IRIN
PAKISTAN: Relief operation slowed by poor weather
28 November 2005


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United 
Nations]

DARBANG, 28 November (IRIN) - Bad weather conditions were seriously 
hampering earthquake relief efforts in northern Pakistan on Monday, with 
dozens of helicopter flights cancelled.

Millions of survivors without shelter were drenched by heavy rain and 
left freezing as temperature plummeted. Up 20 cm of snow fell in some 
high altitude areas.

"The bad weather has cost us a day and a half of our operations with 30 
flights cancelled," said Walid Ibrahim, a logistics officer with the 
World Food Programme (WFP) in Muzaffarabad, close to the epicentre of 
the 8 October quake in which more than 86,000 people are known to have 
died.

"That's 270 mt of aid, which is food for 4,500 people for a month," 
Ibrahim said.

Relief flights for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Save the 
Children were also among those disrupted.

"Our projects are mostly helicopter dependent and if the weather 
conditions aren't good we can't fly, which is really bad for us," said 
Claude-Andre Nadon, a logistics coordinator with the IOM.

Nadon said that the IOM is now concentrating its efforts on areas that 
can be reached by road. With the rain loosening unstable debris and 
earth, delivering aid by mountain roads is a perilous option with risks 
of landslides and rock falls. But sometimes there is no other option.

There is little flat land near the villages of Hariyola and Darbang, so 
even if weather conditions are good, there is no place for a helicopter 
to land. There is also no road leading to the village, only a rocky dirt 
path just wide enough for a jeep. The rain has turned the earth into a 
sticky mud soup.

A thick, white mist hangs low over Hariyola as a downpour of rain pelts 
the crumbled ruins of the houses. Survivors crouch under fallen sheets 
of corrugated iron and under half-collapsed buildings for refuge.

The IOM is the first international aid agency to reach these villages, 
but for some it is too late.

"A few children have already died from pneumonia," said Raja Mohammad 
Mumtaz Khan, a village elder from Darbang and the head of a local NGO 
working with the IOM.

The villages are in desperate need of aid and medical attention. Both 
village clinics were destroyed by the quake and the female health worker 
in Darbang - who enables services to be offered to women - is without 
shelter and is contemplating leaving.

"There are 25 children suffering from pneumonia and diarrhoea. If not 
treated in time this will kill the children," said Ehtisham Ulhaq, a 
doctor working with the IOM.

"The medical needs are urgent. Winter is coming and it's getting colder 
and colder," Ulhaq said.

Most of the locals lived in traditional 'kacha' houses, made of timber 
and mud, with heavy earth roofs. These collapsed in seconds, crushing 
everything beneath them. The livestock that survived the quake escaped 
and the villagers have lost their goats, sheep and buffalo, a vital 
source of food and income. Food stocks for winter were destroyed as well 
as maize and wheat fields.

Soon these villages - and scores around them - will be blocked off by up 
to 1.5 metres of snow and survivors will be forced to walk over five 
hours to reach the nearest town of Chatter Kalas.

The IOM is providing shelter kits to 100 of the most vulnerable 
households and 3,000 blankets to the rest of the population in Hariyola 
and Darbang. Each family will get 12 blankets, which can also be used to 
insulate their tents, eight corrugated iron sheets, two different types 
of tarpaulin and tools for building.

But, as with hundreds of villages in the region, getting aid to Hariyola 
is a logistical nightmare and delivery and distribution is a slow and 
arduous process.

"The main problem lies in transport. It rains just one day and it's 
tough to get even a 4x4 [vehicle] up here, so for big trucks it's 
impossible," said Nadon.

The IOM will send four trucks a day for three days, packed with shelter 
kits. The trucks will travel as far as the road allows, and then the aid 
will be transported by foot to a distribution point near the villages.

In Hariyola, a group of barefoot children wearing thin, cotton clothes 
huddle around a fire for warmth. Sitting in the ruins of a crumbling 
house surrounded by apple and apricot trees and overlooking mountains 
green with thick pine forests, they warm their hands.

"The cold is our biggest problem," says 15-year-old Ranaha Afaq.

"Last night my baby sister died of the cold, of pneumonia," she said. At 
four months old, Ranaha's sister was too small to withstand the icy 
nights.

Ranaha is used to walking in the rain. Her daily trek to school takes 
two hours, a journey she has made countless times in the bitter winter, 
although since her school was flattened by the quake she has not left 
Hariyola.

But, like the other children around her, her clothes were buried in 
rubble of her home. "We just want to be warm," she said.


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