Shelter remains concern for earthquake victims
Oct. 26, 2005
A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
Masood was alone in his house when the earthquake struck his small village in the Battagram district of Pakistan.
He escaped the collapsing building, but at least 250 of the 1,200 people in his village died and perhaps as many as 350 were injured.
Masood and other villagers were taken to the army relief base camp in Battagram, where he told his story to members of a Church World Service response team. He was waiting there to take tents back to his village, where he estimated that half the houses had been destroyed.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief is working with Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan to assist survivors of the Oct. 8 earthquake that particularly devastated northern Pakistan and Kashmir. Between 50,000 and 80,000 people are believed to have died.
CWS is helping provide 20,000 families with food packages and shelter kits. The shelter kits include a family-size tent, ground sheet, plastic sheet, two iron poles and four blankets.
For survivors like Masood, the shelter kits are critical at a time when temperatures are dropping. On Oct. 24, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said only about three weeks remained to get disaster assistance to mountain villages before the first snowfall.
The approaching winter, mountainous Himalayan terrain and scale of the disaster could make this the “most difficult humanitarian crisis ever,” according to Andrew Macleod, chief operations officer in the U.N. Emergency Coordination Center in Islamabad. He told the New York Times that damage estimates for the far-flung villages in the quake area are “the worst-case scenarios.”
Shelter remains a priority for all relief agencies. When possible, CWS has used army helicopters to air-drop shelter kits in remote areas.
Other survivors, such as Hikim Khan, planned to take tents to their villages. Khan accompanied his injured sister to the army relief base camp in Battagram from his home village of Pashakhal, 100 kilometers away. He told CWS that his wife and two daughters did not survive the earthquake.
The tents were needed in Pashakhal, where only half of the 5,000 houses remained standing.
Despite the magnitude of the disaster, contributions — both from governments and individuals — have been slow in coming for earthquake victims.
The Rev. John McCullough, a United Methodist and the CWS executive director, acknowledged the burden placed upon donors in a year that already has included such catastrophes as the Asian tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
“There can be no doubt this has been a most extraordinary year and one that has drawn heavily upon our financial and spiritual resources,” he told United Methodist News Service.
“Nonetheless, the horror of what continues to unfold in Pakistan, the complete decimation of towns and villages, massive loss of more than 70,000 lives, and the nightmares that fill the thoughts of hurting and aching children, leave us little choice but to draw even deeper in our well of faith.”
The issue is not just compassion, McCullough noted, but a sense of justice “and the valuing of others in the face of God. Perhaps at no other time since 1946 has the imperative been greater for all of us — Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Orthodox and yes, Methodists — to work together to help heal a hurting and fractured world. Today, Pakistan is in desperate need of the portion that we can share.”
UMCOR has a bulletin insert, “A Message of Hope: When the Earth Shakes and the Mountains Give Way,” available for local churches. It can be downloaded at http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/ on the UMCOR Web site.
Donations to the United Methodist relief effort can be marked for “UMCOR Advance #232000, Pakistan Earthquake,” and placed in church offering plates or sent to UMCOR, P.O. Box 9068, New York, N.Y. 10087-9068. Contributions also can be made by phone at (800) 554-8583. If funds are intended for recovery in a specific region, that should be noted. More information is available at http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/emergency/earthquake/.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org
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Resources
Church World Service
UMCOR: Pakistan earthquake
United Nations
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