Pakistan Survivors Continue to Suffer in Winter Misery

The hundreds of thousands of survivors of the Pakistan earthquake are continuing to struggle through another period of misery amid severe winter weather conditions as relief work was halted by heavy snow and rain.

|PIC1|The bad weather has led to many landslides which have fallen down on roads, with many tents now flooded in the wet, cold mountains.

The late winter is putting to the test the capabilities of both the army and the United Nations, who are running the relief effort, as more than two million homeless survivors await urgent support.

As yet, no deaths from sickness or accidents have been reported in the first severe weather to hit Pakistan this winter.

The meteorological department reported the bad weather might last as long as January 7th, with the mountains also receiving more than a foot of snow as well as suffering continuous icy rain in the valleys, reported Reuters.

"Everything is wet," said a weeping woman, Shakina, huddled with one of her three children next to a fire outside here sodden tent in a camp in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

"This is very difficult for me and my children. We can't survive in this tent."

Hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors continue to suffer in tent camps across the region with many more dwelling next to the ruins of their old homes in tents or makeshift shacks constructed from the rubble or building materials given by the army and aid groups.

|TOP|Bad weather forced vital helicopter relief operations to be suspended for the third time since the October earthquake which killed more than 73,000 people in northern Pakistan.

Survivors in one tent camp in Muzaffarabad scrambled to get tarpaulins being distributed by an aid group, with many tents brought down by heavy snow across the region.

Three of the four main roads to Muzaffarabad were blocked by landslides triggered by the heavy rain, said military spokesman, Major Farooq Nasir.

“We were expecting this to happen, it happens every year,” he said, as army engineers continued to work on clearing the blocks. The work has been made more dangerous by the threat of more slides, he said.

The military and UN insist, however, that enough supplies are in the region, thanks to a delay in the bad weather which allowed medical supplies, shelters, beds, food and other needs to be brought into the mountains by plane or truck. They said there was no cause for alarm despite the present disruption to the aid effort.

|AD|"In terms of overall relief, it's not the end of the world," said U.N. logistics chief in Muzaffarabad, Natasha Hryckow.

The International Committee of the Red Cross announced, however, that it was expecting a serious increase of new cases of respiratory infections at its field hospitals and clinics once the bad weather subsides, bringing more people out from their tents.

“It's what we've always expected, now it's the reality," ICRC spokeswoman Jessica Barry said of the weather. "If it lasts, it's going to get more and more grim.”

An avalanche killed 24 people last week in Pakistan after being triggered by one of the hundreds of aftershocks that have rocked the region since October, with the Norwegian Refugee Council warning that the snow had increased the dangers of avalanches.

“If fear this tragic avalanche is the first of many to come this winter,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council’s emergency programme officer, Ann Kristin Brunborg. “The danger will increase with more snowfalls.”