Kashmir earthquake of 2005

Earthquake

Date: October 8, 2005

Place: Kashmir and North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan

Magnitude: 7.6

Result: More than 90,000 dead; about 106,000 injured; 3.3 million homeless; $5 billion in damage

At 8:50 a.m. PakistanStandard Time, an earthquake occurred with an epicenter some 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. It proved to be the biggest natural disaster in the history of Pakistan and also affected the neighboring country of India. The area in which it occurred was extremely mountainous, with very poor lines of communication. It was also split by political boundaries. More significant, the area was overpopulated and very poor, with many makeshift buildings and few medical facilities. The rescue efforts were hampered by these factors, plus the sheer size of the operation needed. Although much international assistance was forthcoming, many areas had to wait weeks for help to arrive. The whole area was expected to need years to recover its infrastructures and to rehouse the displaced.

Background. Three background factors governed the enormity of the devastation created by the Kashmir earthquake. The first is geological. The Indian subcontinent, including the countries of India and Pakistan, is separated tectonically from the rest of Asia. The South Asian plate was originally attached to Antarctica some 150 million years ago. It then started drifting northward, and 50 million years ago it slammed into the Eurasian plate, forcing the ground up to form the Himalaya mountain ranges, the highest on earth, including the Hindukush and Karakoram ranges. The plate has continued to move northward at the rate of more than an inch a year.

The result is frequent earth tremors and occasional major earthquakes. The most notable recent quakes have been the Quetta earthquake of 1935 in the Sind Province and the 2001 Gujrat earthquake in India. In the more immediate area, a quake in 1974 with a 6.2 magnitude killed 5,300 people. Although a quake of the magnitude of 7.6 is generally serious, the main factor with the Kasmir earthquake was the shallowness of its hypocenter, which was no more than 16 miles deep.

The second background factor is geographical. The northern areas of Pakistan are extremely mountainous. For example, the Kaghan valley running north of Balakot, one of the towns most affected by the quake, is carved through the mountains, with cliffs up to 1,000 feet towering above it on either side. Even a moderately heavy storm will send landslides crashing over the few dirt roads that hug the mountainsides, requiring army bulldozers to cut a new road out. The area is desperately poor, subsistence living at best on the rocky terraced hillsides, but is seriously overpopulated. Pakistan is a Third World country, despite being a nuclear power, and so provision of medical and educational facilities is basic, often housed in buildings that are below standard. Almost no regulations exist for reinforced buildings in such areas.

Third, the area is divided politically. In 1947 the country of Pakistan was formed out of India for the Indian subcontinent’s Muslim population. The mountainous northern region of Kashmir had a Hindu ruler but a largely Muslim population. The result was that the Vale of Kashmir was occupied by Indian forces, the mountainous west and north by Pakistani ones. A cease-fire line was created as a temporary measure, but efforts to resolve the territorial dispute have been thwarted. The dispute has led to several wars, an insurgency movement, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Pakistani part of Kashmir is known as Azad (Free) Kashmir. It is administered separately from Pakistan proper and is even poorer than the neighboring North-West Frontier Province. The epicenter of the quake lay inside the cease-fire line.

Immediate Impact. The earthquake struck at around 9 a.m. Saturday morning. Saturday is a normal working day, so the schools were full of children. However, it was also during the month of fasting, Ramadan, which meant than many people had gotten up before dawn to eat and then gone back to bed for a while. The epicenter was located near the village of Garhi Habibullah, on the border of Azad Kashmir and the North-West Frontier Province, with the quake being felt as far afield as Kabul in Afghanistan, New Delhi in India, and Karachi on the coast of Pakistan.

The immediate effect of the quake was the collapse of many buildings, landslides, and the displacement of rocks and boulders. There were even reports of new waterfalls appearing in the high mountain valleys. A block of flats collapsed in Islamabad, causing immediate panic, and there were similar scenes in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city. Over the rest of the day, 147 secondary shocks were recorded, 28 with a magnitude between 5 and 6. Also, devastating hail and rainstorms continued throughout that day and into the next. Reports quickly came in of schools and hospitals collapsing, roads blocked, and communications down. It was immediately obvious that the devastation was enormous, though no one had any idea how widespread it was.

What was also obvious in the light of the scope was the inadequacy of the Pakistani government’s equipment in the more remote areas. A state of emergency was declared in all the hospitals of Islamabad and its twin city of Rawalpindi, and the army and emergency services were put on full alert.

The first pictures from the region showed the collapsed apartment block in Islamabad and efforts being made to rescue those trapped inside. First estimates were 18,000 killed and 45,000 injured in an area where close to 3 million people lived. The most affected areas appeared to be around Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir; Balakot, at the entrance to the Kaghan Valley; and the Mansehra district. Efforts to reach those places, however, were hampered by blocked roads. Muzaffarabad was reached only late Sunday afternoon by a handful of trucks. It was estimated that 60 to 70 percent of all buildings had collapsed in these places. In Garhi Habibullah, both boys’ and girls’ high schools had collapsed, crushing students and teachers, as had the hospital. Because of the aftershocks, few people dared to stay in the remaining homes or any other building, preferring to stay out in the pouring rain.

On the Indian side of Kashmir, there was much damage, but not on the scale of that on the Pakistani side. The army took over search-and-rescue operations, the usual practice in both countries, with both armies being well-equipped and well-trained. First estimates put the dead in India at 600. Damage was also reported as far afield as Delhi and Amritsar, and in Gujrat, the site of a major earthquake in 2001, there was panic.

Relief Efforts. The next day, Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf appealed to the international community for aid. The immediate need was for search-and-rescue teams, heavy-lifting helicopters, medical supplies, tents, and blankets. Pakistan possessed only 34 suitable helicopters. Many countries and groups made immediate pledges, including the World Bank, the United States, the European Union, China, and Russia. By contrast, the Indian government claimed that it needed no assistance and even offered some to its traditional enemy, Pakistan. Various search-and-rescue teams arrived very quickly. They were flown by helicopter to the worst affected areas and pulled people out of the rubble for a number of days. The real challenge, however, was to transport the injured by helicopter to the designated hospitals and to ferry in supplies of food and shelter. In fact, there were never enough helicopters at any time. In addition, the weather conditions were poor and unrelenting, hampering much of this effort.

Where aid did arrive, scenes were often chaotic, as people were desperate to get what they could. By October 12, Pakistan had received $350 million in pledges in answer to the president’s appeal and also that of the U.N. aid chief, Nils Egland. Some 20,000 troops had been deployed. U.S. aid slowly began to trickle, and U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited. The U.S. government felt it particularly necessary to help, as Pakistan was a vital partner in its war against al-Qaeda. President George W. Bush was also aware of criticism over his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans one month before the Kashmir earthquake.

Despite heroic efforts by those on the ground, aid was slow to get through. The voluntary aid agencies had been drained by such disasters as the Indian Ocean tsunami just 10 months before and by ongoing emergencies in Africa. Even during the rescue operation in Kashmir, another hurricane hit Central America. Muslim organizations around the world responded, many starting their own makeshift operations, raising aid and money on a private basis, especially among immigrants in Europe and the United States who still had family in the affected area. Some smaller charities and missions deployed small teams of personnel in the country to help. Always, however, the greatest problem was access to the worst affected areas. In Azad Kashmir, members of the insurgency were often the only ones who could bring help and rescue.

Further Impact. Aftershocks continued the rest of October, 2005, those of magnitude 4 or above totaling nearly 1,000, mainly to the northwest of the original epicenter. After a short time, it became clear that many people were dying of injuries that had been left untreated. As more and more remote areas were reached, the scale of this problem became even more evident. Also starvation was becoming a threat, as were the increasingly cold nights in the mountains, where elevations up to 20,000 feet were not uncommon and the winter snows were due to begin soon. Anger against perceived government inadequacies began to rise on both sides of the border in those who had received little or no aid.

By now, estimates of dead were climbing to 38,000, 42,000, and then 47,000, with similar numbers for the injured, with half of those affected being children. These numbers continued to climb over the next few months. The number of homeless stayed at around the 2 million mark. By contrast, the number of injured who were evacuated was put at 6,000 when the total injured was being estimated at 52,000. In Muzaffarabad, a French team of doctors were operating a 6-bed field hospital, an indication of the desperate shortage of medical facilities. In all, it was estimated that 26 hospitals and 600 health clinics had been destroyed. Amputations for gangrenous limbs became increasingly common, as were cases of paralysis. By November, a pneumonia epidemic threatened more lives.

Although Pakistan was the main producer of tents worldwide, the need for additional winterised tents was significant, with 350,000 more tents required. The Pakistan government started plans for refugee camps along the flatter valleys, where people could be more easily reached during the winter. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz appealed to the mountain people to come to the camps, but they were reluctant, fearing the sense of enclosure in such camps and worrying that their land would be stolen.

Fortunately, the winter did delay somewhat and people came to the camps, only to live a miserable existence there. Possibly up to 1,000 villages had been destroyed.

On the Indian side, 30,000 families had been displaced, though the number of dead and injured remained surprisingly low at 1,360 and 6,266, respectively. Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh visited the area and promised a grant of $2,255 to every family that had suffered death or homelessness. Tents, however, were in as short a supply as over the border, with only 13,000 available out of the 30,000 needed.

One hoped-for effect, a cessation of hostilities between Indian forces and the insurgents, did not happen, and although the cease-fire line was opened briefly, mainly for relief purposes, the overall political tension remained high. In fact, during the relief operations, a female suicide bomber blew herself up near Indian troops and terrorists attacked government buildings in New Delhi.

At the international level, the Pakistani government claimed that money pledged to it came too little and too late. In any case, the scale of the earthquake was unprecedented, and it came in a year of quite unprecedented disasters.

Bibliography

Ali, M. M. “With Relief Slow to Arrive, Earthquake Death Toll Continues to Rise in Kashmir.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 25, no. 1 (January 1, 2006): 44.

The New York Times, October, 9-29, 2005.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Pakistan Earthquake: International Response and Impact on U.S. Foreign Policies and Programs. 109th Congress, 1st session, 2005. Senate Report 109-41.

Walton, Frances. “One Nurse Can Make a Big Difference.” Australian Nursing Journal 14, no. 2 (August 1, 2006): 15.