balakot,hazara,azad kashmir,muzaffarabad earthquake

The towns of Balakot in Hazara and Bagh in Azad Kashmir were razed to ground completely and more than 100,000 people are feared dead in these two cities only. The stench of death hangs over the weaving rows of rubble that was once Balakot, a thriving tourist town, a must stopover for cheerful visitors enroute to Kaghan. Saturday's massive quake has turned the historic town of Syed Ahmed Shah's martyrdom into a massive graveyard sprawling on both sides of the river Kunhar while the survivors with broken limbs and hearts mourn their loved ones who perished in thousands in Saturday's earthquake. With estimates of 60,000 or above deaths in this town alone, there is hardly a family that has not lost several of its members. At least 1,000 students buried under the rubble of their school buildings have yet to be recovered. All the communication and transport links of areas beyond Balakot have broken with the outside world and the inhabitants are virtually living in stone age under the open sky. There is no electricity, no telephone line working, no clean water, no food, no medical equipment to save lives, no medicines, no tents and no blankets. In Government High School Balakot, there were 900 students, in Government Degree College for Girls there were 350, and in International Islamia Model School there were 600 kids on Saturday. From Government Degree College Hassa, near Balakot, 150 bodies were retrieved. Except Madni Market near the bridge and three signal towers erected by Mobilink, WLL, and Telenor, the bazar starting from the Shell patrol pump on Kaghan Road (the first milestone that you notice while entering Balakot) to Park Hotel built across the Kunhar, all shops, hotels, shopping malls, cafes, and houses on two kilometer stretch have been flattened completely. Each of this concrete and steel structure turned into graveyard for those who could not run on to the streets within seconds after the deadly quake struck them. A huge number of Balakot residents are buried under the debris, no rescue effort has yet started and hope for survivors is diminishing. Just few yards away, the earthquake that wreaked cracks in the ground at a number of places, had tossed two jeeps onto the riverbed. No one is sure of the passengers. Near Madni market, the lonely building in Balakot that survived the earthquake, another truck was thrown into a shop, two pick up vans nearby were lying on their side. The whole area is littered with concrete, electric wires, shoes, blood-soaked clothes, packets of yogurt, milk, spices, chillies, salt, grains, pulses, straw mats, iron rods, bricks, mud, household items, and plastic toys. It's a mess that will take years, or perhaps decades, to clean up but the scars that this tragedy has left on the minds of people will never go.  Comprising 12 union councils, Balakot and Karlot, make what Balakot city is today. Both these areas have been totally razed to the ground. Four-storey buildings, post office, police station, civil hospital, Nadra office, offices of travel agents, PCOs, mosques, petrol pumps, and other government departments have reduced to a flattened bed of rocks. A five-member French rescue team arrived in a helicopter Monday afternoon to help the civilian volunteers who have been recovering bodies, and alive victims from the rubble of schools, shops and residences. A Japanese team has also set up its camp in Balakot but has not yet started its operation. The first Pakistani army convoy arrived in the outskirts of Balakot late afternoon and was busy setting up its camp. With evening falling fast, they are unlikely to launch any operation before Tuesday. The students of University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar were the first who arrived in Balakot on Saturday afternoon with medicine, food, and water. They were joined by the students of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Technology.
Roads are blocked with huge landslides. No one can go beyond Balakot. The road from Mansehra to Balakot opened on Monday morning but the massive rescue operation launched by the civilians using their own vehicles resulted into worst traffic jams and passengers. victims fleeing Balakot and adjoining areas and the rescue workers were stranded for hours despite the presence of military which, most of the time, stayed away from handling the traffic. The volunteers who came from nearby districts did a commendable job by recovering and burying dozens of bodies. The supplies of food items, medicines, blankets, warm clothes and other edibles came from Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and even from Nasirabad Balochistan.  As many as five million people were left homeless and were now living in the open and freezing temperatures since the quake.Teams from Turkey, Germany, and UK carrying mobile hospitals have been despatched to Muzaffarabad. Teams of Rescuers from UAE, Jordan, China, and Japan along with sniffer dogs have been deployed in Balaokot, Mansehra and Batgram.

worlds highest-magnitude tremor in recent memory.the powerfull earthquake

In February 2009, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists suggested that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake's geological fault line.A Columbia University scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been triggered by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu Reservoir less than a mile from a well-known major fault. His conclusions, presented to the American Geophysical Union in December, coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.The Jan. 12 earthquake that rocked the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince may not have been the highest-magnitude tremor in recent memory, but it certainly seemed the most cataclysmic. Within hours, more than a million people became homeless. Buildings across much of the city and its suburbs were reduced to rubble. Some 230,000 people died, and hundreds of thousands of others were injured. The international response was swift, with dozens of countries sending aid, rescue teams and military personnel to stabilize the situation. But the damage has been devastating and profound in what is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. Tens of thousands remain in ramshackle tent cities that from the beginning have been short on or totally bereft of adequate provisions. Reports of rape are legion, and an epidemic of cholera has set in, killing more than 300 and leading to further calls for international relief. The hobbled Haitian government is unable to cope on its own — at times, outgoing President René Préval has seemed a bemused bystander, and it's unlikely that the results of upcoming elections can do much to change the bleak facts on the ground. On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan Province, a mountainous region in Western China, killing about 70,000 people and leaving over 18,000 missing. Over 15 million people lived in the affected area, including almost 4 million in the city of Chengdu.Since the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which killed over 240,000 people, China has required that new structures withstand major quakes. But the collapse of schools, hospitals and factories in several different areas around Sichuan has raised questions about how rigorously such codes have been enforced during China's recent, epic building boom.In June 2008, low-lying areas in one of the towns most devastated by the earthquake were flooded as a torrent of water was released from a dangerous lake formed by landslides, dislodging wrecked homes, cars and corpses.The surge of floodwater into the town, Beichuan, was part of an effort by engineers and soldiers to drain Tangjiashan, one of more than 30 so-called quake lakes that were formed by landslides. For weeks, the dam of rock and mud holding back the rising waters of the Jian River there had threatened to burst and flood towns and cities downstream that are home to 1.3 million people.Another smaller earthquake struck the region in August 2008, damaging 258,000 homes and killing at least 32 people.Thousands of the initial quake's victims were children crushed in shoddily built schools, inciting protests by parents. Local police harassed the protestors and the government criticized them. At least one human rights advocate who championed their cause was arrested.
The Chinese government has refused to release the number of students who died or their names. But one official report soon after the earthquake estimated that up to 10,000 students died in the collapse of 7,000 classrooms and dormitory rooms.Reports emerged in July 2008 that local governments in the province had begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake.Most parents whose children died took a payment from the local government and a guarantee of a pension in exchange for silence.In December 2008, government officials acknowledged in the most definitive report since the earthquake that many school buildings across the country are poorly constructed and that 20 percent of primary schools in one southwestern province may be unsafe.By the first anniversary of the quake, mothers across the region were pregnant or giving birth again, aided by government medical teams dispensing fertility advice and reversing sterilizations. Because of China's policy limiting most families to having one child, the students who died were often their parents' only offspring. Officials say they hope a wave of births will help defuse the anger that many grieving parents harbor.
But the wounds have festered, in part because the Chinese government, wary of any challenge to its authoritarian rule, has muffled the parents and quashed public discussion of shoddy school construction. As the anniversary of the quake again focused attention on Sichuan, the government intensified its campaign to silence the parents. resorting to harassment by police and threats of imprisonment.The Sichuan government has explicitly prohibited media organizations from reporting on miscarriages by women in temporary housing camps. Some quake survivors say they fear that the miscarriages may have been caused by high levels of formaldehyde in the prefabricated housing.

Pakistan: reconstruction plan for earhquake effected

BALAKOT: A dead body of a seven-year child was found from Balakot school debris after over six months of the October 08 earthquake last year.
The body of a class one student identified as Adeel s/o Qadeerullah was found after 207 days of the earthquake from wreckage of a school at Kaghan road in Sanghar village about five kilometers’ distance from Balakot. The body was found when debris of the school building being cleared for reconstruction of a new building.ISLAMABAD: The groundbreaking ceremony of the earthquake-devastated Government Girls Postgraduate College, Rawalakot, which is being reconstructed with the assistance of Religious Affairs Turkish-Islamic Union (DITIB) and Ihlas Media Holding (IMH), will be held on May 5.The reconstruction initiative was preceded by extensive consultations with the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority as well as with the other related local authorities, following which a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between DITIB, IMH and ERRA on April 27.The construction of the project has been awarded to Turcon (private) Limited. The college will be constructed over an area of 243,000 square feet. The covered area will include 30 classrooms, laboratories for biology, chemistry, physics and science, a gymnasium, a 100-bed hostel, examination hall, administration block and houses for accommodation of the principal and teachers of the college. The building will be constructed along conventional lines, i.e., it will be a reinforced concrete framed structure. The design and calculations of the building will be done in Turkey through latest technology and in accordance with the geological parameters of the area. The ground breaking ceremony of the college will be performed at the site in Rawalakot on May 5 at 10:30 a.m. The ceremony will be attended by Turkish Ambassador H. Kemal Gur, Lieutenant-General Nadeem Ahmed, Deputy Chairman ERRA and representatives of DITIB and IMH, as well as local authorities. Interest-free loans for 800 earthquake-hit families ISLAMABAD: The Muslim Aid has embarked on the project of rehabilitation as well as restoration of employment in the districts of Poonch and Bagh. A spokesman of Muslim Aid said that under the programme, interest-free loans would be given expeditiously to the heads of 800 families so that they could run small business to help themselves stand on their feet. The loans would be giving on a mere personal guarantee and could be returned within two years. In first phase, 200 people have been facilitated as after taking loans they have made a fresh start to their lives. The Muslim Aid, in collaboration with the Sukhi Foundation, has arranged a professional training as well as technical guidance programme.

Powerful earthquake in karachi ............

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.2 shook various parts of country early on Wednesday, jolting residents of cities as far apart as Delhi and Dubai, but the epicentre was far from major population centres. The US Geological Survey said the quake was more than 80 km (50 miles) underground, close to the town of Dalbandin in Balochistan province, near the Afghan and Iranian frontiers.As dawn breaks and officials reach the affected area, more damage and fatalities may be revealed in an area where traditional simple structures may have fared badly under the strains of the powerful tremor.In Quetta, 331 km (205.7 miles) northeast of the epicentre, a woman died at a city hospital from a heart attack following the quake, hospital officials said.In Karachi, 400 km (250 miles) away, people woke and rushed out of their homes in very cold conditions, reciting verses from the Holy Quran after the tremors hit at 1:23 a.m. (2023 GMT on Tuesday). The authorities there had no immediate reports of casualties or damage.An official at Edhi Foundation, said there were no reports of any damage.
In an ominous indication of problems for the small towns and villages of Balochistan, however, people in India's border province of Rajasthan said cracks appeared in the walls of rural dwellings. The simple structures common in the area closest to the quake may fare badly under the strains of major tremors.
The Pacific Tsunami Center said the onshore quake had not triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Natural disaster relief special training

Given the frequency of natural disasters in the world and the devastation that they cause, one would have expected public institutions to welcome offers of training in survival methods, but not the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE). According to a senior official, the FDE showed no interest in the offer of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to train some 400,000 students in its institutions in disaster management training free of cost.CDA`s emergency and disaster management (EDM) directorate had sent a letter containing the offer to the director general of the FDE a few months back but got no response.The official said the EDM wing had highlighted the importance of the training to cope with any natural disaster, especially an earthquake.“The CDA had offered the FDE director general that its EDM wing can impart disaster management training to the 400,000 students studying in around 400 educational institutions in the capital,” said the official.He said looking at the rising disasters the world over, a proper training programme for the students on disaster management drills would be highly beneficial to save lives. However, it seems that the FDE is not interested in the offer, he regretted.“The EDM wing is capable of imparting training to such a large number of students within a few months.”The official said they had even sent a reminder to the FDE but still there was no response.In our reminder: “We have drawn her attention towards the much needed training which can be vital for saving lives during natural disasters.”
It may be noted that several thousands students were killed in the October 2005 earthquake which hit parts of northern Pakistan, including Azad Kashmir.ISLAMABAD: Mild shocks of earthquake jolted various parts of Khaber Pakhtunkwa and federal capital on Sunday at 11.48 am.The magnitude of the quake was recorded as 4.7 at international and its epicentre was 41 kilometres deep and 64 kilometres north west of Mansehra, met office reported.No loss of life was reported as a result of the earthquake.

JAPAN EARTHQUAKE TSUNAMI IS VERY POWERFULL........

The magnitude-8.9 quake struck at 2:46 p.m. local time and was the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.The quake shook dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of coast and tall buildings swayed in Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Prime Minister Naoto Kan was attending a parliamentary session at the time.Large fishing boats and other vessels rode the high waves ashore, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the way. A fleet of partially submerged cars bobbed in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything in its path inland before reversing direction and carrying the cars, homes and other debris out to sea. Flames shot from some of the homes, apparently from burst gas pipes.
Waves of muddy waters flowed over farms near Sendai, carrying buildings, some of them ablaze. Drivers attempted to flee. The tarmac at Sendai's airport was inundated with thick, muddy debris that included cars, trucks, buses and even light planes.Highways to the worst-hit coastal areas buckled. Telephone lines snapped. Train service was suspended in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serves 10 million people a day. Untold numbers of people were stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo's Narita airport was closed indefinitely.Police said 200-300 bodies were found in Sendai, although the official casualty toll was 185 killed, 741 missing and 948 injured. A ship with 80 dock workers was swept away from a shipyard in Miyagi. All on the ship was believed to be safe, although the vessel had sprung a leak and was taking on some water, Japan's coast guard said. Officials declared the first-ever state of emergency at a Japanese nuclear power plant and ordered evacuations after the earthquake knocked out power to a cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi facility near the city of Onahama, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. They said radiation levels inside the facility had surged to 1,000 times more than normal. Some radiation had seeped outside the plant, the nuclear safety agency said early Saturday, prompting calls for more evacuations of the area. Some 3,000 people have already been urged to leave their homes.The group watched homes and vehicles carried away in the wave and found their hotel mostly destroyed when they reached it. A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in the city of Ichihara and burned out of control with 100-foot (30-meter) flames whipping into the sky. Also in Miyagi prefecture, a fire broke out in a turbine building of a nuclear power plant, but it was later extinguished, said Tohoku Electric Power Co.Japanese automakers Toyota, Nissan and Honda halted production at some assembly plants in areas hit by the quake. One worker was killed and more than 30 injured after being crushed by a collapsing wall at a Honda Motor Co. research facility in northeastern Tochigi prefecture, the company said. Jesse Johnson, a native of Nevada who lives in Chiba, north of Tokyo, was eating at a sushi restaurant with his wife when the quake hit. Tokyo was brought to a near standstill. Tens of thousands of people were stranded with the rail network down, and the streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the city. The city set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many planned to spend the night at 24-hour cafes, hotels and offices. Jefferies International Ltd., a global investment banking group, estimated overall losses of about $10 billion. The tsunami hit Hawaii before dawn Friday, with most damage coming on the Big Island. The waves covered beachfront roads and rushed into hotels. One house was picked up and carried out to sea. Low-lying areas in Maui were flooded by 7-foot waves. On the U.S. mainland, marinas and harbors in California and Oregon bore the brunt of the damage, estimated by authorities to be in the millions of dollars. Boats crashed into each other in marines and some vessels were washed out to sea. Rescue crews were searching for a man who was swept away in northern California while taking pictures. Two people with him tried to rescue him, although they were able to return to shore. Thousands fled homes in Indonesia after officials warned of a tsunami up to 6 feet (2 meters) high, but waves of only 4 inches (10 centimeters) were measured. No big waves came to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, either. Islands across the South Pacific were hit by bigger than normal waves, but no major damage was reported. Surges up to 26 inches (66 centimeters) high were reported in American Samoa, Nauru, Saipan and at the far northern tip of New Zealand. The quake struck at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off Japan's east coast, the USGS said. The area is 240 miles (380 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. Several quakes hit the same region in recent days, including one measured at magnitude 7.3 on Wednesday that caused no damage. Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995. Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire"  an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

TOKYO JAPAN EARTHQUAKE :

For more than two terrifying, seemingly endless minutes Friday, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan shook apart homes and buildings, cracked open highways and unnerved even those who have learned to live with swaying skyscrapers. Then came a devastating tsunami that slammed into northeastern Japan and killed hundreds of people.
The violent wall of water swept away houses, cars and ships. Fires burned out of control. Power to a cooling system at a nuclear power plant was knocked out, forcing thousands to flee. A boat was caught in the vortex of a whirlpool at sea.
The death toll rose steadily throughout the day, but the true extent of the disaster was not known because roads to the worst-hit areas were washed away or blocked by debris and airports were closed.
Aerial scenes of the town of Ofunato showed homes and warehouses in ruins. Sludge and high water spread over acres of land, with people seeking refuge on roofs of partially submerged buildings. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.
President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially "catastrophic" disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier is already in Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he added.