Saturday 8/10/2005 will certainly go down as the bleakest day in Pakistan's history when an earthquake of an unprecedented scale of 7.6 on the Richter scale hit upper Pakistan and Azad Kashmir. UN relief chief Jan Egeland, after visiting the devastated areas, declared that the quake had caused much more severe devastation than the Tsunami and hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A catastrophe of this enormity is hard to reconcile. Words cannot express the pain and angst of the bereaved or the desperation of the survivors. Thousands dead! Majority of them young, trapped in schools; an entire generation wiped out. Millions have been rendered homeless, injured and maimed. Lives of those who managed to escape this disaster have been shattered beyond restoration. The tragedy has also brought out the best in the nation. Across the country people have accepted the challenge and started contributing generously to relief efforts. Long queues outside relief and blood donation centers and private convoys of aid supplies headed towards the disaster zone indicate that Pakistanis are capable of collective action whenever the circumstances beckon.
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