2008 Woodie Awards
Pakistan's Catastrophe
Naveen Hussain
Issue date: 10/14/05 Section: Commentary
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Saturday morning I was awoken by a phone call from my parents. They told me there had been an earthquake in Pakistan, but they were fine. We have a lot of earthquakes in that region, so I didn't think too much of it and I went right back to sleep. It was only after I woke up again and read about it that I realized how glad I was that my parents had survived to call me that morning.
This has been the worst earthquake in the history of the region. The earthquake measrued 7.6 on the richter scale, and my mother said that everything was shaking for six minutes after the initial shock. Six minutes is a very long time, long enough to destroy entire cities in the Azad Kashmir area of Pakistan. 20,000 people have been reported dead and 42,000 are injured. Some reports say such figures might double.
It has been an unreal weekend. It's not the death tolls that have brought my spirits down, but the stories of those who have survived. The region of Azad Kashmir and the province of NWFP have been hit the worst. Azad Kashmir is by far the most gorgeous area in Pakistan, and it has been nick named "heaven on earth". Now it more closely resembles a mass grave. Most of the deaths in the Azad Kashmir area have been children, who were attending school that Saturday morning. There aren't many schools in the area, and when we were living in Azad Kashmir, I remember we had to drive at least a half an hour to reach the nearest school in the region.
There are very few schools in the region to start with because teachers don't want to serve in the backward valleys of Azad Kashmir. The government is constantly giving incentives to teachers to move to those areas. Now, there are no more schools there. Hundreds of children were just buried in the ruins of their own school when the buildings collapsed on them Saturday morning. Only a few teachers have survived. In an area that was already lagging behind, an entire generation of children and educators has been wiped out.
This has been the worst earthquake in the history of the region. The earthquake measrued 7.6 on the richter scale, and my mother said that everything was shaking for six minutes after the initial shock. Six minutes is a very long time, long enough to destroy entire cities in the Azad Kashmir area of Pakistan. 20,000 people have been reported dead and 42,000 are injured. Some reports say such figures might double.
It has been an unreal weekend. It's not the death tolls that have brought my spirits down, but the stories of those who have survived. The region of Azad Kashmir and the province of NWFP have been hit the worst. Azad Kashmir is by far the most gorgeous area in Pakistan, and it has been nick named "heaven on earth". Now it more closely resembles a mass grave. Most of the deaths in the Azad Kashmir area have been children, who were attending school that Saturday morning. There aren't many schools in the area, and when we were living in Azad Kashmir, I remember we had to drive at least a half an hour to reach the nearest school in the region.
There are very few schools in the region to start with because teachers don't want to serve in the backward valleys of Azad Kashmir. The government is constantly giving incentives to teachers to move to those areas. Now, there are no more schools there. Hundreds of children were just buried in the ruins of their own school when the buildings collapsed on them Saturday morning. Only a few teachers have survived. In an area that was already lagging behind, an entire generation of children and educators has been wiped out.