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11-10-2005 Scotsman 40 children found alive under rubble of school By Gethin Chamberlain Chief News Correspondent and Craig Brown AMID the devastation, the rescue of 40 children from the rubble of a collapsed school last night brought some relief to Pakistan's pain after the destruction reaped by the worst earthquake in its history. According to reports, the children were plucked to safety from the rubble of their classrooms at Balakot, in the north western region, although officials were unable to confirm details immediately because of the difficulty of communications in the area. Sixty bodies were also brought to the surface, according to a military official and a TV station. The children were among an estimated 370 students who were trapped in the rubble of Shaheen Foundation School in the scenic town that was badly hit by the 7.6-magnitude quake. "According to our information, French experts and our soldiers have saved 40 students, and pulled out 60 bodies," a military official said by telephone from Balakot. Residents had been trying in vain to remove the debris with their bare hands. Yesterday, several French experts and hundreds of Pakistani soldiers arrived in Balakot. As Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee last night launched a co-ordinated charity fundraising appeal in response to the disaster, the picture was almost resolutely grim. As many as four million people were homeless and the death toll remained unclear: more than 20,000 bodies had been recovered but thousands more were thought to be lying under the rubble and India, which escaped the worst of the 7.7 magnitude quake, said 10,000 people in border villages remained unaccounted for. Pledges of financial assistance continued to pour in and some aid began to arrive in Kashmir as roads were reopened. The US sent six more heavy lifting helicopters from nearby Afghanistan but Pakistan could not bring itself to accept an offer of military assistance from its old regional rival, India. But as well as the horror, just occasionally, there was a glimmer of hope: a British team from the Grangemouth-based International Rescue Corps pulled a 12-year-old boy from the rubble of one school outside Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and the town worst hit by the disaster. But they had been digging for hours and after searching the flattened wreckage of five schools, he was the only person they had found alive. Paul Baxter, of the IRC, said a five-strong team led by operations director Willie McMartin came across the boy after hours of fruitless searching. "They had already searched five schools and found no live casualties but this reignited their need to get on with it," he said. "Willie said they had been assigned a number of collapsed buildings just outside Muzzafarabad and while they were searching one of them they made a sound contact." The team were using a trapped person locator - an ultrasonic device capable of picking up any sounds coming from under the rubble. That would have allowed them to narrow down the search to an area of 16m² and they also had a monitor to detect breathing and a flexible camera similar to an endoscope which could be pushed into the rubble. But their heavy cutting gear was still in Islamabad because there was no transport available to carry it north, so the team had no choice but to dig by hand once they had located the boy. "They had to do it by hand using the hammers and chisels that we carry," he said. The boy had been trapped for more than 50 hours; they handed him to a medical team and carried on with the search. But a team from Grampian Fire and Rescue Team had less luck; all they found were bodies. Alastair Swift, the head of the team, said most of the buildings have been "pancaked". "We've helped to tunnel in a bit, cut through girders; it's risky work, very dusty and dark," he said. He said that the constant threat of aftershocks and the blocked roads made the task harder, as did the noise of the helicopters, which made it difficult to listen for sounds of life. But he said: "The local people have been very good. It's been a case that we've searched a building, we've told them that there's nobody alive under it and then moved on to our next task. They've been grateful that we can just confirm exactly what they thought: that there were no survivors." Another member of the team, Terry Poole, said the sense of grief was overwhelming. "You just find yourself surrounded by the sadness and grief of these people who have lost their relatives. You can't not be touched by it. "There were moments when the true horror of the situation was really brought home to us: a victim that we dug out of a building, the brother was brought over to identify him, and to be confronted with that grief, it really brought it home. When you see all this grief and sadness it just makes it clear the scale of the disaster here." People were scared of aftershocks, he said; they slept by the roadside rather than risk re- entering buildings. Agencies said more than 120,000 urgently needed shelter and up to four million could be left homeless by South Asia's strongest quake in a century. "We know that every hour counts in an earthquake of this magnitude," said Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator. The Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said he had instructed all parts of the UN system to do everything possible to help. The International Red Cross said it aimed to provide emergency food and shelter. "Affected people require immediate shelter, food, clothing and medicines," said Australian Red Cross spokesman Dale Cleaver, adding that more heavy-lift cargo helicopters were still needed. More flights carrying rescuers and aid were expected from Russia, the US, Iran and elsewhere. But Sikander Hayat Khan, prime minister of Pakistani Kashmir, said the area had been paralysed. "For the first two days we have been either digging ground to recover bodies or digging to bury them," he said. "Kashmir has turned into a graveyard." There was frustration, too, at the lack of visible help on the ground. Looting broke out in Muzzafarabad. Police fired shots in the air to disperse looters raiding a government store. Despite aid pledges , there was little or no medical attention for many of the more than 40,000 injured. Major-General Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf's government, defended the relief effort. "There is a lot of damage. There are thousands of houses where relief items have not reached. There are thousands of people who have not been rescued," he said. "But there are thousands of people who have been rescued. There are thousands of people whose lives have been saved."
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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