An Often Perilous Ride to the Rescue

The big chopper hovered unsteadily above this earthquake-wounded village, the powerful turbulence from its rotors whipping the burkas and colorful scarves of exhausted residents crowded below.

Inside the lumbering aircraft, two members of a relief group waited anxiously to touch down atop a white ‘X’ that villagers had scrawled on a rural road broken by huge cracks and landslides.

The workers were planning to distribute blankets and high-energy biscuits to survivors of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that rocked Pakistan early last month. Hundreds of residents in this isolated community of 1,300 families were killed in the quake, about 100 of them children. Now, the only way left to reach this village ringed by towering mountain peaks is a throw-of-the-dice ride in a craft usually reserved for combat troops, not relief workers: a Pakistani army helicopter.

“I just told myself that these pilots are in here too,” said Pam Ogor, a Milwaukee family physician and a volunteer with Los Angeles-based Relief International, referring to two Pakistani officers. “They don’t want this thing to go down either.”

For aid workers, the disaster poses a deadly race against time: This Himalayan region is home to a dozen of the world’s tallest mountain peaks, and as winter weather sets in, more than half a million quake survivors whose homes were destroyed by the temblor still await blankets and tents critical to their survival. In addition, 75,000 people scattered across 15,000 mountain villages continue to require medical attention.

At center stage of the disaster are the scores of military and civilian helicopters whose role thus far has proved essential but fraught with peril. The choppers are expensive and often dangerous to operate at such high altitudes. At the same time, relief agencies have complained that there are not enough of them to deliver adequate supplies before the first snows arrive in the coming weeks.

The only other way to ferry supplies to isolated survivors is by mules, trekking over treacherous mountain paths and washed-out, boulder-strewn roads. The airfield in the city of Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir, is closest to the most deeply affected areas, but too small to accommodate most winged aircraft.

Pakistan’s armed forces have several dozen choppers, but they have not been enough considering the scope of the disaster.

U.N. officials estimate that at least 73 helicopters donated by foreign nations and relief agencies are operating in Pakistan, with 47 more on the way.

Although the U.S., Japan, Britain, Germany, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates have contributed heavy-lift military helicopters, officials in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, who say the world has not grasped the severity of the situation, have called for more choppers from member nations.

The U.S. has earmarked at least 33, including a dozen Black Hawks and twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters, diverted from their bases in neighboring Afghanistan. But dozens of members of Congress have urged President Bush to send additional craft.

“These helicopters are expensive and often difficult to maneuver in these remote areas and we wouldn’t have them here if we didn’t critically need them,” said Geoffrey Krassy, a U.S. diplomat who is working on earthquake relief at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. “They’re a piece of equipment we can’t do without if we’re going to reach these survivors in time.”

But traveling by helicopter can prove perilous. On Oct. 15, six Pakistani soldiers were killed when their Russian-made MI-17, buffeted by strong winds and rain, crashed while returning from an aid mission in Kashmir.

Several days later, a Swiss aid worker was decapitated when he backed into a rear rotor on a supply mission. Aid officials also worry about the safety of desperate villagers who rush the helicopters as they make precarious landings.

“These people don’t realize that these big blades, even though they’re invisible, are whirring around and can kill them instantly,” Krassy said.

Yet, to help people in isolated areas, you first must reach them. And time is running out, said Caroline Upton, another volunteer with Relief International.

So Upton and other aid workers hitch rides on military helicopters to ferry supplies. But there’s a catch: Priority goes to victims needing airlifts from mountain villages and those residents returning home after treatment.

Aid workers compete with one another for any room that is left. In an aircraft like a helicopter where weight is crucial to maintain stability in flight, supplies must often be left on the runway to avoid overloading.

On a bright Sunday morning in Mansehra, one of the most devastated towns in the hard-hit Kashmir region, Upton and Ogor arrived at a cricket stadium that had been converted into a makeshift landing field. They had trucked in 10 cases of biscuits and several large bales of blankets to distribute in Kawai.

Amid the din of camouflage-colored helicopters thundering to and from the dusty field, the pair negotiated with a Pakistani army major to hitch a ride on a Bell 412 helicopter, a medium-size aircraft. The chopper would be leaving at 11 a.m. and deposit them in the village. The flight would take 20 minutes -- a journey that would take hours by land on good roads.

But they also needed to ensure they had a ride back to Mansehra. Days earlier, Relief International workers were almost stranded in Kawai after a helicopter failed to return for them. The group was forced to make a dangerous three-hour trek down the mountain to the nearest passable road.

Upton secured a 2 p.m. return flight. She knew from experience that flights later in the day bring more danger when the heat rising from the valleys combines with cooler mountainside air to create unstable air walls.

Inside his makeshift office in the back of a military transport truck, Pakistani Brig. Gen. Sadar Shahid, the airfield’s commanding officer, acknowledged that aid workers take a huge risk riding the helicopters through the narrow mountain valleys.

On a chalkboard near his desk were written several safety reminders to his pilots, who each make more than a dozen sorties a day: They must return to base by 5 p.m. to avoid flying after dark. They are advised to watch for power lines strung across valleys and to avoid flying directly above another aircraft.

“There are many dangers -- the turning is sharp and the landing pads are crude bases put together by villagers,” he said. “We do not advocate taking untrained people in our helicopters. But in this case, we know it must be done.”

Moments later, Upton and Ogor took off from the cricket field, but not before being forced to leave behind two bundles of blankets that would have caused the craft to exceed its weight limits. Still, they gave a thumbs-up to the two Pakistani pilots.

“These guys are cowboys,” Upton shouted over the racket as the helicopter left the ground. “They can land this thing anywhere.”

En route to Kawai, they peered down on a landscape upturned by the earthquake -- entire villages flattened. The helicopter soon entered a long valley whose far end held their destination.

Before landing at 7,000 feet, the craft did a hairpin turn and set down amid the rubble of the broken road as soldiers stopped villagers from stampeding the landing site.

In a few short hours, they handed out supplies with the support of village leaders and helped three Pakistani army doctors attend to the wounded. Upton sang songs and played games with a group of village children who followed her every move throughout the camp like small ducklings.

The first time she played with children in one of these villages, Upton recalled, she saw mothers with tears in their eyes as they listened to the laughter -- heard perhaps for the first time since the quake struck.

Upton walked by the remains of a schoolhouse where 40 children were killed -- desks and chairs still scattered like broken matchsticks. Nearby was one of the village’s makeshift cemeteries where the children are buried, the dirt-mound graves topped by colorful garlands.

Upton knew the sunny day belied the winter weather soon to come. “This place will get buried under 18 feet of snow,” she said.

Speaking with several villagers, she implored them to leave their wrecked homes and what crops and cattle they had left to seek assistance in the valley below. One man shook his head: “I cannot go. I cannot leave my animals behind.”

Then the relief workers heard the thud-thud-thud that signaled the helicopter’s return. They rushed back to the road, shielding their eyes against the dust stirred up by the spinning blades.

With them on the return flight was a teenage girl who had undergone emergency surgery in a nearby village. Her legs had been amputated, one at the hip and the other just above the knee, and she required further medical attention that was available only in a bigger town.

As villagers eased the girl inside the craft wrapped in a blanket, she winced in pain. Her mother, her face also half covered by a traditional scarf, lunged into the craft and sat between the two aid workers.

The helicopter lifted off, the blades roaring. Both mother and daughter began to pray, their mouths silently articulating the words of the Koran. The mother’s eyes were wide and tear-filled as she looked down at her daughter.

Then, suddenly, she gripped the hands of the two aid workers on either side of her and held on tight for the perilous ride to come.