Innocence Lost In Quake Disaster
Of all the grim statistics unearthed from the rubble of Pakistan, the following may prove the saddest: about half of the country's victims are below the age of 15 and nearly a third are under the age of nine, CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports.
Nowhere was that more evident than the town of Balakot, six miles from the earthquake's epicenter.
Balakot had as many as 10 schools. Most were flimsy, multi-story buildings that pancaked when the earthquake hit; one concrete classroom smashed on top of another.
Injured classmates come to watch the recovery efforts.
. The few children's voices once heard are growing more silent every day.Relief supplies poured into Pakistan from about 30 countries Wednesday, including from longtime archrival India. Better weather aided the relief effort, after rain and hail grounded efforts Tuesday.
And U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised long-term U.S. help for Pakistan. Rice predicted more aid beyond an initial $50 million but gave no specific figures or timeline. Tens of thousands were believed killed in Saturday's 7.6 magnitude earthquake, with millions left homeless after entire communities were flattened in the region touching Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
Also on Wednesday, a strong aftershock hit Pakistan's capital of Islamabad. Buildings moved for a few seconds during the short temblor, and it was not immediately clear what magnitude the aftershock was, or whether it caused any damage.
While aid trickles in, rescue teams race to save any remaining survivors.
A French team found a boy using a tiny camera they snaked into the rubble. He was 15 feet down, still trapped at his desk. Careful not to cause another collapse, they dug an escape hatch, and by nightfall, he was delivered from hell to the hands of his father.
There were more survivors, pulled out limp, dust and debris whisked from their hair.
"You just can't be more happy for someone in that situation, at the same time you realize there are so many people who are not that fortunate," Dr. Farrukh Hamid said from Dallas.
Hamid is from Pakistan and still awaiting word of on one of his young cousins.
But as bad as that is, he worried for the children who didn't die, who still sit waiting to be claimed. "There are kids who survived and their parents haven't, and there's a lot in front of them," Hamid says.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday also announced a $17.5 million increase in Britain's aid to victims of the South Asian earthquake.
Japan, in addition to its $20 million pledge, promised Wednesday to send up to three helicopters, four transport planes and more than 100 soldiers to help distribute aid and evacuate earthquake victims at risk of disease from crowded and unsanitary living conditions.
Among other large industrialized countries, Canada has pledged $17 million and Germany $5.2 million. Germany also said it was sending two helicopters and about 50 troops — most of them medical experts — into Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan.
The U.S. aid is already making a difference: many of the supplies were loaded aboard eight U.S. Chinook helicopters to be brought into the disaster zone. One American soldier in Islamabad told CBS News correspondent Robert Berger he had come from hurricane relief duty in New Orleans.
CBS News correspondent Robert Berger flew aboard a U.S. helicopter relief flight.The Pentagon expects to send 25 to 30 more U.S. military helicopters to Pakistan from Afghanistan, Bahrain and other countries in the region.
The big American choppers, which can carry as many as 65 people, more than doubled the efficiency of the evacuation operation. Roads to the earthquake zone were choked by the very manpower and supplies meant to provide relief, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.
"It just seems like there is no end to the casualties they have up there for us," said U.S. Chief Warrant Officer Mark Jones. "Each aircraft that goes up there is bringing back 30 to 40 casualties and there's always more when we leave. We always have to turn people back."
Jan Vandemoortele, U.N. Resident Coordinator for Pakistan, said key roads into the quake zone that were blocked earlier have been opened up. U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts said that with the resumption of flights, helicopters had been able to unplug any backlog of aid.
About 30 countries — including the United States, France, Japan, Jordan, China, Russia, Iran, and Syria — have sent relief equipment, doctors, paramedics, tents, blankets, medicines, disaster relief teams. Many have also pledged financial assistance.
"Relief material is moving in," Vandemoortele said in Islamabad. "It is getting there. Roads are open now. They were blocked until very recently. We have several trucks that are all loaded and on the road now."
As efforts to help Pakistan progress, one U.N. official believes there is a need for a better worldwide relief fund.
That need has become especially pressing because a spike in natural disasters in recent years, including more hurricanes, has strained the international relief system, said Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, chief of staff to Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland.
"Quick money is lifesaving money," Strohmeyer said. "The system is stretched."
More than 1,400 people have died in India's part of Kashmir, and the offer and receipt of the aid by Pakistan reflects warming relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, which embarked on a peace process early last year.
The Pakistani government's official death toll was about 23,000 people and 47,000 injured, but a senior army official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the figure publicly said an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people had died.