Over 87,000 people dead, 65,000+ injured, and over 3.5 million homeless. In the next few weeks these people are predicted to die due to lack of shelter in the freezing winter temperatures of the Himalayas. TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
Please, please, PLEASE check out the DU Quake Donation Thread here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5251724&mesg_id=5251724In this city's vibrant Pakistani and Indian neighborhood, the collection jars for victims of last month's devastating South Asian earthquake are as ever-present as those that appeared across the country after Hurricane Katrina hit.
But travel a few blocks south in Chicago, and those jars and any other reminders of the Oct. 8 quake that killed 87,350 people disappear.
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U.N. officials say donors have pledged $131 million of the $550 million sought by the United Nations for emergency quake aid. By comparison, $13.5 billion was pledged to victims of Asia's Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed 178,000 people and left 50,000 missing.
The World Food Program last week said it could run out of money because donors have not given enough to meet the region's desperate needs. Jan Egeland, chief of the U.N. relief operation, also warned that tens of thousands of people in the mountainous region rocked by the earthquake are at risk of death because of a lack of shelter, food and medical care.
"We have a very short time frame. We have two to three weeks to save tens of thousands of people," Hanafi said. "It's hard to fathom, but it's keeping us going."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1294668