Monsoon rains have caused extensive flooding throughout Pakistan, killing more than a thousand people and causing widespread damage.
Around 20 million people have been affected and 1.2 million homes have been damaged or destroyed.
The Pakistan Red Crescent Society, which has branches and volunteers across the country, has been helping survivors since the flooding began by delivering food, health services, shelter and relief items (including hygiene kits and cooking equipment).
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has reached more than 465,000 people since the floods hit and in the coming months plans to distribute relief items to around 2.1 million people.
We urgently need your help to support the relief effort.
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Sarah Oughton, logistics emergency response unit (ERU), Pakistan:
I escaped the office early this morning to go and see our team of loaders in action. Check out the pics below and see them at work loading one of our trucks with bags of flour, rice and other food items (the trucks out here are the pride and joy of the drivers and are all beautifully and ornately decorated). Even before the heat of day really hits, it’s still a hard and sweaty job filling a 10 tonne truck but the twenty-odd guys tackle it with energy and enthusiasm – even more so when I turn up with the camera!
Our logistics ERU has now ramped up daily distributions of food, household goods and shelter kits to at least 600 families in Sindh province and 800 in Punjab province.
I’m actually off to spend the last couple of days of my mission at our warehouse in Punjab, to help prepare as we hand over to the next rotation of the ERU.
So as I leave Sindh, I just want to tell you about three people whose help I couldn’t have done without during my time here. First of all Mr Ali, wearing a Red Cross cap in the pics below, who is a disaster management officer for the Pakistan Red Crescent and is the man who has been the gateway into the rural communities we are helping. It is only because he has the respect of community chiefs that we are able to work in certain areas we would otherwise be unable to access, due to security concerns.
Then there is Jahanzeb, who works in the office with me and looks after our database, producing the reports that help us track the relief goods coming and going from the warehouse. It sounds simple, but with thousands upon thousands of goods constantly moving through – this is definitely a challenging job!
And finally, there’s Rauf who has been my translator extraordinaire (he speaks five languages!) as well as being the most efficient and effective admin assistant you could hope for.
Below is a pic of me in traditional Pakitani dress (a gift from Rauf’s family). Jahanzeb (left) and Rauf (right) however are wearing traditional English street wear.
I’ve only been here a short while, but I know these guys will continue working hard for months to come, to keep reaching those who have lost everything in the floods.
Sarah Oughton, logistics emergency response unit, Pakistan:
Today I met Haja Ahmad Din, 65, who said: “In my whole life I’ve never seen a flood like this one, there was so much water.”
Haja was one of 600 families who received food and other relief items from the Red Cross warehouse in Sindh province today. He couldn’t stop smiling as he gave in his token and collected two wheelbarrows full of goods.
Afterwards, he explained to me how he and his wife had been stranded on the roof of their home with two of their chilren and their families, including 13 grandchildren, for four days. They’re food lasted for only two days and they had no option but to drink the flood water.
Haja said. “At first it was just a little bit of water and we thought it would just go away like usual and then suddenly it got higher and higher. We went up onto our roof and took some food with us and some bags of our belongings. But thieves came and stole the bags.”
“In the end we managed to get away by shouting to someone who brought their boat over to us,” Haja explained. “We stayed in another village for a while but now we have returned to our home in Rehmadulah Chachar village. Part of our house has collapsed and we have only a few good rooms for our large family.
“The tarpaulins and shelter tool kits I received today will be very useful and will help make our living conditions better.
“At my age I have never seen such destruction, but thanks to God we all survived and God bless those that are helping us.”
14 October 2010 Mass Sanitation ERU Pakistan
You may expect the train to be late when you go to your local train station, what you probably wouldn’t expect is to find 78 families living on the platform and railway lines. This is what we have experienced in the Sindh Province of Pakistan today. 431 people living in homemade shelters and tents deftly constructed on and around the town’s railway station. This is a place of last resort, as all of the schools and other IDP shelters in the area are overflowing with the 2 million flood displaced in this province. The trains are not currently running which means that this group have found refuge on the tracks. But what a meagre refuge it is, with very little shelter from the burning 40 degrees sun. Those people without tents or the plastic sheeting to form tents, shelter under their wooden charpoys beds or the shade of the donkey carts. This community have received some relief items but have very little. In this environment there are of course no latrines, no private washing areas to bathe and very little water.
Working with the volunteers of the Pakistan Red Crescent the BRC mass sanitation team visited the railway station to findings ways to support this community to prevent diarrhoeal disease. The local female volunteers are able to provide hygiene information and knowledge and also distribute soap to each of the 78 families. We will also continue to work here to build at least some temporary latrines so that the people living have a safe and private place to go!
Sarah Oughton, logistics emergency response unit (ERU), Sindh province, Pakistan:
It’s been another crazy day in Sindh province, unlike my cushty 9-5 job in London, this job begins when I wake up and ends when I go to bed and yet the day still doesn’t feel long enough to get it all done!
But the adenaline keeps me going and having the chance to meet some of the people we’re helping yesterday was a real motivator.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, I’m out here with our logistics ERU helping to co-ordinate the flow of goods into the country and into a couple of warehouses we have rented. But yesterday, I got to visit the ‘frontlines’ as I accompanied Christobal (one of our delegates who organises distributions of the relief goods) out to a dusty, rural village where we had sent four 10 tonne trucks full of food to give out to 300 households.
As soon as I arrived at the distribution an elderly man said something to me. My Sindhi isn’t that great, but I had a camera slung over my shoulder and it became clear he wanted me to take his photo. So I then followed him through the distribution process and you can see in the pics below how first step for a beneficiary is to register and get a token for their food parcel (names of beneficiaries have been agreed in advance with local community leaders, according to those who are most in need).
The man I was following is called Muhammad Ismail, he wasn’t sure of his age but said he was between 60-70. After receiving his token, he was escorted by a Pakistan Red Crescent volunteer to receive his food. The whole food parcel weighs 116 kg and is made up of 2 bags of wheat, 1 bag of rice, 3 tins of ghee, 1 bag of chick peas, 1 bag of lentils, and 1 bag of sugar, salt and tea.
Two volunteers, using wheelbarrows, then collected Muhammad’s food directly from the trucks and accompanied him to a dropping off point on the road. From here everyone receiving the food parcels has to organise their own transport, such as a motorbike or qingi (motorised rickshaw). With 300 families collecting their food the road was already pretty hectic, but things got really interesting when a heard of cows decided to stampede through the crowd!
While Mohammed was waiting to be picked up with his food parcel, he told me how his life had changed since the floods wiped out his home six weeks ago.
He said: “Everything was destroyed. We woke up in the morning with the water rising around us, we didn’t know it was coming.
“Since then I’ve been living in a camp, but just under the trees, I have no tent or other shelter. Today, is the first time I’ve received any help. But what can we do?
“Before I had cattle but it was all killed in the floods. Now the only income for my large family is from one of my sons who has been finding some daily labour.
“We don’t want to show ourselves as miserable but we have nothing, and don’t expect to get much more help. We really need this food and I’m thankful for it, but we can’t make a home with it.
“I am very happy for this help from the Red Cross but I think every victim should be helped and there are many more who have received nothing.”
11 October 2010. Mass Sanitation ERU, Pakistan
In a camp in southern Pakistan, 500 men, women and children are living under plastic sheeting formed into makeshift tents. They have been living there since their villages flooded more than two months ago. They explain that they have ‘come across the river’ to land at this dry sun baked patch of bare ground. The water washed away their homes and possessions and many more items were lost in the journey across the water to this place. The people do not know when they will return home and say that their villages are still under 2 meters of water.
Working with the volunteers of the Pakistan Red Crescent (PRCS), the mass sanitation emergency response unit (ERU) team visited the camp.Despite the hardships they face the women of the camp are open and friendly to us and invite us in to their tents. It is clear they do not have anything, not even the large wooden and string beds (charpoys) that are central to many homes, no cooking pots and most telling very few animals or livestock.
PRCS is working hard to support the internally displaced persons in the camps and have given relief food and non- food items. The mass sanitation team is working with PRCS to provide some of the basic sanitation to prevent outbreaks of diarrhoea and contribute to the dignity of the people. Currently there are no latrines in the camps and the people have to resort to discreetly, mainly at night walking to the nearby fields to defecate. This is clearly difficult for women and children , unsafe and contributes to spread of diarrhoeal disease.
With the 20 male and female volunteers of PRCS we are working with the community to erect basic latrines and to discuss hygiene promotion – ways of reducing disease in this most difficult of situations. We will also distribute soap to all the households , in this circumstance a life saving device, to support people to be able to wash their clothes, bodies and hands. It is a small response in an emergency situation for people with so many needs, but it just may reduce sickness and diarrhoea, certainly improve the dignity, and may save lives of the young and sick.
Diane Moody - Hygiene Promoter, MSM ERU team, Pakistan
Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m currently working in Sindh province in Pakistan helping with the distribution of food, blankets, tarpaulins and other relief goods to some of the thousands of people affected by this summer’s devastating floods.
Like Kate, whose blogs you can read below, I am working as part of a British Red Cross emergency response unit and we are supporting the Pakistan Red Crescent staff and volunteer as they try to help as many of the affected people as possible.
This is an unprecedented disaster and the numbers are so huge it’s pretty hard to get your head around . The government has reported that 20 million people have been affected – that’s one in eight people here, in the UK it would be roughly a third of the population. In fact, the UN has said the number of people needing help is more than the last three biggest disasters combined – that’s Haiti, the Pakistan earthquake in 2005 and the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.
The Pakistan Red Crescent, with support from Red Cross National Societies around the world, is running a massive relief distribution operation from three main areas: Khyber Pakthunkwa (KPK) province in the north, Punjab province, and Sindh province in the south.
I am based in Sindh, where we have two warehouses. My role is to keep track of all the emergency items that are coming and going from our warehouse. In this way, I support Toumas, our warehouse manager, in managing the off-loading and loading of hundreds of tonnes of relief goods.
We then work with the relief delegates who are out and about finding the people affected by the floods and arranging times to distribute the goods to them.
I’ve been here a week now, first I had a briefing in Islamabad and I arrived in Sindh province on Tuesday night. The operation is really ramping up with truckloads of food and other relief items arriving almost every day and the distribution schedule is intensifying as we begin to double our output.
Today I managed to get away from the warehouse where I’ve been based sofar and out to see a distribution with Christobal, one of the relief delegates (the one in the non-Red Cross issue sombrero!).
As I normally work ‘behind the scenes’ it was really something to see the end result of everyone’s efforts (not least the fundraisers back in the UK and all the people who have donated money to our Pakistan Floods Appeal).
The distribution took place in a small, dusty rural village where 300 families (approx 7 people per family) received a month’s supply of food, including wheat flour, rice, ghee, sugar, salt and tea.
I spoke to several people collecting their food parcels today, and I heard some really sad stories. But I also saw smiles. Two months on from the floods, this is the first time these people have received any help. A month’s supply of food is not enough, but it’s a start and I think it brought some hope that they haven’t been completely forgotten.
The British Red Cross Mass Sanitation team has been in Sindh province for a week now. We are working alongside the Pakistan Red Crescent to provide sanitation facilities and hygiene promotion to the thousands of displaced people who are unable to return to villages and towns that remain submerged in up to two metres of water.
The area we're working in received a massive influx of people and still, two months on from the monsoon rains, nearly every large open space is being used as a camp – the vegetable market, sports stadium, bus stop. And these are the more desirable places – many people have had to pitch makeshift tents on derelict patches of land and by the side of the road.
Conditions in the camps are often terrible, with people having no access to running water, soap or toilets. We have been working with these communities to try to improve the sanitation facilities and promote hygiene practices to help prevent the outbreak of diseases such as severe diarrhoea – often fatal to malnourished children.
So far our Hygiene Promoter has mobilised and trained a team of 18 local volunteers who have been in the camps supporting the distribution of hygiene kits (which include soap, towels and other essentials) and highlighting the importance of good sanitation practices. Alongside this our engineer and local volunteers have worked in searing temperatures to build four large latrines that will provide hundreds of people a safe and discreet means of doing their business.
Already we are seeing an improvement. The people have been very receptive and camps are looking cleaner and safer. But there is a great deal more to be done. Across the Sindh province there are many camps where people haven’t received nearly enough support. In the comings weeks we want to reach as many of these people as possible, as well as helping develop the capacity of the Pakistan Red Crescent to respond to future disasters.
This is what it looks like - £60, the basics to feed a family of 7 for one month...
Thank you for all your support! It means a lot J
