SHARANA, Afghanistan – As the earth shook, she said, speaking through tears, she felt the walls of her room collapse on her. Then everything went dark. When Hawa, a 30-year-old mother of six, regained consciousness, she was trapped in the dust and trying to make sense of her surroundings.
“I didn’t expect to survive,” she said Thursday from her hospital bed in Sharana, the capital of Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktika province.
Her village, Dangal Regab, like many others in Paktika’s Geyan district, was a scene of death and devastation following the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that struck in the early hours of Wednesday – the death battle worst in Afghanistan in two decades.
A team reporting for The New York Times witnessed the scale of the devastation in Geyan on Thursday – and the magnitude of the response. On rough unpaved roads over mountainous terrain, cars and trucks loaded with supplies made their way to hillside villages with dilapidated houses. Shocked villagers ran through the rubble, using tarps to set up makeshift tents and bury the dead.
Afghan officials in hard-hit areas on Wednesday estimated that at least 1,000 people were killed and at least 1,600 injured. The United Nations’ humanitarian office on Thursday gave a slightly lower estimate – 770 people were killed and 1,440 injured – but warned that its figures were likely to rise.
Relief officials say the rescue effort is going down and they are focusing on survivors, who endured not only Wednesday’s heavy rain but also the unseasonably cold temperatures that threatened brought snow to some areas.
As the scale of the disaster came to light on Thursday, the Taliban government’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, issued a rare appeal for international help.
The earthquake added to an already dire humanitarian crisis that has engulfed Afghanistan since the Taliban took power. The banking system has largely collapsed under the weight of international sanctions, and the foreign aid that supported public services under the previous government has disappeared. According to the World Food Program, about half of the country’s population is facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity.
The West has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency relief aid to avert a full-blown humanitarian disaster. However, the Taliban has struggled to garner lasting support from Western donors, which has been plagued by the new government’s restrictions on women and its human rights record.
The Afghanistan earthquake poses a tough new test for the Biden administration’s approach to the Talibanwhich it refused to recognize or provide direct financial support after cutting off access to $7 billion in foreign currency reserves held in the United States.
And while the US has sent more than $1 billion directly to humanitarian programs in the country in the past year, many human rights campaigners say the US government must work with the Taliban and provide the country with assistance. economic assistance to alleviate human suffering on a broad and long-term basis.
Plus, the earthquake-affected areas along Afghanistan’s mountainous border with Pakistan were among the country’s poorest even before the economic crisis.
On Thursday, roads into the quake zone were packed with cars and trucks carrying relief supplies: bread, flour, rice and blankets, among other things. Emergency medical personnel treated the injured in ambulances as a military helicopter hovered overhead.
But the affected areas can only be reached by dirt roads that climb steep mountain slopes and become muddy river beds, filled with recent rains.
Bags of rice were scattered on the road at a slope – possibly because the driver was afraid of losing control when going downhill. Nowhere were there excavators or other heavy equipment that could be important to such a recovery effort.
In Azor Kalai, one of the first villages to be hit by the quake, partially destroyed mud-brick houses dot the hillside – walls collapsed and ceilings littered. Among them were the white tarps of makeshift tents, hastily erected by survivors as a safeguard against the harsh elements.
As evening fell, sheep were slaughtered around and women sorted through the rubble, picking up what they could. Standing outside what was left of her home in the bright night air, Padshah Gul, 30, tried to gauge the extent of her personal tragedy. All of the household’s belongings – pots, kettles, utensils – remained buried.
“We must stay here, winter or spring,” he pointed at the makeshift tent. Still, he said, he feels lucky to be alive.
Returning to Paktika public hospital in Sharana on Thursday, survivors described gruesome scenes of ruined buildings, cries for help and bodies scattered across a desolate landscape.
Like Hawa, many of those survivors are facing a bleak future. Only two of her six children survived the earthquake. Her three sons and one daughter died, along with 17 other family members.
“I lost everything, my whole world, my whole family, I had no hope for the future,” she said. “I wish I had lost everything, that we were all dead, because there is no one to take care of us, to make us money or food now.”
Recounting the hours trapped in the collapsed house, she said she could feel the chest of her 1-year-old daughter, Safia, barely moving under her left hand. The other daughter cried weakly, begging for water. Looking to where her sons had slept beside her, all she saw was rubble.
She lay there for five hours, trying to protect Safia from the crushing weight, hoping to save her life. Through the clouds of dust and darkness, she could see her father trying desperately but unable to pull the wreckage away.
Finally, as daylight broke and rain poured down on what was left of the town, residents of nearby villages began pouring in to make a rescue effort, and Hawa and Safia were freed. from the rubble.
Dr Hikmatullah Esmat, director of public health for Paktika province, said they were among the 70 to 80 survivors taken to the hospital on Wednesday.
In another corner of the hospital complex, 60-year-old Gulpar Khan stood quietly tending to an injured cousin he had brought back from Dangal Regab the day before.
When the earthquake hit, the ceiling of his house was tilted out around him, he said. He and his 20-year-old son, Spin Wali, tried to find a way out of the rubble, but he could hear his brother calling for help from the next room.
Mr Khan said he yelled at his son to get help. But when his son looked out their front door, he said that the entire village had been destroyed. Nearly every house collapsed and the air was filled with the cries of neighbors for help.
“It was like a scene from a movie,” he said. “I could never have imagined such a thing in the village.”
Mr Khan climbed to where he heard his brother’s voice and tried to peel off the parts that used to be their home when it rained. His son shouted at him that it was not safe to be in that room but he didn’t listen, he said.
His brother survived. But 11 of his relatives – including his wife, five other sons and an uncle – were killed.
“In all my life, I’ve never been through something like this,” he said.
In the men’s section, 70-year-old Abdul Hanan, who had brought several injured family members, sat on a bed in the corner, quietly looking at his hands. He escaped death by deciding to stay overnight while visiting family in a neighboring village. He was sleeping on Wednesday night when he heard a loud noise and the walls started shaking, he said.
He and his loved ones ran out of the house, he said, but the damage was limited, and they were able to go back and sleep until morning.
It wasn’t until he began his hour-long walk back to his own home at around 8 a.m. that he waited patiently for disaster.
The prince at a nearby mosque made an urgent appeal for help in neighboring villages – including his own.
Rushing home, he found his house completely destroyed and his 4 relatives sitting under a tree in the yard, their clothes drenched in blood. Another 17 family members who lived with him died under the rubble.
“Now there’s nothing left, houses are ruined, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing,” he quietly wiped his tears.
“We are happy that the war is over,” he added. “We didn’t expect that destruction like this could happen.”
Christina Goldbaum and Safiullah Padshah reported from Sharana and Azor Kalai, in Afghanistan, and Kyle Crichton from Bondville, Vt. Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington.
