Winter now killing quake survivors

A Kashmiri earthquake survivor (left) holds her child during a snowfall in Drangyari, 130km from Srinagar. Picture / Reuters

A group of children huddle around a cooking stove as a weak winter sun starts to climb behind the foothills of the Himalayas. This is dawn at Mira Camp on the valley floor of the Lai Mountains in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

Winter has arrived and with it aid workers' worst fears. This week six children have died from the cold, the latest a three-month-old baby boy. It's the cruellest of ironies to survive the devastating earthquake of October 8 only to die a few weeks later just for the want of some blankets and winterised tents.

Things are only going to get worse in the weeks ahead. The United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) fears that at least 120,000 children are still without any aid in the inaccessible mountain villages and 10,000 children will perish of hunger, hypothermia and disease if they are not reached soon. The clock is ticking and winter's guillotine is poised to fall, severing all aid routes until the thaw next spring.

Already at Mira camp the grass is brittle with frost and overhead hang pallid yellow snow clouds. Cocooned by soaring mountains, Mira Camp is one of the few expanses of flat land in this region, which is why thousands of people have swarmed here for sanctuary against the encroaching winter.

Many of the inhabitants have either come from the smashed town of Balakot, or have trickled down from villages above the snowline. That trickle looks to turn into an avalanche as the bitter Himalayan winter sets in.

Memories of the earthquake are still raw - survivors need to tell their stories in a cathartic deluge of human misery and loss. Nisreen, a young woman recalls what happened that day.

She remembers: "People were agonising in front of us. Nobody cared about other people. There was no way we could help, surrounded by corpses, threatened by stones rolling from the mountains. Nobody dared to move.

"Later on, we tried to pull out the bodies, but they were putrefied. We had to tie on the arms and legs. It was constantly raining. We managed to make shelters from the bales of harvested crops. We laid out circles on the ground with our clothes to bring the attention of helicopters."

Nisreen tells me: "We all eat, but rations are barely enough. Still, I prefer to be here than in the first place we went. That was a spontaneous camp, which did not have tents - and there were only plastic sheets to cover us at night. It rained and the children were hungry for two consecutive days."

Nisreen is still worried. "There are still people up there. Last year we had three metres of snow, a long, hard winter - and this one will be much worse," she warns.

It is a chilling thought looking back up at the ominous mountains that surround Mira Camp to contemplate those who have been left behind, wounded, orphaned and unable to make the journey down the mountain. According to United Nations figures there are a million homeless, only 100,000 are in official Government relief camps and 800,000 are sleeping in the open.

Unicef teams have trekked into the highlands with vaccines to reach the most vulnerable and used barges to sail to the Black Mountains, never before reached by the outside world. Bundles of blankets and warm clothes are being heaved up mountainsides on mules or dropped by helicopters which swarm the skies.

These are all good signs, but fears remain that it's not enough. No matter how much aid is dropped, or money is raised nothing can stop the winter from coming.

Nisreen's main concern is to get her house back, but she needs security. "We had a piece of land and some animals, but it's all vanished. Somebody has to go there and ensure us that stones will not fall again from the mountainside." With her eyes fixed on the floor she says: "I am tired of being worried, I am tired of thinking about the future."

Admittedly the immediate future looks pretty grim. Although aid is gearing up, this region is a logistical nightmare. UN emergency relief chief Jan Egeland said: "We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse."

Aid agencies are preparing people as best they can. Unicef has immunised 700,000 children against killer diseases such as measles that will take a child's life in a few hours in these conditions. They are also distributing a warm clothes kit for 53,000 children with a further 50,000 to follow in a few days.

Although official relief camps are primitive, they are at least providing the necessities to sustain life through winter. Many camps have established schools for children. For many this will be their first taste of education, especially for girls. Most importantly it gets children away from grieving parents and gives them a respite from the horror of the past two months.

There is no work for the men of the mountains. With their beards dyed saffron red they sit together and talk about the mass graves they left behind and how the rubble of their homes are now mausoleums.

"I want to go back, but I cannot," says camp resident Shafidal.

"The mountain was cut in half and my land has disappeared," he says from the dim interior of his tent. "The tents are too hot by day and too cold by night. The children wet themselves and there is no ventilation.

"We are not allowed to burn wood so we are only given a small, slow-burning cooker. How are we supposed to cook enough food for 10 people on this little stove?"

Shafidal squats down and rocks from his heels to the balls of his feet. He closes his eyes and says magnanimously: "We see this as a temporary situation that will pass. We trust in God that times ahead will be better".

* Georgina Newman is a journalist for Unicef NZ