Quake affectees struggle for food, shelter
- September 26, 2013, 6:59 pm
- Breaking News
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DALBADI September 26 (Online): Survivors built makeshift shelters with sticks and bedsheets after their mud houses were flattened in an earthquake that killed 348 people in southwestern Pakistan and pushed a new island up out of the Arabian Sea.
While waiting for help to reach remote villages, hungry people dug through the rubble to find food. And the country's poorest province struggled with a dearth of medical supplies, hospitals and other aid.
Tuesday's quake flattened wide swathes of Awaran district, where it was centered, leaving much of the population homeless.
Almost all of the 300 mud-brick homes in the village of Dalbadi were destroyed. Noor Ahmad said he was working when the quake struck and rushed home to find his house leveled and his wife and son dead.
"I'm broken," he said. "I have lost my family."
The spokesman for the Baluchistan provincial government, Jan Mohammad Bulaidi, said Thursday that the death toll had climbed to 348 and that another 552 people had been injured.
Doctors in the village treated some of the injured, but due to a scarcity of medicine and staff, they were mostly seen comforting residents.
The remoteness of the area and the lack of infrastructure hampered relief efforts. Awaran district is one of the poorest in the country's most impoverished province.
