Plight of the survivors demands greater attention in real time
The troubled province of Balochistan faces another unneeded disaster, an act of nature in this instance rather than a man (one uses the term loosely) made one. This time it was not the poor Hazaras or the Punjabi labourers who had been slaughtered in the fair name of religion or for reasons of their ethnicity, neither was it a case of mutilated bodies dumped on the roadside apparently for reasons of national interest. The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck this tremor prone region on Tuesday left a trail of death and destruction in its wake, wreaking the most damage in its epicentre district of Awaran. So far, out of the 238 deaths reported from the six affected districts of Awaran, Kech, Gwadar, Panjgur, Chaghi and Khuzdar (with a combined population of over 300,000), 208 belonged to the first named, in which area also ninety per cent of the mostly mud houses have collapsed, leaving an unknown number of victims trapped beneath the rubble, while thousands wait for help to reach them – especially in Awaran and Kech.
The final toll is unfortunately certain to rise as is borne out by experience, mainly due to the slow reaction time in responding to the emergency, accentuated by the isolation of the region, and lack of infrastructure and relative facilities, including trained manpower especially in this case. Some of the dead have already been buried anonymous and unsung in their helplessness, while the work of extricating those trapped is ongoing. The seriously wounded needing urgent surgical procedures are being flown by helicopter to Karachi where they can be better attended to. But the scale of the devastation and the plight of the survivors demands greater attention in real time.
This latest calamity highlights yet again the despair and helplessness of the ordinary man, who is usually left to survive on his own at a time when he most needs a helping hand after a traumatic experience. True, as always in such disasters, the Pakistan Army was quick to reach the worst affected areas but can 100 medical personnel and 1000 troops cope with a disaster of this magnitude, in which the population of Awaran alone is scattered over an area of 21,000 square kilometers? Iran and Turkey have both offered their brotherly assistance, but it is essentially up to the recently elected provincial leadership to mobilize the party cadres and other volunteers and spread them over the whole length and breadth of the tragedy-struck region to ensure an immediate supply chain of essential items like food, water, medicines and medical care. It is also the hour for the civil society in the whole of Pakistan to rise to the occasion and help their brethren in distress by their physical presence and concrete assistance – just like they did when the 2005 earthquake jolted Azad Kashmir and the Northern areas.
