Victims plead for help days after earthquake hit

updated 7:08 p.m. ET Oct. 10, 2005

GARHI HABIBULLAH, Pakistan - “Where is the help? Where are the authorities? We have nothing. We are living under the open sky, alone,” cried Arshad Nawaz, whose 10-year-old niece, Sitra, was killed in this weekend’s devastating temblor.

Nearly three days after the earth convulsed beneath a girls’ school, residents of the Kashmir town of Garhi Habibullah were still trying to reach children buried under the rubble with no rescue dogs, sound sensors or soldiers.

Those affected by Saturday’s earthquake have expressed growing frustration that not enough is being done to help them.

“We’ve been waiting since this happened. We’ve received nothing. Our house is gone. Everything is gone and I have no work. I am broken,” said Mohammed Nasir in nearby Muzaffarabad, three days of stubble on his face, and a sign in his hand pleading for help.

But international relief officials say things are improving and criticism of the overwhelmed Pakistani government is premature.

Help on the way, Pakistani president says
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf also defended his government’s efforts. He had appealed for international help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas cut off by landslides.

“We are doing whatever is humanly possible,” Musharraf said. “There should not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need our help.”

Planeloads of aid arrived Monday from Britain, Japan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Eight U.S. military helicopters also were diverted from the war in neighboring Afghanistan to join the relief effort, bringing with them supplies, tarpaulins, high-tech cameras for finding buried survivors and other equipment.

Until Sunday, not a single road into the Pakistani-controlled side of the mountainous territory of Kashmir was passable, meaning no aid reached the hundreds of thousands of homeless until Monday, said Andrew MacLeod, Humanitarian Affairs officer with the U.N. Coordination and Assessment Team.

“In situations like this, aid never gets through quickly enough, but it is getting through as quickly as possible,” he said.

MacLeod said the international community had learned a valuable lesson from recent disasters like Hurricane Katrina and last year’s Asian tsunami. “You need to coordinate. There’s no point running off and doing everything on your own,” he said.

Anne Veneman, executive director of UNICEF, said her teams were working around the clock and that aid was finally getting through.

First shipments reaching most areas
“We have the first shipments that have now reached the most affected areas. We know they are reaching the children and the people, the families who need them,” she said.

The Pakistani government has called for and accepted aid from every corner of the earth, even nuclear rival India, which also was hit by the quake. Some hailed the thaw between the two sides as a historic opportunity to work toward lasting peace in the region.

But such optimism offered little comfort to those left homeless, widowed and orphaned.

Khursheed Kiyani, who has been living outside in Muzaffarabad since the quake hit, expressed anger at the relief effort.

“It is like living in hell here. The Chinese, the French — everyone is supposed to be helping us, but we don’t see any of it,” he said. “We see the helicopters but we don’t see any food. Where is the relief effort?”

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