From the Salmon

Absolutely horrible.

From CNN:

The Pakistan earthquake toll has reached 18,000 dead and more than 41,000 injured, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said Sunday.

[...]

The quake hit Saturday at 8:50 a.m. (11:50 p.m. ET Friday). Its epicenter was about 60 miles north-northeast of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. It was felt in major cities, including Islamabad and Lahore, and India’s capital of New Delhi.

The death toll is expected to rise, Sultan said, because rescue workers and the military have been unable to access some of the remote areas hit by the quake. He said entire villages and many roads have been wiped out by landslides.

“The army has fully mobilized to handle this situation. This disaster is by far the biggest in its magnitude and scale so far that we have witnessed in Pakistan’s history,” the general said.

“There is a lot that needs to be done. There are many areas that so far have not been reached. The death toll of 18,000 could be many-fold more as we reach more areas and as we discover more and more dead bodies under the rubble.”

From the Washington Post:

Aid organizations warned that relief efforts could be hampered by winter conditions that will soon prevail at the higher elevations of Kashmir. “Winterized tents and blankets will be urgently needed,” Raphael Sindaye, Oxfam’s humanitarian response coordinator, told Reuters reporters after a meeting of aid agencies in Islamabad.

India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, offered his country’s help. “While parts of India have also suffered from this unexpected natural disaster,” he said in a message to Musharraf, “we are prepared to extend any assistance with rescue and relief which you deem appropriate.” India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir but since early 2004 have been engaged in negotiations aimed at ending their historic enmity.

I don’t quite know what to say at the moment, except that big, shallow earthquakes scare the crap out of me.

For now, all I can do is pray. I pray for people who have lost everything, including those they love. I pray for rescue workers and soldiers who are digging through rubble trying to locate survivors. Having recently read Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” I pray for people who are separated from their families by oceans and continents and who are frantically trying to find out what they can from so far away. And I pray that as people across the cease-fire line come together to help each other, that it might lead to compassion and peace.

South Asia Quake Help and Pakistan Earthquake 2005 have more information and suggestions for how to help. I just started reading them myself, so I can’t vouch for either site. But they seem to be a good place to start for regular updates and links.

Update (2:10am): Big earthquakes always make me a little jumpy. We just had a very brief 2.7 earthquake about 3 miles away, and it felt like someone dropped a small car on our roof. I hope I never get to feel what a shallow 7.6 feels like.