Pakistan earthquake death toll rises as rescuers struggle to help injured

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Pakistan earthquake death toll rises as rescuers struggle to help injured

Provincial official puts death toll from magnitude 7.7 quake in Awaran district in Baluchistan at 210, with 375 people injured

Associated Press in Quetta
theguardian.com, Wednesday 25 September 2013 03.06 EDT

The rubble of a house in Awaran district after the magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Pakistan

The rubble of a house after the magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in Awaran district, Baluchistan province, Pakistan. Photograph: Stringer/Pakistan/Reuters

Rescuers are struggling to help thousands of people injured and left homeless after their houses collapsed in a massive earthquake in south-western Pakistan as the death toll rose to 210, officials said.
The magnitude 7.7 quake struck in the remote district of Awaran in Pakistan's Baluchistan province on Tuesday afternoon. Such a quake is considered major, capable of widespread and heavy damage.
The tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi, the Indian capital, some 740 miles (1,200km) away.
A provincial official, Zahid bin Maqsood, put the death toll at 210 and said 375 people had been injured, while a spokesman for the provincial government, Jan Mohammad Bulaidi, put the death toll at 216 – the conflicting figures likely to be due to the difficulty in contacting local officials and people in the remote region.
In the densely populated city of Karachi on the Arabian Sea and Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, people ran into the streets in panic when the quake it, praying for their lives.-

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Pakistanis struggle for food, shelter after quake

AP
Quetta, Pakistan, September 26, 2013

First Published: 10:26 IST(26/9/2013)
Last Updated: 15:44 IST(26/9/2013)

Hungry survivors dug through rubble to find food and thousands slept under the open sky or in makeshift shelters for a second night as the death toll from Pakistan's massive earthquake rose to 348 on Thursday.
Rescuers battled to reach remote areas of the impoverished region in
the wake of Tuesday's magnitude 7.7 quake in southwestern Baluchistan province.
The quake had flattened wide swathes of Awaran district where it was centered, leaving much of the population homeless.
The spokesman for the provincial government, Jan Mohammad Bulaidi, said 348 people have been confirmed dead so far and 552 people had been injured.
"We need more tents, more medicine and more food," Bulaidi said earlier.
In the village of Dalbadi, almost all of the 300 mud-brick homes were destroyed. Noor Ahmad said he was working when the quake struck and rushed home to find his house leveled and his wife and son dead.
"I'm broken," he said. "I have lost my family."
Doctors in the village treated some of the injured, but due to a scarcity of medicine and staff, they were mostly seen comforting the survivors.
Awaran district is one of the poorest in the country's most impoverished province. Many people use four-wheel-drive vehicles and camels to traverse the rough terrain.

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Big Pond

Pakistan earthquake toll reaches 328

Thursday, September 26, 2013 » 06:32am

The death toll from a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that hit southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday has risen to 328.

Desperate villagers in southwest Pakistan are clawing through the wreckage of their ruined homes, a day after a huge earthquake struck, killing more than 300 people.
The 7.7-magnitude quake hit on Tuesday afternoon in Baluchistan province's remote and Awaran district.
At least 328 people have been confirmed dead and more than 450 injured, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) and the Baluchistan government.
In the village of Dalbedi, the earthquake - Pakistan's deadliest since the devastating Kashmir quake of 2005, which killed 73,000 - flattened some 250 houses.
Bewildered villagers dug with their hands through the rubble of their mud houses in Dalbedi to retrieve what was left of their meagre possessions.
Their simple houses destroyed, they used rags, old clothes, sheets and tree branches to shelter their families from the sun.
Farmer Noor Ahmed, 45, said the tremors lasted for two minutes and turned buildings in the village into piles of mud.
'We have lost everything, even our food is now buried under mud, and water from underground channels is now undrinkable because of excessive mud in it due to the earthquake,' he told AFP.

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