Balakot, Pakistan ? It was just before 9 a.m. and 17-year-old Uzair Mohammed Qureshi was reading his chemistry book as the ground began to shake. Seconds later, the roof caved in, showering Qureshi and his classmates with debris. He was one of the few to survive.

In just one small Himalayan town, three schools crumbled in the devastating earthquake that struck northern Pakistan on Saturday, burying hundreds of students.

Qureshi had been sitting with about 15 to 20 other students in a chemistry class at the Shaheen Commerce and Information Technology College when the temblor rattled the earth.

“My teacher had just left the classroom after finishing his lecture and I was reading a book when suddenly we felt a shock,” Qureshi said Sunday. “Then, came another jolt and we ran toward the door to save our lives, but suddenly the roof collapsed.”

“For minutes I thought I had died,” he said, describing how he passed out. “But after gaining consciousness, I looked around and saw a friend of mine lying near me.”

Qureshi’s hands suffered deep cuts when hit by falling debris, but he climbed through a hole in the wall to safety, dragging his friend behind him. He said he believed the other students in his class were critically injured or killed.

The teenager’s ordeal was not over. He rushed home but found only a pile of rubble. His parents and grandmother were dead.

A day after the disaster, he sat on the rubble of his school building, still in his school uniform because all his possessions were gone.

“There is nobody who can help me save my classmates,” he said. “Is there anybody who can help me?”

Reports emerged Sunday in village after village of school buildings collapsing on top of students as the massive earthquake struck a remote region in Pakistan and India, killing more than 20,000 people.

In the northwestern district of Mansehra, police chief Ataullah Khan Wazir said Saturday that authorities pulled 250 bodies from the rubble of a girls’ school in Ghari Habibibullah. Dozens of children were feared killed in other schools.

But Balakot, a town of about 30,000 people surrounded by pine trees on mountainsides and a snowcapped peak, was among the hardest-hit.

Of the college’s 400 students, surviving residents said more than 250 were feared dead. With no sign of outside help coming, dozens of villagers pulled at the debris with sledgehammers or with their bare hands and carried away bodies.

Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas Sunday. However, landslides and rain hindered rescue efforts, blocking roads.

Two state-run primary schools, one for boys and one for girls, also collapsed in Balakot, about 60 miles north of Islamabad, and locals believed hundreds of students were dead inside.

At the girl’s school, a line of 10 bodies was laid out on the ground, and townspeople occasionally pulled another corpse from the rubble.