After the massive disaster

Although the government responded quite promptly to the colossal calamity that hit Azad Kashmir, NWFP and Islamabad last Saturday morning, much of its initial rescue and relief effort lacked a well-directed disaster management planning.
It moved rather late, on Monday, to set up a Federal Relief Commission to co-ordinate the huge on-going operations. President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who had been personally supervising the rescue and relief work, held a special meeting where they decided to set up the commission headed by the Chairman of the Prime Minister's Inspection Commission, Major General Mohammad Farooq.
Massive help in the form of donations, relief goods and volunteers has been pouring in, from other countries, international agencies and foreign as well as local NGOs, aside from ordinary citizens, though still conspicuous by its absence from the scene of disaster is our premier humanitarian assistance organisation, the Red Crescent Society.
There is, however, a silver lining and it is a matter of special satisfaction, that the people's alienation from the system, in evidence for quite some time, has not kept them from expressing complete solidarity with their fellow countrymen in an hour of trial. They have risen to the occasion as one nation to help their suffering brethren.
For a while on Monday, the Opposition and the government benches in the National Assembly too overcame their bitterly acrimonious relationship to say that the nation is united in its determination to meet the present challenge. Relief centres all over the country are overwhelmed by the help on offer. Yet as late as three days after the tragedy struck, people not only in far-flung villages but in cities such the AJK capital, Muzaffarabad, and an important NWFP city, Balakot, were making frantic efforts on their own to rescue their near and dear ones from the debris of homes and schools razed to the ground.
For want of necessary assistance, volunteers and relatives of a Balakot school's students could pull out only two children alive from its rubble.
As of Monday, upto 400 children were still trapped in the school's debris. Notably, all over the affected areas school buildings fared the worst, which perhaps is why Army Spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told a foreign news agency, "It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas."
The NWFP Governor, who visited Balakot some time after the quake, had earlier made the shocking observation that almost all of the relatively new school buildings and government offices had collapsed while many of the old structures had withstood the earthquake's fury.
Once things settle down, those responsible for such criminal negligence in government construction work have to be held to account. Hopefully, the concerned authorities have realised how poor construction standards can become a life and death issue for countless innocent people. Lessons learnt from this tragedy must never be forgotten.
The Prime Minister has said that the cities damaged by the earthquake would be re-planned on modern lines, making them shockproof with the help of the international community. This is important, given the fact that the affected area lies on a geological faultline, and may again be struck by a high intensity earthquake at some point in future.
For now, the top priority, needless to say, has to be search and rescue, relief, and rehabilitation operations. The relief efforts in Azad Kashmir and NWFP had remained hampered for as long as they did because the roads were closed due to landslides or they had simply caved in at several points. Still, the search and rescue as well as relief operations could have been better managed, if, for example, television correspondents could access places like Muzaffarabad along with their cameras to show scenes of devastation.
Of course moving the heavy equipment to rescue people from the rubble needed time and arrival of foreign help, but the survivors could have been supplied with such basic necessities as water, medicines, food, blankets and tents through the same route that took journalists to the people in extreme distress.
Even if belatedly, the government has now streamlined its efforts and a centralised body is in place to direct rescue and relief operations.
We make bold to suggest that the General Headquarters of the Army should issue a call-up of its reservists, particularly those that belonged to the Army Medical Corps and the Corps of Engineers and have served in the area of operation of the army's 12 Corps to help in the rescue and relief effort. We do recognise that the situation demands patience, however, it is also patience that is in short supply in such trying times.