wfn.org | [UMNS-ALL-NEWS] UMNS# 663-Earthquake survivors still living on the

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Earthquake survivors still living on the edge

Nov. 30, 2005

NOTE: Photographs and a related report, UMNS story #664, are available
at http://umns.umc.org.

By United Methodist News Service*

Winter weather has left hundreds of thousands of South Asian earthquake
survivors still without proper shelter, according to relief
organizations.

As a consequence, the first cold-related deaths were reported Nov. 29 by
the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Two children died of pneumonia
and a man died of hypothermia, according to the United Nations.

The Oct. 8 earthquake killed an estimated 80,000 people and left up to 3
million homeless. Snow has started to block delivery of relief supplies
by helicopter or road to the affected villages in the Himalayas.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief is working with Church World
Service to assist earthquake survivors, particularly in northern
Pakistan and Kashmir.

Another emerging problem, according to Marvin Parvez, CWS
Pakistan-Afghanistan regional director, is that many of the emergency
tents already distributed are not winterized, prompting some to light
fires inside the tents. In Maiddan, a village north of Islamabad
destroyed by the earthquake, two children have died because of a tent
fire, he reported.

"Many of these survivors have never lived in tents, have no knowledge of
the fire hazards facing them, and they're not being given basic fire
prevention instructions or any kind of fire-extinguishing equipment,"
Parvez said Oct. 28. "It only takes one candle."

CWS is urging all nongovernmental agencies responding in Pakistan "to
work together to at least give the survivors basic safety instructions."
With offices throughout Pakistan, CWS is coordinator of the Pakistan
Humanitarian Forum.

In Washington, Donna Derr, director of the CWS Emergency Response
Program, said basic fire-extinguishing equipment should be part of tent
or shelter supplies. CWS is pursuing additional resources for
alternative shelter options and additional heating equipment and for
solutions to the fire hazard concerns.

On Nov. 5, CWS - working with Finnchurchaid, Norwegian Church Aid and
Great Britain's Christian Aid - distributed a donation from Finland's
Ministry of the Interior that provided blankets, sweaters and enough
winterized tents and heaters to shelter 15,000 people.

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 or online at
www.methodistrelief.org. 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/index.stm.

*Church World Service contributed information to this report.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org

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