ISLAMABAD – National Resilience Day is being observed across the country today (Thursday) to mark the 15th anniversary of history’s worst destructive earthquake to pay tribute to the martyrs of calamity.
At 8:52 am on October 8, 2005, the quake, 7.6 on the Richter scale, especially in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with its epicenter located 19 km northeast of Muzaffarabad, struck the country causing widespread human and material losses in Hazara division and Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJ&K).
Fifteen years have passed to the deadly earthquake but the majority of the Pakistanis especially the quake victims still feel pain.
The day will dawn with special prayers in mosques for the martyrs and prosperity of the country.
AJK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider will lay floral wreath at martyrs’ memorial.
A large number of people including family members, relatives and friends would visit the graveyards in the quake-hit areas.
The tremor caused massive destruction putting it higher than the massive scale of destruction of the Quetta earthquake in 1935.
Approximately 138,000 people were injured and over 3.5 million rendered homeless. According to official figures, 19,000 children had died in the earthquake, most of them in widespread collapses of school buildings. The earthquake affected more than 500,000 families.
