a nearby bench while she recited Kalima in a hoarse voice. The whole house seemed to be moving, shaking badly. Thankfully it stopped soon but it was horrible. I gathered my senses and went to sleep again..
The sound of Geo’s broadcaster woke me up from sleep as I heard him talking about the earthquake. I never realised it was that bad till i got to see the television. Margalla Bulding was left to dust, several casualties were reported. They fear that the death toll may rise beyond 1000! Tauheed Khalla called from Islamabad and told that a crack appeared on one of their walls. The news agencies are only talking about Islamabad and northern areas not even mentioning Lahore which shows how vicious the quake was over there.
A long, truly compelling description comes from An Army Engineer’s blog, from Islamabad. You MUST read it IN FULL. Here are just a few excerpts:
I’d gotten through most everything, only three pieces of silverware and a wine glass remained to be washed when I started to notice a rumbling sound, low at first, and then getting louder – my senses went into overdrive at this point. I felt the floor move, imperceptibly at first, then a bit more. I also began to hear sounds of dishes rattling. All of these inputs to my brain registered in less than two seconds, and – I immediately, within 2 to 3 seconds of the first indication, knew that now at 8:50 AM, what I was feeling was an EARTHQUAKE…..
…..It seemed like an eternity – and frankly as earthquakes go, it was. Every other earthquake I’ve been through has lasted only a few seconds and it was over. This went on for what seemed like minutes and as I was standing there, I wondering why nothing had collapsed, particularly given the standards of construction I’ve observed, something came crashing down inside the house….
…..We decided to go up to the National Defense College – very close by, to see if our classmates needed any assistance. Along the way, there was very little evidence of damage, but people were flooded out of their houses and apartments, sitting in any shade they could find to protect themselves from the morning sun. Traffic was extremely heavy, many people appeared to be heading towards the building collapse area – we turned up to the College and found our way in quite easily. Most of our classmates were outside, sitting on the grass, many still in their night clothes. They were fine – but shaken, most had never experienced an earthquake before. We stayed for a while talking with them. One student had been in the F-10 area, his house right next to the Margalla Tower that collapsed. He said, the building had come down completely, and showed us a short video on his cellular phone of the area – the devastation was obvious….
—Hatim’s Homepage has a long post that MUST be read in full. A small taste 4 U:
I was listening to music in my dorm room (GIK Intitute ..and Engineering College in Northern Pakistan). It was then that I suddenly felt vibrations on the floor. I thought somehow the BASS of my speakers got a bit high. Surprised how that could have happened, the vibrations got more and more as time passed. It was soon that I realized this was an earthquake. Now minor earthquakes I have seen, but this much of a tremor I have never witnessed in my life. I just put on a pair of slippers and started walking out of my room. Luckily i live on the ground floor. Almost everyone living in my dorm felt the quake, especially people on 2nd floor (top) as the building wobbled alot.
After I came out i straight away called my Mom (in Abbottabad) and Dad (in Islamabad). They were fine but were a bit scared. I thought they would have felt minor tremors. To my surprise and horror, they had similar scale of tremors. I could have only imagined at that time, what would have happened to the epicenter of this quake as it was felt equally in Islamabad, Abboottabad and Tarbela/GIKI (all 2 hours drive away from each other).
I was sitting outside of our dorm building with all my friends and felt the earth moving and shaking for almost 3 minutes. Then It started to subside. The entire Saturday we felt aftershocks. It was in the evening that it was decided by Admin to give us all (GIKI) students off for two days so they could join in any relief efforts in Northern Pakistan or go to their homes.
–First-hand reports from South Asians (many of them in India) who experienced the earthquake can be read on Saleem India blog. Here are a few of them (we recommend you read all of them by clicking on the link):
i was waiting for my friend outside her hostel suddenly i found that someone is pushing me after some time i realize that it was an earthquake….
Our aquarium in our house in New Delhi crashed onto the ground and the sofa moved from one end to the other.
we were waiting for our college bus. me and my friends were sitting on a platform. I felt a sudden movement I initially felt that it was my head that was spinning, so when everyone felt the same way we then thought it was the platform. When we reached college, we got to know that it was a quake.
I was in office….. and it was like somebody is pushing my chair then after few minutes i came to know that its an earthquake… but its tooooooooooooo scary… Thanks to God Almighty that we are safe
Well it was around 9.00 I was standing in my factory which has a small water pool. Suddenly the water starts shaking and the 1/3 water just overflowed. Then I heard the clattering of the factory windows. By the time we evacuated the building it was all over. We could see the entire shed shaking. Luckily there was no damage caused.
–Ramadam Kareen has images of falling buildings HERE.
—THE TUATARA BURROW in New Zealand also has a relevant entry:”Well, it’s been a quiet weekend here! Other than the tremor we felt from the earthquake in Pakistan and India last night! Luckily, it wasn’t much more than a short shake for us, but it certainly made a huge impact in other parts of the world.”
UPDATE: The toll is now up to 20,000 and could go higher — 30,000 or more — Reuters reports.
UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin has a list of links where you can immediately give some help.
WEBLOG REPORTING: A wide variety of weblogs are writing on this story. Here is a cross-section: Confederal Yankee, Birds Eye View, In The Bullpen, This Blog Is Full Of Crap, Pam’s House Blend, Public Eye, The Jawa Report, Kelly-Brian, Boing Boing, . Blogs for Bush~*~*~BôLlYwÖòD &°¤° LöLlYwÔòD°¤° Qu£éN~*~*~, Jaya Tea, Gateway Pundit, The Left Coaster, Sortapundit, Basil’s Blog, On The Third Hand, The Heretik, The New Editor, Sister Toldjah, Secular Blasphemy
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