IR's intervention over the last two days

Islamic Relief's intervention over the last couple of days:

Friday 21 October
IR aid workers distributed tents, food, blankets and jerrycans benefiting more than 5,000 people in 10 villages in the Bagh district.

In a separate distribution in Bagh, IR staff handed out 197 tents, 397 mattresses and 563 quilts, as well as food, jerrycans and warm clothes.

In the Dhirkot district, IR staff made two aid distributions of food, blankets, mattresses, kitchen sets and quilts. The first benefited nearly 4,000 people in 14 villages, the second benefited over 1,000 people in 7 villages.

In Neelum Valley, IR distributed 143 tents and 800 plastic sheets. The distribution took place in the villages of Chalayana and Baliahah.

IR staff distributed blankets, kitchen sets, mattresses and food packs in Rawalakot, benefiting around 1,400 people.

source

Other interesting reads:

Jamsheed Din's Diary
Stories from the field

Latest Progress Update from TCF

Thanks to Sarah Karim for the TCF's latest progress report update:

TCF's two-phased strategy on track; overwhelming need forces additions of Field Hospitals.

Immediate Relief: Our target was to provide basic care packages including tents, blankets and food rations to 20,000 affected people. Of this we have provided relief supplies to nearly 10,000 people and tented accommodation to 1,000 families. This program is vigorously being pursued.

Permanent Housing: Surveying the area and researching the best suited design for the construction of 5,000 seismically designed homes over the next two years, remains as per plan. Building new schools in these areas will be central to our reconstruction program.

TCF Field Hospitals: The plight of the injured being brought in impelled us to direct our attention to setting up 3 Field Hospitals at Neelam Ground - Muzaffarabad, Batal-Mansehra, High Court-Muzaffarabad. With the support of specialist doctors from Karachi major operations and procedures are being conducted. A team of doctors from UK is joining them next week.

More Information can be found here.

URGENT: Young medical doctors needed for medical team working with SUNGI out of Muzaffarabad

The following email came into us from Sarah Karim, an aid worker assisting Sungi quake relief ops:

I post this on behalf of a close friend who just called me from Muzzaffarabad, where he is working with SUNGI. SUNGI urgently needs medical doctors and/or final year medical students as part of a medical team to travel by foot for several hours to outlying villages beyond Muzaffarabad that have not been accessed at all as they are only accessibly by foot, and where individuals and families need urgent medical help.

If you are willing to be part of SUNGI's medical team, and can go volunteers for 4-7 days or more, please contact me URGENTLY at sarah(dot)karim(at)gmail(dot)com .

New York City Benefit Show on Oct. 21 2005

SAWCC Earthquake Relief Fundraiser
Performances & Silent Art Auction
Friday, October 21, 7pm
Asian American Writers Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th floor
(btw. 5th & 6th aves, NYC)

Please join the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC) to help raise funds for earthquake victims in South Asia. 100% of proceeds will be donated to the Edhi Foundation and to community members giving direct aid at the grassroots level. Please bring in-kind donations of painkillers, blankets, and warm clothing. Home-made food will be served.

For more information on in-kind donations: www.yourdil.org/projects/relief

Line-up:
Musical Guest: Falu - "Hidden Gem" hot pick in Pop Montreal Festival, September 2005

Performances by: Alka Bhargava, Edward Garcia, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Tahani Salah, Suneet Sethi, Saba Waheed, Kron Vollmer

Visual Art for auction donated by: Jaishri Abichandani, Amanda Cartagena, Chitra Ganesh, Swati Khurana, Maxwell Fine Arts, Saeed Rahman, Chamindika Wanduragala

Directions to Asian American Writers' Workshop
N, R, Q, W, F, B, D, V, 1, 2, 3, 9 to 34th Street; 4, 5, 6 trains to 33rd Street

(From Saurav Sarkar.)

Update on SMS Reports

Further to this post, we now have a cellphone number in place in Pakistan.

So, to send messages that will appear on http://smsquake.blogspot.com,

You can mail sms2blog AT gmail DOT com

or

You can send an SMS to Imran Hashmi at +923008568418.

Please give your location and name in your message.

Oxfam tent innovation

Oxfam have come up with an ingenious new tent based on materials that are locally available. They cost around $140 each, 6 people can sleep in them, they are easy to put together - you don't actually need any tools to erect one of these tents:

See: Oxfam innovates to tackle shelter crisis in earthquake zone

with images: here

UN warns of a second wave of death

A scathing report of the poor response of the major donors so far to the Asia earthquake.

A few snippets from the report:

Jan Egeland said of the aid sent so far: "This is not enough. We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse." [...]

The UN children's agency, Unicef, has warned that a further 10,000 children could die if relief efforts are not boosted.
[...]

Mr Annan's chief aid co-ordinator in Islamabad, Andrew McLeod, told the BBC the world had failed to understand the severity of the situation. "We have one of the best organised relief operations going here, and we are just not getting the funding. If the second wave of deaths hit, it's the major donors that are going to have to look at themselves in the mirror and ask why."

SMS updates

We now have updates via SMS on a new blog, http://smsquake.blogspot.com. Anyone can post there. That means you.

To post to this blog, at present, you will need a phone that can send SMSes (text messages) to an email address. Send your updates to sms2blog AT gmail DOT com

We're working on a method by which you will be able to send updates to a cellphone number. We hope to have a number from Pakistan to which you can send your messages to be relayed to this blog.

Anyone who'd like to volunteer the use of their phone number for this purpose, please email quakehelp AT gmail DOT com.

Pakistan - resources - list of tent suppliers

Ramla A of HelpPakistan.net has sent in a list of tent vendors

Appeal - India - Delhi

[via email from Danish Husain]

Thousands have been affected by the earthquake in Kashmir. They are in dire need of medical and material assistance A team of doctors and volunteers from the Hussaini Relief Committee with assistance from the AMAN Charitable Trust, Delhi, have set up medical relief camps in Kamalkote area of Uri. We are trying to provide shelter, medical relief and warm clothes to the victims.

Please donate generously though cheques drawn in favour of AMAN (Public Charitable Trust). Please write 'For Earthquake Relief' behind the cheque. Your donations will be exempted from Income tax. Please send your cheques to C-651 , 1st Floor, New Friends Colony. New Delhi-110065

About Us

The AMAN Trust and the Hussaini Relief Committee set up a Primary Health Care Centre in Mattipora Village of Baramulla district in the Kashmir Valley in 2004. Land for the Centre was donated by the villagers and the Centre was inaugurated by the Divisional Commissioner. More than 3000 patients have benefited from services provided till date."

First Birth in Devastated AJK at a TCF Relief Camp

New life emerged from the ruins of devastated Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday when a woman rescued from an earthquake-devastated mountain village gave birth to a baby girl. The woman, Naseema Bibi, was outside her home in the remote Himalayan village of Paktika when the earthquake struck a week ago, her husband said.

“I’m very happy, I have a new baby,” said the father, Mohammad Munir, who had been camping out in the cold and wet with his wife and two other children since their home was destroyed.

“I was very worried, I didn’t know what to do, she was pregnant, then a helicopter came and brought us here,” he said, speaking at an emergency clinic set up in a ruined army camp in Muzaffarabad.

His wife and new baby, Fareen, were resting inside the tent. Both were doing fine. “It’s the last thing we expected,” said Adnan Asdar of the Citizens Foundation, a Pakistani aid group running the centre. “There’s some good news, we’re very happy. We’re all enjoying this for five or 10 minutes then we have to get back to work.”

Helicopters are still rescuing injured from outlying villages cut off by landslides and bringing them in to Muzaffarabad, while in the ruined city bodies are still being dug out of the rubble. Soldiers were on Saturday looking for the last of 12 employees killed in a bank in the city centre, using a digger to remove huge chunks of broken concrete and twisted metal. Read More ....


Source: Daily Times

Update Wednesday

Hey everyone its update wednesday! Well big news today, we had a giant tremor this morning around 7:32 A.M. and my God was it rough! My guess it was around 6.3 - 6.4 and it lasted nearly a minute, or it just seemed that long.

I sent an sms about it a few minutes after the occurance but it doesn't seem to be posted so I dont think it made it over the border. Angelo / Peter, kindly look into that.

Anyway, Evacuee Trust Complex rattled so work was cancelled. Schools have been cancelled since last week until th 24th, but I believe that will be pushed forward again too. This is becoming a real nuisance and unfortunately we are not becoming numb to the tremors.

Just when they started becoming small and insignificant, we had to get our knickers in a twist!

TENTS!

UNHCR has made it official:

http://www.unhcr.ch/donate/redirect.html


For tent buying, I took the liberty of finding websites that sell and ship tents in the US and maybe even abroad.

Altrec

Bizrate Camping Gear

Camping Gear Outlet

Cabela's

Campmor

Cross-posted at http://zohare.blogspot.com/2005/10/tents.html

Pakistan's Quake Relief Flights Resume

A halt in heavy rains Monday allowed helicopter relief flights to resume across Pakistan's quake zone, but fresh landslides hampered efforts to move supplies by road. Officials estimated the death toll could now be more than 54,000.

Pakistan said it was willing to accept an offer from rival India to send helicopters for earthquake relief operations, but without Indian pilots - either military or commercial. The nations have fought three wars since 1947, but India has sent quake relief aid to its neighbor.

``Pakistan was ... willing to accept helicopters from India if these were offered without pilots,'' the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. ``Given the obvious sensitivities, we could not accept involvement of Indian military on our side for relief operations.''

Read more at: The Guardian

EFICOR relief efforts in Kashmir

EFICOR responded to the Jammu & Kashmir earthquake by deputing its staff on behalf of the Disaster Co-ordination Committee (DCC) to make assessment of the damages and need of the affected victims for emergency relief.

Details of updates from the EFICOR team:

http://eficor.org/

Earlier updates:

Update 1: http://eficor.org/main/mainm/jk_day1.htm
Update 2: http://eficor.org/main/mainm/jk_day2.htm

Relief Goods

If anyone wishes to send relief goods by land into Pakistan or any other way, kindly feel free to contact me for how the distribution of those goods may be done best.
Right now, the biggest problem is not supply of goods because believe me there is plenty, it is coordination of the distribution and appropriate distribution.
Deserving Elders, women, children and severely injured individuals first, then the remaining villagers.

Zoharehaider@gmail.com
+92-333-528-9108

Relief material collection in Kolkota

If you live in Kolkota and wish to donate relief material for the earth-quake affected in Srinagar, this organization is collecting material including woollen blankets and tents.

The Telegraph reports on this, The first lot, comprising 50 shelter boxes, was sent on Saturday. The boxes, worth $ 1,000 each and sent by Rotarians in the US, have provisions for 10 people, including sleeping bags, utensils and water purification tablets. Fifty more boxes will accompany 6,000 blankets, 200 tents and several thousand woollens and clothes in the next consignment. Woollens, blankets and tents can be sent to 12 Sunny Park, opposite Ballygunge Post Office, Calcutta 19. Phone 22829898/97. (Link through Indian Writing)

SMS Situational Report #2

This sms just came in from Zohare on the ground:

We just experienced an intense 2 second tremor wave.

SMS Report #1 from Relief Youth Group on the ground

This is the first SMS report with more SMS reports to follow, which was sent directly from the ground via dedicated SMS lines (operating on a 24-hour basis) from a team of citizen journalists and SMS reporters in affected areas, some of whom are contributors to the QuakeHelp Wiki & Blog Network. The following SMS report came from Zohare who’s with the Youth Relief Group - Islamabad):

Time:23.15GMT/Location: Sutan Gali/Situation: Snowfall on mountains of affected kashmir. No activity from army still. People in mountains not receiving any supplies enough for residents. Access restricted for civilians due to poor road conditions.

Necessities

Today is a very rainy day with hailstorms and heavy rain drops. This is going to hamper the rescue efforts and recovery work for all regions affected. The biggest concern at this moment, more than anything, is how to get these people to be self-sufficient so they can again fend for themselves.

The most important thing the survivors need now is tents. Most of the people who still have erect houses refuse to sleep inside fearful that it may collapse. One cannot blame them, they are petrified. The continuous tremors only contributes to the fear.

Another thing that is lacking, and I made a post regarding this on my blog too, that these people are desperate for anything to keep them warm. If they loot your truck its for two reasons:
1. You didn't stop and that makes them wonder if its not for them then who is it for
2. because you drive by on your way down without explaining what makes them less deserving.

I had three occasions where people started getting aggressive and rowdy, the best way to handle them is to raise your voice so as to attract their attention, do not be afraid because they don't want to be violent but if you look at their conditions, you would behave no differently.

Try to stop and talk to them. tell them that we are trying to see different places that are damaged so that we can determine how much of what is required here to help get things back on track. If you do not communicate with them, they will act out of character and that will create unnecessary nonsense. Be considerate of everyone when trying to help out. It is neither their fault nor ours. We are going to get through this if we stick together and stay focused.