Weaving his way through piles of slippery stone rubble on a steep hillside, Asif Ghulab makes house-by-house assessments. If the damage is bad enough, he passes out a "reconstruction" voucher to the owners -- in many neighborhoods, virtually all houses qualify.
Two months after the Oct. 8 earthquake flattened much of this rugged city in the mountains of Kashmir, Ghulab's work has only just begun.
"There are about 40,000 houses to check," he said. "We have inspected about 375."
Like most other cities and villages in this remote region, where the quake killed an estimated 86,000 people and left another 3.5 million homeless, life is in some ways beginning to return to normal.
Water was restored after about a month in Muzaffarabad. The lights came back on after eight or nine days. The main market is crowded, and most of the shops that weren't crushed by the quake are back in business.
The rebuilding will take much longer.
Muzaffarabad is the capital of the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir, which India also claims. Though very much a frontier city, about 100,000 people live here and hundreds of thousands populate the surrounding mountains and valleys.
With the city's infrastructure still fragile at best, many basic services are being augmented by foreign aid agencies, which are distributing food and water and providing shelter materials.
Refugee tent villages dot the city. Though the aftershocks have weakened, many of those whose homes were not destroyed by the initial jolt also choose to stay in tents at night rather than risk a second calamity.
"Our city is in sleep-mode right now. We are in shock," Ghulab said after a recent inspection tour. "It will be a very long process. But we shouldn't be dependent on others, we have to rebuild ourselves."
Hoping to generate activity, Muzaffarabad is providing residents whose homes were ruined with debt compensation and reconstruction vouchers worth 25,000 rupees (about US$420) per household.
The assistance is merely a token.
"We are happy to get this money, but it is hardly enough," Shakeela Yousef said as she clutched her check, her thumb still purple with ink after stamping Ghulab's logbook.
Yousef was relatively lucky. Her husband, a tailor, and two school-age children were unharmed in the quake, and only part of her home collapsed.
Repairing it is her family's only option.
"We don't have the money to move somewhere else," she said. "We will try to manage somehow."
Muzaffarabad could soon have its already meager resources stretched even tighter if an expected wave of refugees from the surrounding mountains abandon high-altitude villages to flee the severe Himalayan winter.
Aid workers say hundreds and perhaps thousands of refugees are already streaming down the mountainsides each day.
Pakistan army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan downplayed concerns about large-scale displacements, saying soldiers have built more than 50,000 temporary shelters of iron and corrugated steel sheets at heights of more than 1,600m. Construction will begin in April for more than 400,000 permanent homes in quake-affected areas, Sultan said.
Army engineers have cleared most of the roads blocked by landslides, while water and electricity supplies have been restored for nearly 80 percent of the quake zone, he said.
"It was not an easy task. We were able to do it because the entire nation stood behind the army and they helped their brothers and sisters," Sultan said.
Colonel Iqbal Hanif Orakzai, commanding officer at the Combined Military Hospital, the largest medical facility in Kashmir, said he expects it will take at least five years for Muzaffarabad to recover.
Iqbal's hospital was nearly destroyed. Its newest building is about all that remains standing -- but it is tilted and a floor lower than before because the basement caved in.
"My ambulances were crushed just when I needed them most," he said. "I lost 37 staff and 71 patients."
Although water and electricity have generally been restored, Iqbal said they are frequently disrupted by newly broken mains or severed lines as people continue to clear roads and lots.
"Massive jobs must be undertaken," he said. "The civil government alone can't do this. The army must intervene."
Still, he said the situation is improving.
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