Quake-hit Pakistan relies on chopper trips
By HANS GREIMEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEHAR BALA, Pakistan -- Threading through an icy-white canyon, the wind-battered helicopter banks left and suddenly plummets to a snow-draped toehold to deliver more aid to survivors of South Asia's killer earthquake.
Choppers are a lifeline for villagers cut off by snow and landslides in the Himalayan mountains of northern Pakistan. But the U.N.'s biggest humanitarian airlift is also its riskiest, and three aircraft deployed in the relief effort have crashed in the last four months.
Last week, authorities abandoned the search for a helicopter chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross that disappeared with seven aboard on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The crew had just finished three months of relief flights for victims of the Oct. 8 quake.
"It's the most difficult conditions I've ever experienced," said Nozdrin Sergiy, a Ukrainian pilot with 33 years under his belt.
He flies with the United Nations, which under the auspices of the World Food Program coordinates 26 aircraft for as many as 200 flights a day - 11,000 in all so far. Thousands more missions have been flown by six choppers from the ICRC, seven from Pakistan's army and 12 from the U.S. military.
The flights are more important than ever for isolated mountain villages, helping to keep the quake's death toll of 87,000 from growing during the harsh winter.
Although the helicopters have been periodically grounded by the weather, the U.N. flights alone have so far moved 11,000 tons of food, 3,000 tons of other supplies and nearly 22,000 people, including aid workers and quake victims needing hospitalization.
"It's the biggest, most complex air operation on the humanitarian side of the U.N. in its history," said Einar Schjolberg, head of the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service, which directs flights from a bustling air-traffic control center in Islamabad.
Given its grand scope - more than 20,000 chopper flights so far by all relief agencies - mishaps have been remarkably few, aid workers say. Two of the three aircraft that went down were actually flying to and from Pakistan.
"It's really impressive, looking at the number of helicopters flying over the area," said ICRC spokeswoman Layla Berlemont Shtewi, whose organization has flown nearly 5,000 sorties.
Chartered by the ICRC, the Russian-built Mi-8 helicopter lost last week vanished in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on its way home to Turkmenistan.
In October, four people were killed when a U.N. helicopter heading for the quake zone crashed in Azerbaijan. In the same month, a Pakistan army helicopter went down in Kashmir in bad weather, killing all six on board.
Other dangers abound. Moody weather and the unforgiving landscape are the biggest wild cards. The choppers are delivering to elevations of 10,000 feet, but a sudden storm can box them into Kashmir's narrow canyons with little warning.
"The worst was just down this valley," chopper worker Nisar Malik recalled of the terraced cliffs that hem in the hamlet of Nehar Bala and its 3,000 villagers.
"A huge storm front was racing through," he said. "The snow started hitting us as we took off, and we had to dive into the valley with this big thing just chasing us."
The Mi-8 and all other choppers contracted by the WFP must be equipped with emergency homing beacons, two global position systems, weather radar and 24-hour supplies of food and water in case they go down.
Because of destroyed or blocked roads, helicopter airlifts will be needed through the end of the year and into 2007, Schjolberg said. Flights will keep moving 300 tons of supplies a day through June and will then be scaled back by two-thirds.
But that all depends on cash flow.
Chartering an Mi-8 costs the WFP $4,500 a day, while fueling the entire fleet for a week sets the United Nations back $536,000 on top of that. The helicopters burn 211,000 gallons every seven days.
U.N. officials are hustling for donors because helicopter operations are about $15.4 million short of funding needed to keep missions flying through the end of March. The United Nations estimates it will need about $80 million for the rest of 2006.
"It's a very costly operation, but it has really paid off," Schjolberg said.