THE title of this column exactly five Mondays ago was “Is Pakistan prepared for a Katrina”? Well, our “Katrina” struck much sooner than anyone could ever have imagined and without any warning whatsoever on October 8 at about 8.50am. Were we prepared?

Judging by the television coverage of the events during the first day of the quake, and even in the next few days, there was practically no civil defence infrastructure. The only people performing search and rescue operations were the ordinary public, especially surviving relatives and friends of those trapped beneath the collapsed buildings, and they were doing so with practically nothing but their bare hands.

Far away in foreign countries, gung-ho international search and rescue teams, e.g., RAPID UK, immediately geared themselves up to fly all the way into Pakistan to save lives once news of the 10/8 earthquake was out.

But we ourselves in Pakistan were paralysed. We had no disaster search and rescue teams - neither in the government, the army nor the NGOs - which could respond and move in quickly to save lives within the crucial first 24 hours of the calamity, especially in the hundreds of schools which collapsed, trapping thousands of children underneath.

RAPID UK was one of the first foreign high-tech search and rescue teams with sniffer dogs, snake-eye cameras and vibraphone sound locations to land at Islamabad Airport - 21 hours after the quake, much too late to save many who may not have died instantly upon collapse of their buildings. Research suggest that 50 per cent of people buried in earthquakes die within six hours, while 95 per cent are dead within 48 hours.

Other foreign disaster search and rescue teams from China, France, Turkey, etc., also landed in Pakistan soon after. They managed to locate and pull some lucky people out alive at the collapsed Margalla Towers in Islamabad and in other cities like Muzaffarabad and Balakot, as was shown on television. But for many, many more trapped beneath the twisted rubble of fallen schools, hospitals and homes, help came too late.

Their fate could have been different if we had our own local search and rescue teams based all over the country, in the federal territory, the provinces and the districts. These could have been mobilised in much lesser time. In a rapid-onset disaster like the 10/8 earthquake which give rescuers very little time to save lives, time is the crucial factor.

We should have established such search and rescue teams in Pakistan long ago, especially after the December 1974 devastating earthquake in Kohistan district which wiped out villages and killed thousands of people. But we failed to do so, even to this day, over 30 years later.

The chief minister of one province said over television, five days after the 10/8 quake: In such situations, there is nothing we can do in the immediate aftermath (“Is halat mein, forei tor per hum kuch nahein ker sektey”). This aptly sums up the kind of mentality which has hindered the establishment of disaster search and rescue teams so far in this country.

Many countries first started forming specialised search and rescue teams after the devastating earthquake in Mexico City in 1975, a year after Pakistan’s Kohistan earthquake. Countries that now have well established search and rescue teams include not only developed nations like the US, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Italy and Japan, but also earthquake-prone countries in South and Central America like Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras. Other countries with search and rescue teams include Turkey, South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia.

Some countries have not only one but several search and rescue teams, government as well NGO based. RAPID UK, for example, is a charity NGO. Some countries even have a whole ministry devoted to civil defence and emergency management, e.g., New Zealand.

The fact that foreign disaster search and rescue teams are out there ever ready to fly into any disaster zone in the world does not justify complacency in setting up our own “RAPID PAK”.

All the more we should have been prepared for disasters because the region has long been vulnerable to devastating seismic activity.

Forty years before the 1974 earthquake, the city of Quetta was flattened by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in 1935 which killed 60,000 people. Tremors shake parts of the country every now and then, including the heavily populated cities of Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta and even Karachi. Besides, for some time now experts abroad have been warning of the vulnerability of our region to catastrophic earthquakes sooner or later, based on the fact that the whole subcontinental landmass is inching northwards every year.

But far from being on our toes as far as earthquakes (or any other disaster) are concerned, we are not even mentally nor psychologically prepared. Schools, offices and high-rise apartments do not have earthquake readiness drills, and people generally do not know what to do in the event of a tremor apart perhaps from running out into the open. Since the time between a strong tremor and the collapse of a building could be too short for people to even run safely out into the open (as was the case in the Margalla Towers and the countless schools, hospitals and houses in Muzaffarabad, Balakot, Rawalakot, etc. that were razed to the ground in the quake on 10/8), people ought to have been informed about the places where they should take immediate cover, e.g., under the table or bed.

Despite the regular seismic activity in Pakistan, there are no stringent building codes, even in the heavy populated towns in quake-prone areas like Muzaffarabad, Abbotabad, Murree, Gilgit, Skardu, etc. Building codes is a concept unheard of in the mountainous seismic active areas of Pakistan, and even in the bigger, less seismic-prone cities, building codes, if any, are very often not honestly followed.

An earthquake engineer based in California told a local television channel last Friday that earthquake resistant buildings constructed according to specified building codes may crack and get damaged during a strong earthquake but they would not crumble and collapse the way that they did in the 10/8 earthquake.

Islamabad narrowly escaped with the collapse of only the Margalla Towers and cracks in several other high rise buildings during the 10/8 earthquake, the epicentre of which was 95 kms away from the capital. Similarly, Lahore also escaped with relatively minor damage as compared to cities and towns in Azad Kashmir and NWFP. But if buildings are not strengthened now to withstand strong tremors, Islamabad and Lahore and other big cities may not be so lucky the next time round, especially if the epicentre of the quake is near these cities.

When it comes to protection for our VIPs, we do not hesitate to invest in the latest bullet-proof cars and high-tech jamming devices, meticulously charting out their route on the roads, halting up traffic in many places. The same keenness for protection needs to be applied in disaster preparedness for the people. The 10/8 earthquake is a wakeup call for us to improve our civil defence and to prepare ourselves better for the next disaster.

GAZA: “My life is at risk,” says 60-year-old Gaza heart patient Khalil al-Khatib.

“I need to go for a test so they can see if my arteries are blocked. But they won’t give me a permit to enter Israel, and I can’t do it in Gaza.”

Khatib, who once had bypass surgery in Israel, is one of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who seek permission to enter the Jewish state each year for medical care unavailable in impoverished Gaza.

But Israel, which has battled a Palestinian uprising for the past five years, has denied many permits on security grounds.

Signs are it is becoming even harder for Palestinians in Gaza to enter now that Israeli settlers and troops have been pulled out of the territory after 38 years of occupation.

Building up the health sector is a major challenge for Gaza as it tries to increase self-reliance in a narrow, coastal strip which Palestinians hope to make a model for the statehood they also seek in the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s treatment of Palestinian ‘humanitarian cases’ while occupying Gaza has led many in the territory to expect access to a level of specialist care usually unavailable to residents of the developing world.

The entry of Palestinians for medical treatment – Israel has put the figure at approximately 7,000 a year -– has traditionally been seen across the Israeli political spectrum as helping to boost the country’s image.

But since the Israeli pullout, the main crossings from Gaza northward to Israel and to Egypt on the southern frontier have been very difficult to get through.

Military sources said dozens of patients were currently allowed to use the Erez crossing to Israel daily, compared to an average of more than 100 before. Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights said the number was at times as low as three or four.

Looking ahead, the group estimates that $2.5 billion would be needed over 10 years to bring the level of care in Gaza to that in nearby Jordan.

The Palestinian Health Ministry’s annual budget of $55 million does not even cover the $90 million it costs to send patients abroad for treatment. Other offices pay the rest.

Four in 10 people seeking medical care in Gaza need to be sent outside, the health ministry said.

Gaza hospitals lack technology for heart surgery, organ transplants, brain surgery or treating burns. Tests like catheterization, to check for clogged arteries, and body scans are also unavailable.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel wants to offer health services to Palestinians as best it can.

“But unfortunately there is a very severe security problem. We cannot offer an open-door policy because then we have terrorists exploiting that policy,” he said.

Regev cited the case of a would-be suicide bomber who was arrested at the Gaza border in June. She later said she had planned to blow herself up at the hospital in Israel where she sought treatment.

Israel also has shut the southern Rafah crossing to Egypt, the only other way out of Gaza, before removing forces under a plan it billed ‘disengagement’ from conflict with the Palestinians.

Crowds briefly forced the border open after the pullout, but it has since been closed except for a few short openings that have allowed some humanitarian cases through.

Discussion continues on re-opening Rafah, possibly with foreign security monitors to address Israeli concerns over arms smuggling. Palestinians rejected Israel’s proposal for a new terminal that would have given it control.

Regardless of how soon the border issue is resolved, Gaza cannot afford to depend on Egypt in the long term.

Patients, whose treatment in Egypt or Israel is subsidized by the Palestinian health ministry, would still be at the mercy of closures, while some are not stable enough for the 350-km ambulance ride to Cairo.

Several new hospitals are planned in Gaza over the next two years, but Planning Minister Ghassan al-Khatib said there were no formal long-term plans for developing Gaza healthcare.

“It’s not just dependent on financial capability, but it’s also a matter of human resources,” he said.

Billions of dollars pledged for Gaza by international donors — who have demanded an end to corruption and called for greater financial transparency in the Palestinian Authority — have yet to come through.—Reuters