- Surviving camp outdoor fears of inserts, lacking tents.
- More than 2,200 dead in accident, helicopters provide help.
- Afghan children are facing trauma, disease risks after earthquakes.
Haunted for fear of inserts being able to send boulders crashing from the mountains, Afghan earthquake survivors refuse to return to their broken villages and camping in fields and along riverbanks, despite the lack of tents for shelter.
“We have no shelter, not even a tent,” said the 67-year-old farmer Adam Khan, who was outside his destroyed home in Masud Village, in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, which was flattened by the recent earthquakes. “It was raining last night. We had no place to take cover. Our biggest fears are the big cliffs that could come down at any time.”
Two earthquakes since August 31 have killed more than 2,200 people and wounded over 3,600 throughout the region and the flattening of thousands of mud-and-stone houses. Aftershocks triggered fresh landslides, leaving families trapped between unstable mountains and raised rivers.
Help agencies have flown in food and supplies by helicopter, but the survivors say that help has been slow and uneven. Many villages remain cut off, several hours from the nearest road. Families are now clinging in provisional camps with a little more than their rescued belongings.
“The tents they gave us can’t even cater to our children,” said Farmer Shams-Ur-Rahman, who lost six relatives and fled with his family of nine. “On the way down from the mountain I had no shoes to my son, so I shared mine with him in swing when we went down.”
For many, displacement occurs permanently. “Even if there is no earthquake, a simple rainfall could bring cuts down on us,” said Yellow Ahmad, 51, standing next to flapping pop-up tents. “We will not return. The government should give us somewhere.”
Humanitarian groups warn that the trauma without adequate shelter, sanitation and food could spread the disease and elaborate on poverty in one of the world’s most grounded countries. Children are among the hardest affected 12-year-old Sadiq, who survived 11 hours trapped under the rubble, said quietly, “I thought I’d die. It felt like doomsday.”
In the United Nations, Shannon O’Hara, head of strategy and coordination for Ocha Afghanistan, will map the humanitarian response to earthquakes.
