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| October 10, 2005 | Monday | Ramzan 5, 1426 |
Parents in search for trapped children
BALAKOT, Oct 9: With hands, picks and shovels, desperate parents struggled on Sunday to reach more than 850 children trapped in the rubble of two schools here flattened by the weekend’s massive earthquake.
The frightened voices of trapped children and the anguished wails of parents accompanied the frantic work in the Balakot valley in the mountains of the NWFP, one of the areas worst hit by Saturday morning’s quake.
“Save me, call my mother, call my father,” came the faint voice of a boy, again and again, from the rubble of a government school in which residents said about 200 children were trapped.
“Bring out my child, bring out my child,” his mother wailed, beating her chest as other parents and relatives pulled out the bodies of four children, bringing Sunday morning’s toll to eight.
Residents of the scenic resort town of about 20,000 people estimated 2,500 people may have been killed there and in seven surrounding villages. They complained that they received no support from police and emergency services.
Thousands were injured, mostly women and children who were in their homes at the time of the disaster while their men worked in the open. Almost every second woman or child bore an injury.
At the private Shaheen School, 650 children were trapped inside the four-storey building that collapsed as the children sat in class at 8:50am on Saturday.
Parents scrabbling through the rubble said they had brought out the bodies of six dead children and 19 injured. The bodies of four more were seen on the school roof.
A teenage girl was pulled out covered in dust and with leg injuries on Sunday morning.
“We were sitting down when it happened. We tried to get up and run, but everything just caved in,” she said. “I was lying buried up to my neck. There are many others in there.”
The rescue effort has been hampered by frequent aftershocks causing panic among survivors, who face a bleak immediate future with little or no food or shelter. Some relied on soft drinks and biscuits recovered from a damaged warehouse.
The Balakot region is a scene of massive devastation. About half of the concrete houses have collapsed and dozens of bodies lay in the open. The road into town has been blocked by landslides, and it is only possible to reach the town on foot.
A Reuters reporter counted 105 bodies on the eight-km trek into town. Some were laid by the road by relatives hoping for help with their burial. Others were carried on charpoys (traditional rope beds).
A boy carried a younger sister of perhaps four or five, her skin stripped off her face and the side of her body by a rock that flattened their house. He did not know what to do.
“There are no bandages or anything at all,” he said. “There are no doctors, nothing — where should we go?”
A German woman doctor running a leprosy centre in Balakot said they were doing what they could. She said six of their patients died when the centre’s roof collapsed and 20 were hurt.
“I have been involved in helping refugees for the last 17 years, but I am in shock because I have never seen such devastation,” said the doctor, Chris Schmoter.
Villager Haji Nawaz lost his wife, his mother and four children when his house collapsed. “The whole place shook and the boulders came down from the mountain. In less then a minute, I saw half the town destroyed. I have seen women going mad with shock.—Reuters
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