1935 Balochistan Earthquake - Rescue Efforts

Rescue Efforts

Tremendous losses were incurred on the city in the days following the event. On streets, people lay dead, buried beneath the debris some still alive. British regiments were scattered around town to rescue people, an impossible task as 1st Queen's remember. While assisting in rescue efforts, Lance-Sergeant Alfred Lungley of the 24th Mountain Brigade earned the Empire Gallantry Medal for highest gallantry.

The weather did not prove to be of much help and the scorching summer heat made matters worse. Bodies of European and Anglo-Indians were recovered and buried into a British cemetery where soldiers had dug trenches. Padres performed the burial service in haste as soldiers would cover the graves quickly. Others were removed in the same way and taken to a nearby shamshāngāht for their remains to be cremated.

While the soldiers excavated through the debris for a sign of life, the Government issued the Quetta administration with instructions to build a tent city to house the homeless survivors and to provide shelter to their rescuers. A fresh supply of medicated pads was brought forth for the soldiers to wear over their mouths while they dug for bodies in fears of a spread of disease from the dead bodies buried underneath.

  • Images of life after the quake

  • Initial medical set ups were established near the railway station to help provide first aid to the survivors. A tent city was built in the vicinity.

  • The tent city was erected to house the thousands of homeless survivors and also the rescue workers.

  • image shows the gates of the ruined Kabari Market when the earthquake struck. Commercial operation were hit badly.

  • Opera Talkies, a cinema set up for the recreation of the soldiers was destroyed in the quake.

Read more about this topic:  1935 Balochistan Earthquake

Famous quotes containing the words rescue and/or efforts:

    “To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. And we will have to allow them the choice, without fear of death: that they may come and do likewise or that they may come and that we will follow them, that a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.”
    —June Jordan (b. 1939)

    “Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.”
    —Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)