I’m usually a very sound sleeper. If you placed a drum kit besides my bed and told pappo saain to play his dhol while dancing upon it, it wouldn’t freaking well wake me up! ....But even I woke up. My bed was shaking crazy. I opened my eyes to shout at my brother who’s most fond of doing so. But it wasn’t him. The chandeliers were swinging above my head. I could hear yelling from my mom’s room. Couldn’t make out much of what was going on besides the word ‘earthquake’.. Oh God, it was a really strong one, is all I thought, thinking it was going to stop any second...but it didn’t. The photo frame lying on my study table lost balance and crashed against the polished wood. That’s when I got up and ran to mom’s room. Mama was holding on to Hashim. We all stood there waiting for it to stop. After a couple of more seconds it finally did. Birjees turned on the T.V. and soon the breaking news of the destruction caused by the earthquake started pouring in on all channels. It was horrible...
The earthquake measured as 7.6 on the richter scale, epicenter 95 kms from Islamabad. It was caused by the collision of the same plates that caused the Himalayas into being....scary.
Two towers of Margallah Apartments have collapsed. I remember passing by them every time, while going to Tayaa abbo’s house, watching people coming to and from. People like you and me. Cracks appeared in the walls of many houses, weak railings fell and glass window panes crumbled. After shocks lasted for a day, and tremors are still being felt.
Some buildings and shops in Lahore also came down, in the Shahalami and other inner city areas. Old buildings like the Lahore Museum have been seriously affected and shut down.
But the worst effected are the northern areas. Azad Kahmir, Muzaffarabad, Balakot, Mansera...entire villages have been wiped out, people buried under debris, as roofs of houses, schools, shops, full of people collapsed..
We had family friends in Muzaffarabad, Papa’s friend and his family. We hadn’t met up too often in the last few years since when everyone got busy with college and work. But we quite recently did visit them, when my uncle died. Images of his wife crying, run through my mind every time I think of them…their nineteen year old daughter who I got a chance to bond with while helping out in the kitchen. She struggled back her tears as she told me how her brother had to leave college to work after their dad was gone .. And now... We still haven’t been able to contact them. I hope they’re all alright....
Landslides have blocked access to all these remote areas. Great obstacles are being encountered in getting aid and rescue teams through. People are sleeping out in the open. There are dead people lying around on the roads. Some have not been identified by any surviving relatives. Many of those identified even cannot be buried due to lack of cloth for kafan and volunteers willing and having the strength to bury another. Epidemics have broken out among the survivors, as they live out in the cold, collected in huge numbers. Supplies that did find their way through amounted for nothing compared to what is needed. People violently broke onto them, fighting one another for a pack of aata,chawal, daal to fill their starved stomachs.
In an interview on GEO a passerby was relating how he saw 21 cars swept down a cliff by a landslide, along with them people sitting inside and those who had left their cars running for escape. I often look down the cliff at the thin stream from way above when we are traveling up north. It gives you shivers up your spine just looking down that cliff. I can’t even imagine what a fall that would be. You would die before the water even touched you...
A lot of aid is coming in, from here and abroad. Britain, USA, Turkey, Kuwait, UAE and lots of other countries have made their contributions. Above all Pakistani’s themselves have pitched in their bit. Rescue teams have been coming in, with hi-tech voice detecting equipment etc, working with the Pakistani army in the rescue efforts. The death toll has risen way beyond 20,000. More than 40,000 have been injured. Alive survivors, continue to be recovered from the ruins, though the number is declining everyday.
I have traveled down these very roads. Been to all these beautiful places now buried under dust. I live in a house just like the one that came down, and study in a building made of the same bricks. This is by far the worst disaster that has ever occurred in the history of Pakistan. Nothing could be worse, besides only it happening to us. It’s really just a matter of geography. We did nothing to deserve what those didn’t. It could have been any of us. Or maybe it was us too....
Quetta has suffered many earthquakes. It wasn’t something alien to us. But isn’t it sad to see we had no infrastructure to manage radar keeping of seismic activity? And where on one side we can spend so much on destructive ‘safety measures’, hoarding everything from nuclear weapons to F16s, we haven’t spent a dime on building up rescue teams. The difference between the amount of sophistication and success of the British teams over ours is out there, so in your face.
Residents of buildings next to Margallah Towers, that had been evacuated, when returned to take with them their belongings saw their locks broken, safes empty, jewellery missing, all stolen. At a time like this? For Gods sake! Who could be that brutal and insanely pathetic enough to fall to that level?! ..
Relief efforts and fund raising is being done by various organizations. The army has set up a collection camp at fortress stadium. They’re doing pretty fine. I see them carrying and packing boxes everyday in the mornings when I leave for LUMS. Schools and colleges are collecting donations. LUMS has formed a LUMS Disaster Relief Fund committee. We are donating our collections to the Edhi foundation, Islamic Relief fund and Red Cross.
An ex-LUMS student has appealed to LUMS to help out at his village at Balakot, which has been completely destroyed. He has given them a list of items gravely needed and directed them regarding what roads to take. A team of 5 students and 1 faculty member (I think) are going with a truck full of supplies, to personally help out. I wish I could have gone *sigh* But they said females would be a liability rather than help, in the face of utter chaos and lawlessness that has broken out in the area *argh* ...Anyways, I wish them a biiiig goodluck! We’r proud of you :) .... I went to LUMS tonight to hand in my donations and help out with the packaging. It was really moving seeing everyone there…Farrukh, Shandana, Miguel, Yasser Hashmi, the LVS, LAS, the rugby team, everyone! All these familiar faces…pleasant and some not-so-pleasant ones, all differences dissolved, putting their hands together, laboring away to finish on time to load the truck, which was to show up any minute. I explained the intricacies regarding the medicines, ways of making home-made ORS and what not, rushing it in 5 minutes, and then helped finish up packing the clothes in separate cartons. Most of the work had already been done. But it felt so good to have actually done something, like non-monetary, proper man-labor kinda work. We’re gonna go around collecting money door-to-door from houses and set up stalls outside restaurants at aftari times to collect donations as well. People spending over 500 bucks on all-u-can-eat Pizza Hut and Freddy’s aftari should go jump into a well if they think they cant spare the cost of a bottle of olives neatly chopped up and placed upon their pizza, or a can of cherries dashed over their huge tutti-frutties.
Do your bit. Please donate generously. Get out on the roads. Do what ever you can! It’s never enough :)
