In Afghan Quake: ‘I did not expect to survive’

As the earth shook, she said, speaking through her tears, she felt the walls of the room collapsing on her. Then everything went dark. When Hawa, a 30-year-old mother of six, regained consciousness, she was choking on dust, and struggled to make sense of the scene around her.
“I did not expect to survive,” she said Thursday from her hospital bed in Sharana, capital of Paktika province in Afghanan’s southeast.
Her village, Dangal Regab, like many others in Paktika’s Geyan drict, was a tableau of death and destruction in the wake of the 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck in the early hours of Wednesday — the deadliest in Afghanan in two decades.
A reporting team for The New York Times witnessed the scale of the devastation in Geyan on Thursday — and the magnitude of the response. On rugged unpaved roads over mountainous terrain, cars and trucks laden with supplies made their way to hillside villages that were strewed with wrecked houses. Dazed residents shuffled through the debris, using tarps to build makeshift tents and burying the dead.
Afghan people wait to receive aid in an area affected an earthquake in Gayan, Afghanan, June 23, 2022. Picture taken June 23, 2022. REUTERS/Ali Khara
Afghan officials in the hard-hit areas estimated Wednesday that at least 1,000 people had been killed and at least 1,600 injured. The United Nations’ humanitarian office Thursday offered a slightly lower estimate — 770 people killed and 1,440 people injured — but cautioned that its figures were likely to rise.
Relief officials said the rescue effort was winding down and that they were focusing on the survivors, who had endured not only a heavy rain Wednesday but also unseasonably frigid temperatures that threatened to bring snow to some areas.
As the scale of the disaster came into focus Thursday, the supreme leader of the insular Taliban government, Haibatullah Akhundzada, issued a rare plea for international help.
The earthquake added to an already dire humanitarian crisis that has engulfed Afghanan since the Taliban seized power. The banking system has largely collapsed under the weight of international sanctions, and the foreign aid that propped up public services under the previous government has vanished. Around half the country’s 39 million people are facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to the World Food Program.
The West has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency relief aid to stave off a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe. But the Taliban have struggled to attract longer-term assance from Western donors, which have balked at the new government’s restrictions on women and its human rights record.
Adding to the misery, the areas hit the earthquake along Afghanan’s mountainous border with Pakan were among the country’s poorest even before the economic crash.
The earthquake in Afghanan poses a difficult new test for the Biden adminration’s approach to the Taliban, which it refuses to recognize or provide with direct financial assance after cutting off its access to $7 billion in foreign currency reserves held in the United States.
And although the United States has sent more than $1 billion directly to humanitarian programs within the country over the past year, many human rights advocates say that the U.S. government must work with the Taliban and provide the country with economic assance to alleviate human suffering on a wide and lasting basis.
Adding to the misery, the areas hit the earthquake along Afghanan’s mountainous border with Pakan were among the country’s poorest even before the economic crash.
On Thursday, roads into the earthquake zone were crowded with cars and trucks loaded with relief aid: bread, flour, rice and blankets, among other things. Emergency medical workers treated the injured in ambulances as military helicopters hovered overhead.
But the stricken areas are accessible only dirt roads that climb steep mountainsides and decline into muddy riverbeds, swollen the recent rains.
Sacks of rice littered the road at one steep stretch — probably offloaded drivers fearful of losing control on the descent. Nowhere in sight were excavators or other heavy equipment that would be vital to such a recovery effort.
In Azor Kalai, one of the first villages in the earthquake zone, heavily damaged mud-brick houses were scattered across the hillside, their walls collapsed and ceilings lying in pieces. Among them were the white tarps of makeshift tents, hastily erected surviving residents as protection against the harsh elements.
As evening fell, sheep milled around and women sorted through the rubble, salvaging what they could. Standing outside what remained of his house in the brisk night air, Padshah Gul, 30, tried to assess the extent of his personal tragedy. All of the family’s belongings — pots, kettles, utensils — were still buried.
“We have to stay here, winter or spring,” he said, gesturing to the makeshift tent. Still, he said, he felt lucky to be alive.
Back at the Paktika public hospital in Sharana on Thursday, survivors described horrific scenes of crumbled buildings, anguished cries for help and bodies strewed throughout a desolate moonscape.
Many survivors face bleak futures. Only two of Hawa’s six children survived the quake. Her three sons and one daughter died, along with 17 other family members.
“I lost everything, my whole world, my whole family, I don’t have any hope for the future,” she said. “I wish I had lost everything, that we had all died, because there’s no one to take care of us, to find money or food for us now.”
Recounting the hours she spent trapped in her collapsed house, she said she could feel the chest of her 1-year-old daughter, Safia, barely moving beneath her left hand. Her other daughter cried out weakly, asking for water. Looking to where her sons had been sleeping next to her, all she saw was rubble.
She lay there for five hours, trying to protect Safia from the crushing weight, in hopes of keeping her alive. Through clouds of dust and darkness, she could make out her father desperately trying and failing to pull away rubble.
Finally, as daylight broke and the rain beat down on what remained of the town, residents of near villages began pouring in to mount a rescue effort, and Hawa and Safia were freed from the wreckage.
They were among the 70 to 80 survivors brought to the hospital on Wednesday, said Dr. Hikmatullah Esmat, public health director of Paktika province.
In another corner of the hospital ward, Gulpar Khan, 60, stood quietly looking after an injured cousin he had brought in the day before from Dangal Regab.
When the earthquake struck, the ceiling of his house caved in around him, he said. He and his 20-year-old son, Spin Wali, managed to claw their way out of the rubble, but he could hear his brother shouting for help from the room next door.
Khan said he yelled at his son to go and get help. But when his son looked out through what had been their front door, he said the entire village had been destroyed. Nearly every house had collapsed and the air was filled with a chorus of his neighbors shouting for help.
“It was like a scene from a movie,” he said. “I could never imagine such a thing in the village.”
Khan climbed to where he heard his brother’s voice and tried to peel away chunks of what had been their home as rain poured on them. His son screamed at him that it was not safe to be in that room but he did not len, he said.
His brother survived. But 11 of his relatives — including his wife, five other sons and an uncle — were killed.
“In my whole life, I never experienced anything like this,” he said.