Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Truly sad news. We just lost some of our finest. 6 member helicopter crew went down near the down of Chapri. High winds were too strong for these angels. Too strong for their tiny wings. These men of Pakistan army refused to stop due to bad weather. How could they. When thousands of quake victims are relying on them. These men who have been flying for 12 hour straight are mostly the sole link for the badly needed supplies and the injured.

Good bye my heroes. Good bye. May Allah place you in Jannat. May Allah give courage to your survivors. You lost your life while helping the needy. You are the heroes.

BBC NEWS
Quake helicopter crash kills six
Six Pakistani soldiers have died in a helicopter crash while returning from an earthquake aid mission, as heavy rain again hampered relief efforts.

The MI-17 helicopter had just delivered aid to the town of Bagh in Pakistan-administered Kashmir when it came down late on Saturday.

Almost 40,000 people were killed when the quake struck on 8 October.

Kashmiri politicians have now called for the Line of Control that divides the region to be opened to aid relief.

Grounded

Pakistani military spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said wreckage of the MI-17 was found by a search party near the town of Chapri.
Many people are out without shelter… things are only going to get worse
Robert Holden UN relief operation

All those on board - four officers and two other soldiers - were killed.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known but Gen Sultan said strong winds and heavy rain were disrupting relief work in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the northern region.

Dozens of Pakistani and American helicopters flying from the main logistical base near Islamabad had to suspend their operations due to bad weather.

Gen Sultan said the flights would resume only when the weather improved.

The pilot of the crashed helicopter was a Colonel Roghani, generally regarded as one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the Pakistan army.

Senior military officials told the BBC news website that he was the only one out in the air delivering relief goods when all other helicopters had been grounded due to the bad weather.

Helicopters are vital to the relief effort as many communities and thousands of villagers are still cut off by landslides that swept the roads away.

Cold snap

The heavy rain has brought more misery to the millions of people made homeless by the quake.

HOW TO DONATE
Unicef
UNHCR
Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)
World Food Programme
Kashmir International Relief Fund
Red Cross/ Red Crescent

Pakistan has delivered 18,000 tents to the affected regions, far short of the 100,000 it says are initially needed.

Robert Holden, operations manager of the UN relief programme, said the weather had worsened the situation.

“Many people are out without shelter. It was miserable to start with but with these things are only going to get worse,” he said.

“We’ve also got the danger of further collapse of buildings; a very, very difficult situation made even worse by the rain.”

Pakistan’s meteorological bureau in Islamabad has forecast more rain for Monday followed by a cold snap.

Pakistan says 38,000 people died in the quake, 60,000 were injured and 3.3m are homeless. At least another 1,400 more people died in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan says the quake will cost it $5bn in infrastructure losses.

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK, Maleeha Lodhi, on Sunday defended Pakistan’s response to the quake but admitted international aid so far given was “insufficient for what we need”.

She told the BBC’s Sunday AM programme that Pakistan in the long-term would need trade concessions like those given to countries following December’s Asian tsunami.

Meanwhile the leader of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, called for the opening of the Line of Control that divides it from Indian-controlled Kashmir to help earthquake relief operations.

He told the BBC Hindi service that co-operation was needed as “we have to save humanity”.

The leader of the governing party in Indian-administered Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, said she supported the idea.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had welcomed India’s offer to help along the LoC but declined to accept it saying there were “sensitivities” involved.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, which both claim it in its entirety.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2005/10/16 09:28:39 GMT

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Re: Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

extremely sad news May allah grant them a place in Jannat!

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Re: Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

^^ Pak army is there to help the needy. Pak army zinda baad.

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Re: Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

May they be granted great honors in this world and in the afterlife. ameen.

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Re: Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

Ina Lillah e Wa Ina Illaihai Rajiun

:Salute:

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Re: Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

These men are brave and are heros, unfortunately they are the exception rather than the norm.

Pak Army response as a whole has been to do only what they need to do, to do what the Army of any country would do,nothing special :frowning:

Time Pass
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Re: Goodbye helicopter heroes: May Allah bless you with a place in Jannat

Exception than the norm!
There are people who can never be happy. No matter what the level of effort may be. Pak army in Kashmir suffered huge loss to their infrastructure. Hospitals, family members, barracks were utterly devastated due to the earth quake.

Considering the calamity, it was amazing that first assessment flight was on the scene within 2 hours. Read the following link to see how Pak army soldiers are putting their lives on the line for the victims in Kashmir.

Most of the lefties are quick to cast judgement against the Pak army. These pathetics do not understand that Pak army’s operating budget is less than $2billion. This is really like pennies for 500,000 men army. Compare this to roughly 2 million soldiers (active and reserve) for USA and they have budget of $500 billion. Granted that US has overall budget of $2500 billion compared to Pak’s $15 billion. I hope these figures will put into perspective how armies function depending on the money invested on them.
BBC NEWS
Earthquake helicopter ‘heroes’

	By Aamer Ahmed Khan

BBC News, Rawalpindi

When the global media descended on Pakistan in the wake of the killer quake on 8 October, what the world saw was a relief effort that was perhaps memorable only for its chaos.

What went unnoticed was the tireless effort made by a handful of nameless and faceless people that eventually set the ground rules for what is shaping up into one of the largest relief and rescue operations since the Asian tsunami.

These men are the helicopter pilots of Pakistan’s armed forces - perhaps the only people who have delivered more than was expected of them.

While those in cities and towns - helped mostly by road transport - have perhaps not even noticed their presence beyond the deafening hum of the rotors on their flying machines, villagers call them angels.

“If it hadn’t been for these helicopters, about 600 people in my village who survived would surely have died,” says Abdul Ghafoor, a resident of Chikothi.

Chikothi is a border town 62 kilometres northeast of Muzaffarabad. The road is so badly damaged that its restoration would perhaps take several months.

Locals say the choppers were there on the second day after the quake.

Sea change

One of the Pakistan army’s most senior helicopter pilots says he saw a “sea change” in the pilots under his command after their first trip to Muzaffarabad.

Some of the slopes are so steep... that most of our airdrops just roll down to the river below

Pilot

“Aviators are pampered brats because of the nature of their job,” says this officer.

“You try and stretch them beyond regular hours and they throw the rule book at you.”

Yet each one of the 20-odd chopper pilots employed by the Pakistan army has been doing 12 to 16 hour days since the quake struck.

For the first two days, they were even flying during the night - a practice strictly forbidden under normal circumstances.

Pilots recall those critical 48 hours as a period of “blind flights.”

But while that pressure eased with the commissioning of more choppers, the pressure to evacuate the injured has only mounted with time.

Pakistan army spokesman Shaukat Sultan says the army’s fleet of 10 Russian-built MI-17s - along with a few smaller ones - has rescued 6,000 people so far.

The commanders of these pilots say they will not stop their aid efforts, and when ordered to do so they fight and resist to the point of insubordination.

“There were hundreds of people standing amid the rubble, waving to me, motioning me to come down,” says one MI-17 pilot describing his first view of Muzaffarabad - only about four hours after the quake.

"But at that stage, we had only been sent out to assess the situation, not to intervene.

“Now we can and I am not stopping till I drop.”

Highest battlefield

During their typical 12-hour day, about half the time is spent in the air.

It must be tough staying up for such a long time, especially given the hilly terrain.

“The terrain is the least of their problems,” says one senior commander.

According to him, Pakistani chopper pilots have had extensive experience of hostile conditions because of the conflict in Siachen glacier.

“They have been dumping combat supplies at the world’s highest battlefield for more than 20 years now,” he says.

The pilots have also had vast experience of operating in hilly areas because of Pakistan’s 25-year-old involvement in Afghanistan.

So it is not the terrain that is the issue.

“It is the people,” says one pilot.

He says one of the trickiest problems he has faced in relief and rescue work so far is airdropping supplies.

The hastily put together relief packages in the initial days could weigh in excess of 40 kilos.

“Can you believe that old men, women and children would run directly under the choppers, trying to catch the drops,” he says.

“From a height of 20 to 25 metres, they would have been crushed under their weight.”

Often, the pilots would have to return without dropping supplies - a complaint that was heard from many villagers once the land routes opened.

"What could we do? We were carrying only the minimum possible fuel so we could carry more supplies.

“And if the people in one village held us up for more than a few minutes, we would just fly on to the next.”

Super mules

Particularly problematic for the choppers was to drop relief supplies at villages - tiny settlements really, often not larger than a dozen houses - close to mountain tops.

These areas have traditionally been served - in severe weather conditions for example - by the army’s animal transport units (ATUs) made up of mules.

The mules are amazing animals. Each one of them is trained to carry particular kinds of supplies.

Those trained in carrying ammunition will not carry guns and the ones trained to carry clothes will not transport food - each of these mules is a specialist.

And they can find their destination without human assistance.

They have been a critical part of military logistics for more than 50 years and the only means of helping villagers trapped in snowstorms in the harsh winter months.

The quake has reduced the ATUs to a fraction of their original strength, leaving the relief work entirely dependent on choppers.

“Some of the slopes are so steep - especially where levelled clearings have been swept down to the valley by the quake - that most of our airdrops just roll down to the river below,” says one pilot.

“We don’t want to hover too close to the survivors either, as the rotors would blow away whatever little shelter they are left with.”

Indeed, at the Muzaffarabad chopper base set up inside a stadium, people toppling over as mammoth US Blackhawks touch down or take off is a regular sight.

Thank you

The hardest part by far, say the pilots, is evacuating casualties.

One of the hardest hit areas away from the towns and cities is Lipa valley.

The quake seems to have inflicted 100% damage here. From the tiniest of sheds to the brigade headquarters, nothing has been left standing.

Entire hillsides have caved in. Even the walkways leading up the hills have disappeared.

A Medecins Sans Frontieres doctor, who had set up a medical camp at a small clearing, said even a week after the quake, between 100 to 150 people - most with fractures - were still making their way down the hills every day.

As the soldiers started bringing in casualties, it was easy to understand the pilots’ consternation.

On the 13-minute flight from Lipa valley back to Muzaffarabad, and the 32 minutes from there to Rawalpindi, the copter resembled a nightmare tomb.

The wounds of many among them have begun to fester and the aircraft stinks unbearably.

The casualties are packed like sardines and when rough winds shake the copter, many of them cry out in pain.

“This is the only thing that I still haven’t gotten used to,” says one of the crew.

“But we know that there are many more - hundreds or may be thousands - who still await evacuation.”

By the evening, the chopper has evacuated 95 casualties and dropped nearly 10 tonnes of relief supplies across the Lipa valley.

“No matter how much we do, we know there is still a lot more to be done,” says one of the crew.

“How can we even think of giving ourselves a break?”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4346778.stm

Published: 2005/10/16 11:44:22 GMT