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October 8 earthquake: An incident which keeps haunting its affectees

Saad Iftikhar Mir
by Saad Iftikhar Mir

Some natural calamities leave long-lasting impacts on the memories of the people affected and continue to terrorise them even after many years. Natural calamities are virtually unstoppable and humans can do very less to prevent such disasters but maybe very small steps can help in this regard if such steps are taken on the right time. As Pakistan commemorates the 19th anniversary of its biggest natural disaster, the October 8, 2005 earthquake, we would like to make the nation remember the catastrophe that hit the country on that day and how such a calamity exposed the virtual ‘characterless-ness’ of the Pakistani nation.

The earthquake hit the regions of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). AJK was the most hit with many villages and small towns getting completely vanished from this planet. The government death toll puts the count at around 80,000 while various organisations put the total death toll at around 0.3 million. Many generations of people were completely wiped off from the face of this earth. In many instances, only one member of the family was left alive while all the rest died. The state capital, Muzzaffarabad, was the worst hit. Even the residences of the president and PM were not spared and the PM was forced to reside in a tent for many days. The city was declared a ‘graveyard of people’, as nearly more than 75 percent of the city had been reduced to rubble. The town of Balakot was completely razed and a new Balakot City was established at a nearby place. Such natural devastation had never been seen in Pakistan. But what can be the cause of such devastation? There are many conflicting theories in this regard.

Some say that a religious debate led to this catastrophe. According to believers of this story, two groups of people had a heated debate in a mosque and after getting infuriated with each other, both parties allegedly threw copies of the Holy Quran at each other, which after hitting the people fell on the floor of the mosque. They also used racks carrying the holy book to hit each other. Because of this humiliation of the Holy Quran, God sent such a wrath to the people of the area that their future generations would never be able to forget what happened on that day. Another story blames open prostitution in the region to have been the biggest cause behind the calamity. The supporters of this story say that brothels had become a frequent sight in the state capital and many women from good and noble families had joined the profession. They say that these women were seen coming in and out of houses on frequent basis during the day. Because of this immoral activity becoming so popular and frequent in the city, God’s wrath devastated the region, as The Creator doesn’t like major sins being committed unstopped. Another theory says that a mentally unstable man was roaming around the area on a daily basis and telling people that a big devastation is coming to this area and all of you should leave your homes and settle somewhere else. Some say that all pet animals of the region were screaming loudly just an hour before the disaster hit. They say that the animals were warning about the disaster, which was about to hit, and wanted people to run away from their places but hardly anyone moved and all sunk into the hands of death sometime after. The story of animals creating a loud noise can also be associated with a similar story about animals doing the same in Thailand when the Asian tsunami hit the country’s shores on December 26, 2004.

Maybe all these stories hold some weight but are the ever-increasing sins of the people really contributing to natural calamities? Pakistan gets hit by one calamity after the other and the ratio and frequency has largely increased in recent years. Floods are the most common type of calamity hitting the country with large areas of Punjab and Sindh always being affected by uncontrollable water. However floods are stoppable by building more and more dams and stronger banks and dykes of rivers, which can withstand the flow of the mighty water. Earthquakes can also be controlled to a very small extent. The only effective way is not to built human settlements on chunks of land which have volatile plates stored beneath it, which cause severe earthquakes. Unfortunately, nothing has been done in this regard in AJK and the settlements remain where they were before the disaster.

The callousness of the Pakistani government was also largely exposed by the calamity. Nearly US $ 4 billion came into the country after the earthquake but alleged large-scale corruption and red-tape diverted the money from its real motive. The federal and AJK governments have also failed to work efficiently in this regard and big question marks are raised over the performance of the government machinery. The projects and schemes promised for the affectees have not been successfully completed and remain relevant in only government files and documents. Incidents of wide-spread looting in the affected areas also haunt the affectees along with similar incidents of cutting-off body parts of victims which had jewellery on them speak of moral degradation of the highest order.

Natural calamities will continue to strike the world until doomsday, which would be the final and most devastating calamity. Pakistanis as a nation need to learn lessons from such disasters but the people show their moral bankruptcy every time such an event occurs, leaving us with no option but to label the nation as one of the most morally degraded on earth. Here’s hoping that this moral degradation comes to an end before the nation is forced to see its eventual fate sealed as the most cursed nation on earth.

 

About author: The writer is a freelance journalist and can be reached at [email protected]          

 

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