Aftershock, Rumors Spark Panic in Pakistan’s North

Rattled by a powerful aftershock and rumors later of a big temblor in the offing, Pakistanis fled damaged homes and hospitals in the middle of the night and flooded out of multistory buildings in the capital at midday Thursday.

The panic in the wake of last week’s earthquake thwarted the rescue of a woman trapped in Muzaffarabad and later briefly paralyzed commerce in Islamabad’s government district.

Amid the new confusion, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official warned Thursday that the clock was running out for getting to survivors isolated after Saturday’s magnitude 7.6 quake.

An expanded fleet of helicopters ferried tons of relief supplies to the north and evacuated hundreds more people in dire need of medical care. But with winter closing in on the Himalayan region, where as many as 40,000 people are believed to have died in the temblor, officials said it was a race against time to reach the injured, cold and hungry.

Truck convoys bringing tents and other supplies to the mountainous heart of the disaster area were augmented by hundreds of private cars as Pakistanis thronged the quake-damaged road to Muzaffarabad to bring clothes, medicine and food.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, took an aerial tour of the devastated Kashmir region. He appealed for more helicopters to speed the delivery of supplies to remote highlands already gripped by near-freezing nights and the season’s first snow flurries.

“Two million people are in need of new housing. They’re facing extreme difficulty as it is just before winter. This is our worst nightmare,” said Egeland, visibly moved by the magnitude of the disaster.

Bemoaning a dearth of aircraft to evacuate the injured, he said, “people are dying as we speak.”

Egeland praised the response of the Pakistani government and of individuals, but he warned that the airlift of winter survival gear to the backward hinterlands would have to be stepped up at least threefold.

About 30 helicopters have been deployed as aerial lifelines to the north but more than 100 are needed, added Andrew MacLeod, spokesman for the U.N. disaster assistance and coordination team that accompanied Egeland on his tour.

One of the latest suspected casualties of the massive quake was a 22-year-old woman trapped in a collapsed house in Muzaffarabad, about 55 miles northeast of Islamabad, the capital. Rescue workers told news agencies that they had to break off efforts to reach her after a sharp aftershock at 1:25 a.m. shifted the pile of debris where they were working. By the time efforts resumed six hours later in daylight, sniffer dogs indicated that she had died. Witnesses told Associated Press that rescue workers wept at the news of their failure to save her.

“It was a very difficult decision to leave a living person, and I had a responsibility to my team,” squad leader Steff Hopkins told AP, referring to the British, German and Turkish rescue workers. “It could have meant their death.”

An army major in Muzaffarabad told reporters that the nation’s rescue effort had been called off early today, but Azer Abas, a spokesman for the federal relief coordinator, said no such decision had been made.

Minutes later, there was an unconfirmed report from GEO TV that a 1 1/2 -year-old girl had been found alive in the rubble of a house in the Mansehra district.

The magnitude 5.6 aftershock caused chaos at the badly damaged main hospital in the city of Abbottabad, about 35 miles north of Islamabad. The facility had been receiving several hundred patients a day.

Hundreds of frightened patients and staff fled Abbottabad’s Ayub Medical College hospital when the aftershock hit, leaving patients to fend for themselves, witnesses said.

Inside the hospital, where walls have gaping holes and long cracks, volunteer relief worker Naseem Wajahat stood bewildered, holding a tiny stillborn baby that an injured woman had delivered amid the chaos. He was waiting for someone to collect the body, wrapped in a dirty shirt. But as more patients returned inside, overwhelmed hospital staff were too busy trying to account for the living to deal with the dead infant.

The gripping fear instilled by Saturday’s deadly earthquake was palpable in the reaction to the midday rumor of another coming tremor, which unleashed fresh chaos in the capital.

“We can’t help ourselves. We are so scared after the earthquake,” said Nusrat Khoshnood, embarrassed after rushing to grab her twin 6-year-olds from their school when she heard an earthquake had been predicted for 1 p.m. “I know you can’t predict earthquakes. I don’t know why I believed the rumor. It’s just that we are all in trauma.”

The director of the National Meteorological Office, Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, urged calm in a radio broadcast after thousands fled high-rises on the swift-traveling rumor. It took at least half an hour before most could be coaxed back to homes and offices.

“I don’t trust the scientists. They said the aftershocks were over, and look what happened this morning!” said Mohammed Shafiq, who abandoned his ground-floor tailoring shop along with neighbors. “I can’t take the risk of staying inside.”

Dozens of aftershocks, some surpassing magnitude 6, have kept Pakistanis on edge. The tremors have triggered mudslides and rock falls, blocking crude mountain roads and further hampering aid efforts.

In the hard-hit cities of Balakot, Bagh and Muzaffarabad, the homeless hordes weathered the sharp overnight jolt in newly erected tents, some brought north in the trunks of private cars by Pakistanis carrying out spontaneous relief missions.

Although the hundreds of private cars slowed traffic on the sole road from Islamabad and brought unwanted items that ended up cluttering the rubble-strewn streets, the influx of relief has helped get lifesaving necessities to some people who had been stranded for more than five days, said Pasnin Aslan of the U.N. Development Program office in Islamabad.

“The whole nation mobilized on its own. There’s been an immense amount of aid collected,” she said. “The concern is more that we are still not able to reach all affected areas, particularly the mountain areas where assistance hasn’t reached since the disaster.”

Employees of a real estate firm in the capital were collecting food and medicine donations from shoppers at the Jinnah market, bustling after sundown with the end of daytime fasting for the Muslim holy period, Ramadan.

“We’ve been sending up five cars a day and have 100 laborers helping distribute supplies,” said Zeeshan Razzaq, one of the enthusiastic young volunteers amid stacks of fruit drinks, bandages and bottled water.

MacLeod, the U.N. disaster assistance spokesman, said Pakistan’s new relief coordinator was urging volunteers to call in to a government center to arrange a more orderly pickup and distribution of their donations.

“It’s commendable ... but this is a hindrance to the relief operations,” said Amjad Jamal of the World Food Program, which Thursday delivered 43 tons of high-energy biscuits to Muzaffarabad and the city of Mansehra.

Without army protection, an individual with a truckload of aid might prompt a riot, Jamal warned. “People are desperate. They’re starving,” he said.

International aid workers continued to pour into the capital, gearing up for a massive relief effort that many say is only just beginning.

As the chance of finding survivors trapped in the rubble dwindles, search and rescue operations “are coming to a close. We’re moving into relief,” said Amanda Pitt, spokeswoman for the newly created U.N. relief coordination center.

Feeding, sheltering and caring for the widely scattered survivors will be a long-term effort expected to last into next year.

“No one will know the full extent of the damage for months and months,” Pitt said.

Williams reported from Islamabad and Watson from Abbottabad. Times staff writer Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.