Pakistan Post Earthquake : Hunger Ridden, No Shelter and Medical Supplies

Dalbadi, Pakistan: The earthquake that killed 285 people, which left 373 people injured as per the National Disaster Authority, is still taking more people into the death toll count, as the injuries and lack of food is already affecting the already poor Awaran District. The survivors were found to be creating houses using sticks and bedsheets.

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The earthquake was marked as one of the strongest and had even created a mud island in the Arabian Sea. The quake which has flattened almost all mud houses in the Awaran district, is still agonizing pain to the heart of survivors. 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."

Awaran District is one of the most remote and underdeveloped areas in Pakistan. The lack of infrastructure is causing the much needed help at bay. There were few medical doctors available soon after the disaster but the lack of assistants is making the situations worst. TOI reports that the doctors are mainly involved in mental support to the survivors more than treatment.

Just getting to victims was challenging in a region with almost no roads where many people use four-wheel-drive vehicles and camels to traverse the rough terrain.

"We need more tents, more medicine and more food," said a spokesman for the provincial government, Jan Mohammad Bulaidi.

The Pakistani military said it had rushed almost 1,000 troops to the area overnight and was sending helicopters as well. A convoy of 60 Pakistani army trucks left the port city of Karachi early Wednesday with supplies.

Pakistani forces have evacuated more than 170 people from various villages around Awaran to the district hospital, the military said. Others were evacuated to Karachi.

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One survivor interviewed in his Karachi hospital bed said he was sleeping when the quake struck.

"I don't know who brought me from Awaran to here in Karachi, but I feel back pain and severe pain in my whole body," he said.

Local officials said they were sending doctors, food and 1,000 tents for people who had nowhere to sleep. The efforts were complicated by strong aftershocks.

Baluchistan is Pakistan's largest province but also the least populated. Medical facilities are few and often poorly stocked with supplies and qualified personnel. Awaran district has about 300,000 residents spread out over 29,000 square kilometers (11,197 square miles).

The local economy consists mostly of smuggling fuel from Iran or harvesting dates.

Inputs from Times Of India Photos: Economic Times

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- Unknown Updated at: Saturday, September 28, 2013

Pakistan's 'Earthquake Island' A Short Time Wonder Says Experts

Gwadar: A small island of mud and rock created by the huge earthquake that hit southwest Pakistan has fascinated locals but experts -- who found methane gas rising from it -- say it is unlikely to last long.

The 7.7-magnitude quake struck on Tuesday in Baluchistan's remote Awaran district, killing at least 271 people and affecting hundreds of thousands.

Off the coastline near the port of Gwadar, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the epicentre, locals were astonished to see the dark grey mass of rock and mud that had emerged from the waves in the Arabian Sea.

"It is not a small thing, but a huge thing which has emerged from under the water," Gwadar resident Muhammad Rustam told AFP.

"It looked very, very strange to me and also a bit scary because suddenly a huge thing has emerged from the water."

Enterprising boat owners were doing a brisk trade ferrying curious sightseers to the island -- dubbed "Earthquake Mountain" by locals.

Mohammad Danish, a marine biologist from Pakistan's National Institute of Oceanography, said a team of experts had visited the island and found methane gas rising.

"Our team found bubbles rising from the surface of the island which caught fire when a match was lit and we forbade our team to start any flame. It is methane gas," Danish said on GEO television news.

The island is about 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 metres) high, up to 300 feet wide and up to 120 feet long, he said. It sits about 650 feet from the coast.

The surface was a solid but muddy mix of stones, sand and water with visible cracks, said an AFP cameraman who visited the island. Dead fish and sea plants lay on the surface.

Gary Gibson, a seismologist with Australia's University of Melbourne, said the new island was likely to be a "mud volcano", created by methane gas forcing material upwards during the violent shaking of the earthquake.

"It's happened before in that area but it's certainly an unusual event, very rare," Gibson told AFP, adding that it was "very curious" to see such activity some 400 kilometres from the quake's epicentre.

The so-called island is not a fixed structure but a body of mud that will be broken down by wave activity and dispersed over time, the scientist said.


A similar event happened in the same area in 1945 when an 8.1-magnitude earthquake at Makran triggered the formation of mud volcanoes off Gwadar.

Professor Shamim Ahmed Shaikh, chairman of the department of geology at Karachi University, said the island, which has not been officially named, would disperse within a couple of months.

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- Unknown Updated at: Thursday, September 26, 2013