Ijaz S. 30 year old single male

"I was at home when the quake happened, on my way out to teach a course on computers. All of a sudden there was the sound of a huge explosion and very powerful vibrations. My house was damaged but surrounding houses were utterly destroyed. I ran to get my niece who is in the third grade then I went to see my father who was fine so I went to my school and saw that it was totally destroyed but almost everyone inside survived somehow. Then I got together with friends to help people get out of the rubble. I helped get out 13 people of which two died and one 35 year old man lost both of his legs. Of course there were many other very serious injuries. It was a horrible frightening time with people running everywhere just running with wide eyes looking for loved ones or just safety.

When I was taking people out many were unconscious and others were asking about their families. One was in such a bad situation that parts of the building he was in collapsed on him arm and he was screaming and begging us to just cut off his arm to save his life! No one had the heart to cut his arm our insides were raging with disbelief and we couldn’t find it in us to cut the arm of this young man. So we waited by him for 3 days and the Turks came to move more rocks and bricks and they pulled him out and during this time his parents patiently sat by him feeding him and giving him any solace they could. There was no medical help for a long time. (Pakistan was almost completely incapable of taking care of these people and the international community tragically responded too little too late.) Even the hospital was destroyed so what were we supposed to do? (Most government buildings: schools, medical units, prisons, etc were the first and fastest to fall, a testament of government spending and involvement in Kashmir.) So we spent time with my uncle who was seriously injured and many patients alongside him died, so many, and eventually my uncle died too. I stayed at my house and another uncle came and we all were sitting thinking Muzaffarabad is finished, there is barely anything or anyone left.

I wanted to believe there was hope and we will establish ourselves again and open the computer institution once again."

He offered some more information about another school next to his:

"The school next to my school called Shaheen Model College was just another statistic in Muzaffarabad. Every student out of the 350 who attended perished. Many of the kids or just people in general that died, they died-waiting. Waiting for some medical help and then eventually they were just waiting for someone to remove the rubble so they could bury their children."

The earthquake shook the ground and the souls of these people into bewilderment and amazement. There was no mental or physical preparation for such a catastrophe.