Pakistanis here start earthquake relief effort

Thousands of miles from the chaos of an earthquake that has hit close to home, local Pakistanis gathered yesterday within the calm of a restaurant in Redmond Town Center to share information about the calamity and organize a Puget Sound-area relief effort.

A clear head helps when putting together logistics for sending supplies to the other side of the world. But that's asking a lot, as the minds of some local Pakistanis are consumed with the grief of knowing that relatives and friends did not survive — or the angst of not knowing, and fearing the worst.

Nasir Aziz, of Mercer Island, has received good news and bad news thus far.

The software engineer awoke to a phone call Saturday from a local friend's mother, concerned about the welfare of Aziz's family back in Pakistan. That's how he found out about the 7.6-magnitude quake centered 27 miles northeast of Abbottabad, where his parents live.

He immediately called his parents' house and, to his surprise and relief, his mother answered, telling Aziz that she, his father and grandmother were fine.

But the husband of Aziz's cousin, a physician working in one of the mountain villages devastated by the temblor, had perished in a landslide.

Kamran Salahuddin, of Redmond, said all roads to the mountain villages are blocked.

"The only way to get relief supplies to those areas is by helicopter," he said.

Aziz also talked to a friend in the capital city of Islamabad who said he had witnessed the collapse of a high-rise apartment where his mother and grandmother lived.

Living in an adjacent tower, he was looking outside his window trying to figure out what he could do to help when the tower fell.

"I'm almost afraid to call him again because I don't want to hear more bad news," Aziz said.

Reports are grim, but the lines of communication between here and Pakistani cities are sound, via satellite, cellular and land-line phones.

Local Pakistanis also are getting details about the earthquake from TV channels that originate from the Middle East and are available locally to satellite-service subscribers, said Rizwan Nasar, a member of the Pakistan Association of Greater Seattle, which represents the more than 1,000 Pakistani families living in the Seattle area.

Nasar was among the small group of association members who met yesterday to map out the local relief plan.

They heard from John Gokcen, Turkey's honorary consul general in Kirkland, who has the experience of responding locally to a 1999 earthquake centered 55 miles east of Istanbul. He recommended the group reach out beyond the local Pakistani and Muslim communities for help.

"People are very generous," Gokcen said. "Don't focus only on those communities related to you."

The association has opened a "Pakistan Earthquake Relief Fund" account at all Seattle-area US Bank branches to accept monetary donations. Salahuddin said the money will go directly to the Pakistan equivalent of the Red Cross.

Additional information on local relief efforts and updates about rescue work will be posted on the association's Web site: www.pakistanseattle.com

"We know that the U.S. has its own problems with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but we are asking people to help as much as they can," Aziz said.

The priority now is to get medicines, blankets and tents to the devastated areas.

"They are going to run out of resources very quickly," said Aziz, who is receiving updates from his father, a physician who works with an organization that runs 10 hospitals in the hard-hit Kashmir region.

"Most of these villages have been wiped off the face of the Earth," Aziz said. "They are gone. Vanished. They have rolled down the mountain into the river."

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com