Greater havoc than tsunami

October 8, 2005, was a 'BLACK SATURDAY" morning. Students of Rizwan Public School, Muzaffarabad, and many thousands like them were unaware of the catastrophe coming ahead.
The collision between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, that created Himalayas 50 million years ago, was about to create a new chapter in the history of mankind.
At 08:50:38 Pakistan Standard Time, a massive earthquake of magnitude 7.6 on the Moment magnitude scale, was recorded by The United States Geological Survey (USGS). The quake unleashed death and destruction in scores of districts, Tehsils, union councils and hamlets of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and N.W.F.P. The epicenter was at 34' 29' 35" N, 73' 37' 44" E, about 19km (11.8 miles) north-east of Muzaffarabad, and 95 km (60 miles) north-north-east of Islamabad (Pakistan) at a depth of 26 km (16.2 miles) from the surface.
The jolts were felt in Afghanistan and in the entire Indian subcontinent. The Northern parts of Pakistan bore all the brunt of the destruction. 08/10"instigated the complete topsy-turvy of the Northern Areas of Pakistan.
The reverberations of the incident directly affected 4 million people. However the sighs and agony of the calamity is being shared by 154 million Pakistanis along with the rest of Muslim Ummah and the International community.
The staggering earthquake has claimed over 38,000 lives, affected millions of people and played havoc with infrastructure over a vast swathe of the mountainous region. But no one can vouch for the accuracy of the fatality rate, since it is dreaded that the toll is going to rise higher.
The "8/10" invigorated the devastations of tsunami that had struck ten littoral states of the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately the extent of the destruction of this quake is far larger than the tsunami ordeal.
This earthquake is also bigger in catastrophe than tsunami in terms of the number of people made homeless and the extent of destruction to infrastructure.
The quake rendered 2.5 million people homeless as against 1.5 million displaced by the tsunami. Besides, another million people are in extreme grief, needing immediate help. The quake had caused much more severe devastation than the tsunami and even hurricanes like Katrina and Rita.
No roads were destroyed by the tsunami and the destruction was confined to areas within a few hundred metres along the coasts and it took only a few days to assess the damage. Besides, there was the facility of transportation through the sea. Here the devastation is widespread, in mountainous and difficult-to-reach regions and only helicopters could reach the disaster areas.
The United Nations has revised its "flash appeal" for earthquake which hit Pakistan to $312 million from $272 million, and so far over $50 million has been pledged. Hitherto 5 billion dollars have been the estimated cost of the disaster.
According to the UN the complete pre-quake restoration of the infrastructure in Northern Areas of Pakistan will require at least ten years. The tragic loss of fifty thousand precious lives can never be redeemed. The UN officials warn of 'disaster within disaster' unless the remedy is done professionally and promptly.
Children are the most vulnerable victims of the quake. Hardly a handful of school-going children survived the catastrophe. This has created a state of shock and trauma amongst the victims of the quake. Over eight thousand school buildings have been destroyed. And what's left of them is only decaying corpses and rubble.
This kind of devastation has never been seen in Pakistan's history before. To quote an example Shaheen Girls Degree College and Shaheen Boys Commerce College, Government Girls High School and Government Primary School in Balakot were destroyed causing loss of more than 2,500 lives.
The children of the quake have been alluded as Killer quake's 'nowhere children' by the BBC. Some 600 or more children are without their guardians either in hospitals or camps. This is raising serious concerns for the officials here.
UN Resident Co-ordinator Jan j. Vandemoortele made a passionate appeal for fortifying relief efforts and strengthening co-ordination among relief groups, saying "one disaster has occurred; we should prevent another one from happening". Describing the situation as desperate, the UN representative said the job ahead for relief agencies was colossal.
As Chairman of The Helping Hands for the Needy, I am looking forward to fulfil this colossal task with full sincerity, professional approach and altruistic vision.