After the Quake Mild Winter Aids Relief Effort in Pakistan
As soon as the last survivor had been pulled from the rubble of the Oct. 8 earthquake in Pakistan, nervous aid workers immediately shifted their attention to the coming winter. The season can be especially cold and brutal in the Kashmir region and aid workers had to move fast to erect temporary housing and provide blankets and heating so that 3 million survivors of Pakistan's worst ever natural disaster wouldn't freeze to death.
This week, the United Nations claimed that it had won the battle to save those who were left homeless by the devastating 7.6 magnitude quake.
"There has been no second wave of deaths, no massive population movement down the mountains, no severe malnutrition and no outbreak of epidemics," said Jamie McGoldrick, the UN's deputy humanitarian aid coordinator in Islamabad, who attributed part of the success to "very kind weather."
Since the earthquake, the UN said, helicopters supplied by the Germany, the United States, NATO, Australia and Pakistan had completed more than 27,400 humanitarian relief trips and carried more than 30,000 tons worth of food, tents, blankets, building materials and medicine. It hasn't been a comfortable existance, with cramped quarters and a complete lack of creature comforts, but Pakistani residents in Kashmir have escaped a second disaster.
With winter's end near, an internationally funded $6.5 billion effort to rebuild the region, where 87,000 were killed by the quake, will begin in earnest in April. "We have to use this opportunity to support and encourage people to return to their places of origin so we can help rebuild their lives," McGoldrick said.
dsl/ap/reuters
