Clear skies bring hope to quake rescuers

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Monday (Reuters) Forecast clear skies raised hopes on Monday that supplies of food, blankets and tents will start getting through to a million homeless survivors from the earthquake in northern Pakistan over a week ago.

After heavy rain and thunderstorms frustrated relief operations on Sunday, grounding all but a few helicopter flights to the stricken areas in Pakistan Kashmir and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a change in the weather would be a blessing.

Some tent villages were already springing up, but Pakistan is desperate for other countries to send more tents as fast as possible to get people under shelter before winter arrives with a vengeance in the Himalayan foothills later this month.

Close to 40,000 people have already been confirmed dead, with at least 65,000 injured, putting the disaster on a par with a quake that almost destroyed the city of Quetta in 1935.

Another 1,300 people died on the Indian side of the border.

The toll is expected to rise, even without the effects of weather which threatens hungry people with death from exposure.

There are also fears of disease from ruined sewage systems and drinking water sources.

The Pakistan Army, leading the relief effort, has yet to reach villages cut off by landslides in Kashmir's Neelum and Jhelum valleys, where a heavy loss of life is feared.

"We are creeping forward," Lieutenant-Colonel Rana Sajjad told journalists in Muzaffarabad, the once pretty Pakistan Kashmir capital wrecked by the quake.

Soldiers were trying to reach outlying areas on foot where roads were blocked, Sajjad said.

The military is also starting a village-to-village survey to try to get a more accurate assessment of casualties.

A pilot of one of the U.S. helicopters dispatched from the fight against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan said some Kashmir villages looked normal from the air, but consisted only of intact roofs lying on the ground.

"What we have heard from our pilots and the other pilots around, roughly 20 percent of the affected area has yet to be reached," Geoffrey Krassy, senior aviation adviser at the U.S. embassy, told reporters.

Helicopter pilots will be heartened by the meteorological office's forecast of clear, sunny weather, with temperatures of between eight and 22 degrees Celsius (46.4 to 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Going into the ninth day after the quake struck, rescue workers have begun to give up hope.

A British team that had pulled seven people alive from the rubble of an apartment block in Islamabad, decided on Sunday there was no hope of finding any other survivors.

Twenty-one people, including a Swedish woman and three children and a Spanish man, were still missing at the Margala Towers, the only site in the capital to have been badly hit.

In Muzaffarabad, small shops began to reopen and aid agencies are setting up long-term bases for the huge emergency and rebuilding task.

Most of the town's buildings were damaged or destroyed and tent cities have sprung up made up of plastic awnings, old signboards and a few real tents.

The government plans to set up tent villages in and around afflicted areas to house up to 500,000 people with food, schools and other services, though it will also make provisions for families who want to stay in order to guard their destroyed homes against looters.

The government estimates damage from the quake at about $5 billion. So far more than $500 million has been pledged from around the world, but development officials said they have started planning for a much larger long-term appeal.