Quake’s death toll likely to rise

Tom Hussain, Correspondent

• Last Updated: October 30. 2008 12:36AM UAE / October 29. 2008 8:36PM GMT

A villager, sitting at centre right, looks at the body of his family member, who was killed in the earthquake. Arshad Butt / AP Photo

ISLAMABAD // More than 215 people may have been killed in landslides and house collapses triggered by an intense, short-duration earthquake that struck Pakistan’s western province of Balochistan yesterday morning.

The epicentre of the quake, which hit at 4.45am (2.45am UAE time), was at Khanozai in the Chiltan mountain range, about 70 kilometres north of the provincial capital, Quetta.

The National Disaster Management Authority has verified 215 deaths. However some reports have suggested the toll could rise as high as 400, because villagers started burying victims before government officials reached the area.

The Pakistan Meteorological Office measured its intensity at 6.5 on the Richter scale. It has predicted a power aftershock of up to 4.5 Richter-magnitude by tomorrow, and said tremors will continue to shake the area for a month.

The rugged area, which sits astride the Zhob Valley fault, has a history of devastating geological activity. About 30,000 people were killed in a massive earthquake that flattened Quetta in 1935.

The brunt of the quake was borne by eight hillside hamlets in the Yuni valley of Ziarat district, where debris crushed 113 people to death in their beds – 61 of them in a landslide that devastated the village of Challi Dam village.

The victims there included 15 members of the family of schoolteacher Malik Afzal.

Officials who visited other villages in the area said 28 people from two families were killed in Waam and Kaan.

About 500 houses were destroyed and thousands damaged beyond repair, rendering 15,000 people homeless, according to Abdul Samad, a provincial minister.
“There is not a single habitable home left in the valley,” he told a press briefing in Quetta.

Military pilots, flying reconnaissance sorties from a Pakistan Air Force base at Quetta, first reported the scale of the destruction. Nawab Aslam Raisani, a provincial chief minister, immediately declared a state of emergency in the affected areas and appealed for federal assistance.

His call for help sparked a race against time as army relief teams rushed to rescue people trapped under the rubble, set up field hospitals to treat them and arrange tent villages to house them before the onset of night and sub-zero temperatures.

Three years ago, federal authorities criticised the Balochistan government for its failure to develop a disaster management infrastructure in the aftermath of a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Oct 2005 that killed 78,000 people and laid to waste an area the size of Belgium in the north of the country.

“That is a sore point – they had no plan and the resultant poor co-ordination created problems” Farooq Ahmed, the chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, told journalists yesterday in Islamabad.

“The fact that they have appointed one official, the home secretary, as a focal point for co-ordination shows how little faith they have in their own administration,” he said.

Recovery and relief teams and equipment are being flown in from cities across Pakistan to pick up the pace of relief work. Local officials are hoping the help does not arrive too late for people trapped under the rubble of their homes throughout the area.

“Reports coming in from Killi Sra Khezai village are dreadful. Scores of inhabitants are still trapped,” said Momin Khan Dummar, the deputy mayor of Ziarat district.

* The National