Logistical problems hindering relief work

MUZAFFARABAD—Effort to deliver relief goods to millions left homeless after devastated October 8 earthquake, are picking up as massive cargo helicopters kick up clouds of dust and provide relief items to the victims. Taking off from an army stadium converted into a relief operations base in Muzaffarabad, the helicopters complete about 100 daily sorties delivering food and aid to upland areas inaccessible by roads. But while tons of food and medicine and other goods keep pouring in, relief agencies and non-government organisations say logistical problems are hampering the effort to provide help to hundreds of destroyed villages. “We only have several helicopters being shared for medical missions and to deliver necessities,” says Olivier Moeckli, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Many distribution centers are also disorganized and overwhelmed, and the key now is how to quickly bring relief supplies to the homeless and injured before they die of hypothermia or infections from diseases. “That remains an issue,” says Moeckli, adding that the fleet of 60 to 80 helicopters was simply not enough for distribution. The situation remains dire two weeks after the earthquake, which the government said has killed over 58,000 and injured 80,000. More than three million men, women and children were also rendered homeless, their houses crushed to the ground. Moeckli says the relief mission should gather pace in the coming days, but many villagers remain just out of reach in the rugged Himalayan terrain. Many of these are on steep slopes and “even if you have a helicopter where would it land?” he says.
The ICRC is now considering food drops in these heavily affected areas, where no one could exactly give a clear picture of the number of casualties. The ICRC is also to begin operating a 100-bed hospital in the army stadium, where they would distribute food enough for 30,000 displaced people. Blankets and tarpaulins to combat the cold would also be handed out. The engineering battalion promised by Nato to help reach untold numbers of quake survivors in the rugged hills is needed right now, she said. “The emphasis is on the need for road engineers. If we can open the roads, that would solve everything,” Mia Turner added. “More than 2,000 villages have to be reached and they have to be reached by roads,” she said. The army is working round the clock to open roads covered by landslides or swept away by the quake in Azad Kashmir and adjoining NWFP. Lieutenant General Salahuddin Satti said he hoped the road up Jhelum valley would be re-opened in a week, but it would take six weeks for the nearby Neelum valley. In some parts of Azad Kashmir, people are desperate enough to fight each other for food aid or loot supply trucks. Incidents of people attacking and looting aid trucks are growing, witnesses say.
“They are worse than vultures,” said Mohammad Ishaq Khan after two truckloads of food and tents he had sent to his village from Lahore were looted in broad daylight before they got there. Another witness reported seeing 100 men and women fighting one another with sticks and tree branches over flour dropped off by World Food Programme trucks on a mountain road. Nearby, rocks had been strewn across the road in an apparent effort to halt trucks so they could be looted, he said. There are few police to keep order because they suffered as much as anyone else in the devastation. The government has drafted in police from elsewhere in the country to patrol roads still intact, but there are not enough to watch surviving side roads into the hills.—Agencies