Earthquake

The death toll sits at about 30,000, most of which is in Pakistan. Indian losses sit at about 500. The epicentre was 95km northeast of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in a a city known as Muzafarrabad. Villages have been wiped off the face of the earth, apartment blocks reduced to rubble, infrastructure cracked and badly damaged, and, of course, a huge burden has been placed on the surviving population.

The worst hit indian town was Uri. It's in Kashmir and sits right on the Pakistani border. According to reports, 80% of the town is gone. You might have seen pictures of the devastation in Islamabad. One apartment complex has been all over the news after it just collapsed.

The magnitude of the quake was 7.6 and it happened at 9:20am IST (8:40pm PST). Tremors could be felt as far south as Gurgaon (just south of delhi). Some reports say that as many as 120 aftershocks were felt, with the highest magnitude being 5.9. The latest recorded aftershock was a 4:20 pm IST.

As for me, I was on the bus when it all happened. I received an SMS from one of the trainees I work with and she told me that an earthquake had just occured. Apparently, the room was shaking, people were running outside, and it last for about 2 minutes. I really couldn't believe that it had happened. I showed the message to the guy sitting next to me and within minutes the entire bus knew what had happened.

I reached Gurgaon at about 1:30 and made it to my friend's place. There, I turned on the TV and immediately saw the damage. Had I been looking in a mirror, I bet my face would've had this horrid and shocked look on it. In no way did I realize the damage that this quake had caused when I first heard about it. For the next hour, I just stared at the pictures and tried to make some sense of what just happened. It struck me that if the epicentre was about 200 km to the south, Chandigarh would've been in ruins. Looking at the map with concentric circles going outwards from the epicentre, I could not believe how close I was...550 km or something like that.

Then we heard this big bang and thought a bomb and gone off or something had cracked. As it turned out the transformer blew, but when you're sitting there watching footage of an earthquake, a big noise isn't very pleasant.

So that's basically the earthquake as I experienced it. One thing you realize is that buildings in this part of the world are not designed to withstand earthquakes, nor are India and Pakistan at all ready to deal with a disaster like this. Even after similar quakes have happened, there is still no adequate disaster response team. It took a day just to have earth-moving equipment brought to some of the worst hit areas. I'm not criticizing the relief effort in any way because there were people in there with bare hands trying to rescue people, but from the government's standpoint, there needs to be some sort of plan.