KARNAH (India): Shivering in the autumn chill, 12-year-old Adil Khan and his younger brother collect wood and tin sheets from a heap of rubble. This was their home until a devastating earthquake hit Kashmir three weeks ago.

The boys are helping their parents build a temporary shelter on the banks of a shimmering stream in occupied Kashmir.

“It is spine-chilling when I think of winter,” says their father, 50-year-old farmer Assadullah Khan. “Tents won’t work. We have to make a shelter of tin sheets and wood that will protect us from the snow and the icy winds.”

The winter in the Himalayan region jealously divided between India and Pakistan is just weeks away and fears are growing for the fate of thousands of villagers in the rugged, remote and mountainous areas who have had no real shelter since the quake on struck on Oct. 8.

The quake, the strongest to hit South Asia in a century, killed more than 73000 in Azad Kashmir and parts of northern Pakistan and more than 1,300 in occupied Kashmir.

Winters are always brutal in this part of the world — snowstorms and avalanches killed 300 in occupied Kashmir last season — and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) predicts another tough one this year. Villages and districts are cut off from the rest of the world, sometimes for months.

“Temporary shelter is the top priority now and we are running against time,” says Indian army colonel P.S. Sisodiya. “Hopefully, we will make it before this valley gets cut off.”

Karnah, one of the worst hit areas close to the frontier with Kashmir, is normally isolated for three or four months every winter. It is barely 55 km from Muzaffarabad, which bore the brunt of the 7.6 magnitude earthquake.

“These homeless people immediately need shelters that will protect them from the harsh winter,” said Jammu and Kashmir State Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Syed. “We have deputed engineers in affected areas to help people build temporary shelters.”

As well as putting up community centres, the government is supplying money and tin sheeting for survivors to build their own shelter.

Snow is already falling higher up. From December to February, overnight temperatures plunge to as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Farenheit) here — or minus 20 Celsius (minus four Farenheit) at high altitudes.

“The weather can turn ugly any time now. Only God can save us, He is the saviour,” says Haider Nadeem, holding his son close to his chest to keep him warm in an olive green tent.

Nadeem, a 50-year-old teacher, lost his elder son, Naveed-ul-Rehman, his home and most of his savings in the quake.

“I don’t want to loose another child to the cold in this tent,” he says. “We have collected tin and wood, the government is also helping us. Immediately after Eid we will build a shelter.”

Kashmir celebrates Eidul Fitr on Friday or Saturday depending on the sighting of the moon.

A religious aid organisation from the nearby state of Punjab is building 11 community centres in the Karnah valley, which is linked to the rest of Kashmir by a narrow and treacherous road, 180 km northwest of Srinagar, the region’s main city.

“Little time is left. Over 250 workers including architects and engineers are working day and night to make these halls,” says an architect for the aid group, who did not want his name or that of his organisation used.

In the distance, near a huge, distinctive Kashmiri Chinar tree, crimson-red with autumn, a long queue of people waits in the sunshine to collect warm clothing and kerosene from a government relief centre.

“We pray to God that the weather remains like this for a longer time. In the past, it didn’t snow even until the end of December many times,” says Abdul Madjid, a 45-year-old farmer.

“But last winter was really tough.”

—Reuters