Aid rushes in as disaster toll rises to 920 in Unknown

Cars and pickup trucks became emergency ambulances as survivors raced the injured to hospitals and the death toll climbed to 920. Hundreds more people are believed to be missing or trapped under rubble, raising the prospect that the toll will rise further as rescuers reach areas local crews could not yet fully search.

The clearest measure of the disaster’s severity has been the strain on the health system. Hospitals have been overwhelmed by the number of wounded, with shortages of trauma care and delays in moving the injured shaping who could be treated quickly and who had to wait. In the hours after the disaster, ordinary people improvised transport and rescue because the local medical response was already stretched beyond capacity.

That overload has turned every transfer into a race against time. When ambulances and organized rescue lines are not enough, the burden falls on families, neighbors and bystanders who load the injured into private vehicles and drive them to any available hospital. The scale of that improvisation points to a system overwhelmed by the volume of casualties before specialized help could fully take over.

Aid is now rushing in from abroad. Two dozen countries are sending assistance, and international rescue teams have begun arriving to support the search for survivors and the treatment of the wounded. Their arrival is a measure of what local capacity could not handle alone, from pulling people from collapsed structures to helping triage the injured once they reach medical facilities.

With hundreds still unaccounted for, the response remains focused on two urgent tasks: finding those trapped beneath the rubble and keeping hospitals from being swamped by the injured who keep arriving. The death toll of 920 already reflects a mass-casualty emergency on a scale that has forced the entire response, from street-level rescues to intensive care beds, into crisis mode.