Helicopters top priority 48 hours after huge earthquake

Many more helicopters are urgently needed to deploy rescue teams and assist an estimated four million people left in dire need of food, shelter, water and medicine after Saturday's devastating earthquake, aid workers said on Monday. The earthquake has left at least 20,000 people dead and 42,000 injured over northern Pakistan and India. Many of those trapped beneath collapsed buildings are in areas cut off by road and time is rapidly running out to get to them. "We are having logistic problems at the moment. Roads are not in a condition to carry heavy trucks of supplies. It's time that matters most now," Andrew Macleod, spokesman for the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team, said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, early on Monday. The United States is sending eight helicopters from neighbouring Afghanistan, including five Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, along with support staff, to quake-hit Pakistan. Fixed wing aircraft are of limited use, although C-130 aircrafts can be used to move relief supplies and heavy-lifting equipment into the worst-hit area, they can only land at one airport: Muzzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, Macleod explained. The city, 100 km northeast of Islamabad, was badly hit by the quake. Amid widespread devastation caused by the quake that registered 7.6 on the Richter scale, Pakistan has deployed its own substantial fleet of helicopters to search for survivors but the scale of the disaster means many more are needed. Officials announced on Monday that the road to Muzzaffarabad had been re-opened following the earthquake. Trucks carrying relief supplies have arrived in the city, government officials said. Aid workers warned that Islamabad may soon have to host thousands of people fleeing quake-hit villages, and should prepare shelter, food and medicine for the expected influx. Pakistan’s seismic and weather experts have recorded over 140 aftershocks, with 21 over 5 magnitude on the Richter scale, since Saturday morning’s massive earthquake. With more United Nations relief and rescue teams arriving in Pakistan, UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other aid organisations are meeting in Geneva on Monday to plan international relief efforts. "We know that every hour counts in an earthquake of this magnitude and the United Nations is ready to assist the country affected in any possible manner," Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said on Saturday in a statement from UN Headquarters in New York. The UN will issue a flash appeal shortly which is expected to include estimates of the costs of immediate relief operations and longer term reconstruction and development needs of the earthquake-affected regions.