Strong jolt triggers panic as houses collapse in Kashmir

Fear swept across many parts of Pakistan-administered Kashmir as an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale hit its capital, Muzaffarabad, and surrounding areas just after 9am local time on 20 February. "The epicenter of the quake was just across the Line of Control [dividing Pakistani and Indian-administered Kashmir] in Baramula,” Chaudhry Qamar-uz-zaman, Director General of the Pakistan Metrological Office, told IRIN.

There were no reports of deaths, but damage was said to be widespread, particularly in the Neelum Valley area north of Muzaffarabad.

The region suffered widespread devastation from an earthquake in October 2005 that killed 73,000 people. Evidence of the damage caused by that disaster can still be seen, with some buildings yet to be fully repaired. Any subsequent tremors in this area put the population on edge.

"I was here when that quake struck [in 2005] and I was here again today. We heard screams and saw panic as people rushed out of their homes," Anwar Butt, 40, a shopkeeper based in Muzaffarbad, told IRIN by phone.

In the village of Panjkot, some 60 km north of Muzaffarbad, 40 to 50 houses reportedly collapsed. "We don't know how many others have been damaged," Ashraf Abbas, a resident of Panjkot, told IRIN.

School damage

In Muzaffarbad, Geo TV reported that a newly built government school had been damaged, injuring two children. Concern over the substandard construction of schools has been a feature in the aftermath of the 2005 quake, in which around 10,000 children died under the debris of school buildings.

According to the US-based Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), which sent a team to survey damage to buildings soon after the 2005 quake, 17,000 schools had been damaged or destroyed beyond repair. It also noted there was a higher proportion of "catastrophic damage" to government-owned buildings. Other studies bore out these findings, but it is feared the lessons have not been learnt.

"Again school buildings have been damaged. What would have happened if the quake had been more severe?" asked Butt, who rushed to pick up his children from their school minutes after the tremor hit.

In Neelum Valley, many people say their homes are still not quake-resistant. "The government promised it would help us build stronger structures, but this has not happened. We received some support, and used it to build our houses any way we could, using brick and wood," said Fahim Hamid, a resident of a village some 20 km south of Muzaffarabad.

kh/at/ed