ISLAMABAD, 10 October 2005 — The death toll in the deadly earthquake, the worst disaster in Pakistan’s history, crossed 30,000 yesterday according to a top official. Rescuers struggled to reach remote, mountainous areas and stricken residents of a devastated city scavenged for food and gasoline, a day after the massive earthquake struck Pakistan and India, wiping out entire villages, severing transportation links and knocking out power and water supply.
In dozens of villages, many cut off from rescuers by quake-induced landslides, relatives desperate to find their loved ones dug through rubble with their bare hands, and a Pakistani official said the death toll was more than 30,000. In addition, India reported more than 465 dead, and Afghanistan said four were killed.
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said the magnitude 7.6 earthquake was the country’s worst on record and appealed for urgent help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas.
In response, US President George W. Bush yesterday promised cash and eight helicopters to help with earthquake rescue and recovery.
“Thousands of people have died, thousands are wounded, and the United States of America wants to help,” Bush said from the Oval Office.
Bush said he called Musharraf and “told him that we want to help in any way we can.”
Pakistan’s Prime minister Shaukat Aziz said the American helicopters would be drawn from coalition military operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
India also offered assistance.
Aziz said the Pakistani death toll was 19,396 dead, and that it was expected to rise. The interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, said most of the deaths were in Pakistani Kashmir, and that 42,397 were injured. The worst-hit city was Pakistani Kashmir’s capital, Muzaffarabad, where 11,000 died, Sherpao said. One top official put the Kashmir death toll much higher. “I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir,” Tariq Mahmood, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.
Troops “have not started relief work in remote villages where people are still buried in the rubble, and in some areas nobody is present to organize funeral for the dead,” he said.
The quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of three nations, with the damage spanning at least 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in Indian Kashmir.
In Islamabad, a 10-story building collapsed. Residents in Muzaffarabad said they were facing food and gasoline shortages. The city of 600,000 had no water or electricity supply, and people collected water from a mountain stream.
“People are relying on local fruit, and they have little food to eat. I went out to get bread, and could only get a couple of apples,” said Gul Khan, an Afghan carpet seller. He said he wanted to leave for another town, but couldn’t go because of damaged roads.
Hundreds of people waited at bus stations, hoping to leave Muzaffarabad. The body of a man lay on a roadside, and nearby a family pushed a body in a cart.
The city’s military hospital collapsed, and residents said there were bodies inside. Doctors set up a makeshift clinic in a park.
“Eighty percent of the region is destroyed,” said Ozgur Bozoglu, a member of a Turkish search-and-rescue team, GEA, operating in Muzaffarabad yesterday morning.
“The situation is very bad. Surgeries are being conducted on soccer fields. There are not enough doctors,” Bozoglu told Turkey’s NTV television. Officials said Balakot, in the North West Frontier Province about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Islamabad, was one of the hardest-hit areas. Near the ruins of one collapsed school, at least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets of the devastated village of about 30,000. At least 250 pupils were feared trapped inside the rubble of a four-story school.
Dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers but many without tools, pulled at the debris and carried away bodies. Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-old business administration student, said he had heard children under the rubble crying for help immediately after Saturday’s disaster.
“Now there’s no sign of life,” he said yesterday. “We can’t do this without the army’s help. Nobody has come here to help us.”
Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to some damaged areas yesterday. There was no sign of government help in Balakot. The quake leveled the town’s main bazaar, crushing shoppers and strewing gas cylinders, bricks, tomatoes and onions on the streets.
Injured people covered by shawls lay in the street, waiting for medical care. Residents carried bodies on wooden planks. The corpses of four children, aged between 4 and 6, lay under a sheet of corrugated iron.
Nations offering assistance included the United States, the United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan and Germany. An eight-member UN team of top disaster coordination officials arrived in Islamabad yesterday to plan the global body’s response.
On the Indian side of the border, at least 54 soldiers were killed when their bunkers collapsed, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian Army spokesman.
The only serious damage reported in Islamabad was the collapse of a 10-story apartment building, where at least 24 people were killed and dozens injured. Yesterday, Pakistani rescue teams pulled two survivors from the rubble. The boy and woman, who were listed in stable condition, told doctors others were trapped alive and calling for help beneath the debris.
Late yesterday, rescuers heard the voice of a man trapped in the rubble, and were trying to reach him.
The death toll in India rose yesterday to 465 after rescue workers and soldiers pulled out 90 more bodies in the frontier Tangdar region, north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths were in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and Srinagar, where the quake collapsed houses and buildings.