At 8:49 last Saturday morning UW- Madison research scientist Nasim Akhtar was resting quietly in bed and enjoying a vacation at the home of family members who live in Pakistan.
At 8:50 his life’s priorities changed as the earthquake that shook the country and killed thousands began to tear his family’s house apart. “We ran out into the courtyard and the walls on three sides of us began to fall,” he said in telephone interview Friday. “My whole family thought they were going to die.” Akhtar survived the earthquake’s six minutes of terror without injury.
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