Scale of damages: Nearly all of Mashkai town flattened, say survivors

Injured victims are undergoing treatment at Karachi hospitals.

KARACHI: Nearly all of Mashkai, a town of over 25,000 people, has been flattened in Tuesday’s earthquake that jolted the country’s largest, but sparsely populated, province of Balochistan.

“It was a doomsday for us,” recalled Karim Dad, an earthquake survivor from Mashkai tehsil of Awaran district, who has come to Karachi for treatment. “There was a huge cloud of dust across the city and I heard cries from every direction.” The62-year-old feels as if the earthquake has ruined everything.

Karim brought his wife and another relative to Civil Hospital, Karachi, on Thursday morning through an Edhi Ambulance. His 19-year-old daughter, Fatima, died when she couldn’t leave the room on time. “I had a six-room house but it was completely damaged,” he told The Express Tribune. “My daughter is buried under the debris.”

Karim was taking a nap at his house when the house was shaken by strong jolts at around 4:15pm. “My room collapsed within seconds as I left it,” he remembered. According to his rough estimates, over 90 per cent of the houses, shops and other buildings in his home town have been flattened. “We had mud houses and almost all of them collapsed in the first jolts. The remaining ones will also fall down,” he feared.

Scale of destruction

For people living in far flung areas, it is really hard to imagine the scale of destruction. “The first thing we have to do is recover the bodies,” Karim said. “Then we should provide first aid to the injured persons as countless injured people are waiting for doctors.”

By Wednesday afternoon - a day after the earthquake - only three Edhi ambulances managed to make their way to the remote town. “It took us 17 hours to reach Karachi,” said Karim, explaining that driving on the hilly terrain is difficult and most roads are damaged. He still finds it hard to shake away the memories of the countless injured people they met on their way to Karachi. “We couldn’t fit anymore people in the ambulance.”

Another old survivor from Mashkai, Haji Abdul Aziz, was looking after his seven-year-old grand daughter, Mahnoor, and daughter Halima. The 67-year-old man lost five family members in the deadly earthquake after they waited for more than 24 hours for help. Hardly able to understand Urdu, Aziz said every house in Mashkai has been destroyed. “More people will die if rescue teams do not reach on time. People need food and medicine urgently.”

The late arrival of the rescue teams did not go well with the residents. “We are considered insurgents,” explained an attendant, Yar Muhammad. “Do you think the entire population of our area is a rebel?”

Relief efforts

All the attendants stressed the need for medical camps in the affected areas, especially Awaran and Mashkai. “Thousands of people are living under the open sky. There is no shelter left for us.”

A total of 12 injured survivors have been brought to Civil hospital so far and all of them have minor injuries, according to a medical officer.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Relief Foundation chairperson Haleem Adil Sheikh said he was trying to take five truck loads of relief goods with him but he was stopped by the Frontier Constabulary. They told him that the law and order situation was not stable enough for a high-profile person to go there. Other vehicles that were part of large convoys were, however, allowed to go on.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2013.