Word: balakot
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...news from the area may get worse: Some Pakistani officials are saying the death toll could exceed 50,000. Word is starting to reach Balakot from higher up in the Himalayas, where dozens of villages went tumbling down the mountainsides - it may take days, or even weeks, before rescuers can reach them...
When French rescue teams were first dropped in the Himalayan town of Balakot on Monday night, they appeared as bewildered and overwhelmed as Balakot's remaining survivors. Balakot had once been a hillside town of 20,000 people, but the earthquake has reduced it to a muddy smear. Ninety percent of its houses were obliterated. There were so few people left alive that sometimes, where you would expect to see a funeral procession, instead there would be a solitary man heading toward the graveyard, carrying on his shoulders the white shrouded body of his wife or child...
...French, with only 12 rescue workers and a couple of dogs, didn't know where to begin; everybody in Balakot was desperate for help. Finally, they chose to begin work at one of the town's elementary schools whose walls had collapsed at the first dreadful stirrings of the earthquake, trapping over a hundred kids inside. Their mangled bodies would slowly emerge, cradled in the arms of the rescue workers. The girls had worn green blouses, probably ironed that morning by their mothers; the boys wore gray. That night, three days after the temblor, the French managed to pull...
...hours, the people of Balakot had no help at all from the outside world. Landslides had cut off the mountain roads. "For two days there were helicopters flying over us. We waved at them with red pieces of cloth, but they just went by," says Javed, a shopkeeper, whose son also died in the school collapse...
...Only on the second day after the quake, as news of Balakot's catastrophe spread down the valley, thousands of men from surrounding areas converged on the town carrying hammers, shovels, iron rods and axes after walking for miles and miles. The volunteers also helped clear the road into Balakot, making it possible for hundreds of pickups and cars to wend their way into the devastated town bringing food, blankets and tents. All were donations from Pakistanis who had seen photos of Balakot's disaster taken from army helicopters. The relief trucks were mobbed by hungry and cold people, prompting...