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Save the Children Helps Rescue Pakistani Earthquake Survivors After Temporary Shelters Collapse in Heavy Snow
Westport, CT, January 11, 2006 –
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Pakistani earthquake survivors return after getting drinking water in the devastated northern area of Batal, 180 km (112 miles) from Islamabad. Reuters/STR/PAKISTAN, courtesy www.alertnet.org |
Three months after Pakistan experienced one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern times, the situation is worsening for many survivors in the remote valleys and mountains of the North West Frontier Province and Kashmir.
In the Allai Valley of northern Pakistan, Save the Children and the Pakistan Army helped rescue 100 families whose shelter could not withstand the heavy snows that began in earnest on New Year’s Day.
More than 2 feet of snow in the higher elevations and drenching rain in the foothills have cut off access to villages and forced the suspension of helicopter flights. Heavy snowfall damaged the field hospital in Bana operated by Save the Children but heroic efforts by staff and local volunteers kept the hospital functioning.
“Save the Children has made great strides to address the immediate emergency situation, but huge challenges remain,” said Bruce Rasmussen, Save the Children’s Pakistan field office director. “We are mounting an urgent effort to meet the winter-survival needs of earthquake-affected children and their families.”
Save the Children is sending out rescue teams to ascertain the needs of vulnerable children while continuing to distribute corrugated metal sheeting to hundreds of families so that they can have a roof over their heads.
Working against the clock across the vast disaster zone, Save the Children aims to ensure that children and families have a warm place to spend the extreme winter—and that the short- and long-term survival needs of the region’s vulnerable children are met.
The 7.6-magnitude quake on October 8, 2005, killed at least 73,000 people and made another 3 million people homeless. The Pakistani government estimates that more than 150,000 people still lack proper shelter.
“Children in this impoverished region were very vulnerable prior to the earthquake and are in an increasingly more desperate situation today, especially those in remote valleys,” said Rasmussen. “Many children suffer from malnutrition and diseases that should be preventable. But with little education, limited access to health services and the remoteness of the area, children remain in critical need of massive assistance.”
To date Save the Children has distributed tents, large plastic sheets and corrugated metal sheeting to provide basic shelter for nearly 30,000 families, along with household kits that include blankets, warm clothing and basic kitchen utensils. The organization is also delivering food rations for several months to more than 120,000 people, is conducting primary health care outreach services in remote areas and has set up 90 safe play areas and is giving more than 8,500 children in affected areas the opportunity to enter a classroom—many for the first time in their lives—by operating temporary learning centers and partnering with the government and local communities to rebuild destroyed schools.
Save the Children is calling on donor countries to make good on their November pledges to support the victims of the earthquake. Funding commitments for life-saving and life-sustaining shelter, food, healthcare and education have yet to be met, leaving international relief organizations working in the region with fewer tools to help curtail the massive suffering that is occurring.
Save the Children—which has been working in Pakistan for almost three decades—responded within hours of the disaster. Today the agency is providing food, shelter, medical services, psycho-social support and education services to children and families in some of the worst-hit and remote areas of the North West Frontier Province and Kashmir .
