Pakistan quake survivors face winter crisis
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-08 20:45

"I DON'T WANT TO DIE"

The most important supplies for survivors were food and material to help them keep warm.

"There's always a need for iron sheets because the tents will be damaged and collapse under the snow," Vandemoortele said.

Authorities are hoping people living about 5,000 feet

will come down to camps on valley floors for the winter but many have chosen to stay on their land with their livestock.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in flimsy tents next to the ruins of their houses across the region while about 250,000 have moved into tent camps that have sprung up in towns and along main roads.

While the main worry is disease killing off cold, hungry survivors, seven members of the same family, including four children, were killed on Tuesday night when fire engulfed the tent they were sleeping in beside their ruined home.

Vandemoortele said the tent camps had to be better organized.

"Almost all of them need to improve. We need to educate people about sanitation and fire hazard and we need to maintain social order because there is a lot of frustration," he said.

While helicopters are the only way to reach the most remote settlements, tons of supplies are also being trucked every day along treacherous mountain roads that the snow will make even more dangerous.

"I don't want to die in the Neelum Valley, but I have to do this work," said truck driver Shaukat Ayub as he prepared to set off up the valley to the northeast of Muzaffarabad, the wrecked capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

"My family is also affected by the earthquake and they depend on me."

Survivor Mohammad Yousuf, carrying flour from Muzaffarabad up to his nearby village, said his family would soon have nothing.

"We've used all our savings on food and we have enough for another 10 to 15 days," he said. "If nobody comes to give us some we'll die of hunger."