wfn.org | [UMNS-ALL-NEWS] UMNS# 664-Disaster provides lessons as relief workers

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Disaster provides lessons as relief workers prepare for winter

Nov. 30, 2005

NOTE: Photographs and a related report, UMNS story #665, are available
at http://umns.umc.org.

By Paul Jeffrey*

MANSEHRA, Pakistan (UMNS) - Sher Shaider's 6-year-old son was feeling
sick the morning of Oct. 8, so the school teacher decided to take him to
a clinic rather than go to work.

It saved Shaider's life and gave him a chance to work saving other lives
in his village of  Thakot.

Shaider is one of more than 1,500 school teachers in northern Pakistan
who have been trained in disaster preparedness and mitigation during the
last two years. The training was sponsored by Church World Service, a
member of Action by Churches Together, the international alliance of
churches and church-based agencies responding to emergencies. The work
of CWS is supported by the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which
is also a member of ACT.

The most recent training took place Oct. 2 in Balakot, where some 100
teachers - meeting in separate sessions for women and men - were coached
in preparedness for emergencies, including training their students to
crouch beside their desks, how to evacuate the building to a safe
location, and how to treat the wounded. CWS provided first-aid kits and
stretchers for each location.

And then, less than one week later, the big one struck.

In most places the preparation had little impact, as the brisk shaking
of the ground quickly knocked everyone to the floor, and concrete roofs
collapsed onto classroom after classroom full of children. Some
estimates claim as many as 10,000 classrooms collapsed in northern
Pakistan. Most of the teachers that CWS had trained in disaster
preparedness were killed, along with thousands of their students.

"There was no way out for them. No training could have helped them cope
with this kind of disaster," said Dennis Joseph, the associate director
of operations for CWS.

According to Saima Abbasi, a CWS field officer in the relief effort and
one of the trainers at the Oct. 2 session, a few teachers did survive,
with some reportedly hospitalized in nearby Abbottabad, but she's been
so busy helping homeless families prepare for the looming winter that
she hasn't had time to visit them.

She wants to hear how their training might have made a difference, but
she admits that in most cases, it probably did not. "They had no time to
respond," she said. "And now they're dead, many still buried under the
rubble."

Although he wasn't in his classroom, Shaider said he put his training to
work by helping provide first aid to several families, evacuating
damaged structures and organizing a team to save farm animals trapped in
a collapsed shed.

Now he has taken a leading role in organizing survivors to prepare for
the harsh winter ahead. "We've been devastated by the earthquake, but
there is still a lot we can do to survive and begin to rebuild," he
said.

Preparedness is crucial

Throughout Pakistan, people face the challenges of a variety of
recurrent disasters, but the country's mountainous north, according to
CWS Director Marvin Parvez, is Pakistan's only multi-hazard area,
subject to mudslides, flash floods, earthquakes, and more. "You name it,
you get it in the north," Parvez said.

That's why the disaster preparedness and mitigation program of CWS,
launched in 2002, had focused much of its attention on the north. Since
1981, CWS had a health program operating among Afghan refugees in the
area, so it already had staff on the ground and good relationships with
local leaders.

It was a natural place to crank up the disaster preparedness program,
using teachers as a port of entry into remote communities that are often
reluctant to trust outsiders. The program also sought to improve the
capacity of local nongovernmental organizations whose close
relationships with village members put them in a position to strengthen
the resilience of local communities by fostering a culture of
preparedness.

It was slow work. The earthquake cut it short. Yet CWS officials
maintain they're on the right track. "We firmly believe that response is
not the solution," said Mansoor Raza, the coordinator of the CWS
disaster program. "The solution to emergencies lies in preparedness."

Even though 17 of its staff lost family members to the quake, CWS moved
fast in the wake of the tragedy. It was the first organization to get
tents into Batagram, quickly moving 600 shelter kits it had
pre-positioned in a Karachi warehouse. Many were airdropped by Pakistan
Army helicopters into remote villages.

"At the hour of our greatest need, it was CWS that came to the rescue of
our people," said Brigadier General Khalid Mehmood Ahmed, the
coordinator of the army's relief efforts in Batagram.

Yet Parvez claims CWS' initial response could have been even better
given the severity of the emergency. He wants CWS to position 5,000
tents around the country in preparation for future disasters. "Each tent
saves many lives," he said.

Parvez said the quake showed several areas where CWS and the government
need to improve their preparation.

"The first search and rescue team to reach the earthquake area came all
the way from Great Britain, and it took 22 hours for them to reach here.
That's great, and we appreciate their sacrifice and help. But why don't
we have our own rescue teams trained and ready to go here, teams that
could reach affected areas faster and thus save even more lives?" Parvez
asked.

CWS is also ensuring that its current disaster response doesn't
contribute to future crises. That means doing things differently than in
the past.

The agency is working with Arif Hasan, a renowned Pakistani architect
and urban planner, to develop a manual for village-level masons. As CWS
helps villagers rebuild their homes and schools, Raza said the manual
will help in the creation of "seismic-sensitive" structures that can
withstand the frequent tremors that continue to shake the steep valleys
in Pakistan's north.

"We're also going to help the survivors salvage what they can from the
rubble, so as not to put more pressure on the environment," Raza said.
"Abuse of the environment contributed to the landslides that the
earthquake provoked." Linking its disaster response to underlying issues
of vulnerability is a key component of CWS' emergency response.

Don't blame nature

CWS, which established a presence here in 1954, has taken a leading role
among nongovernmental organizations responding to the quake. It
coordinates the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum, which meets regularly to
share information and coordinate response among 40 private groups
involved in the disaster response.

The quake also underscores the importance of CWS' Emergency Response
Center, which the organization set up to examine the four elements that
Raza claims are central to preparedness: environmental issues,
governance, demographics and emergency response.

"The center is a space where all the stakeholders can come together and
dialogue about these issues," he said. "We collect information about the
four variables and disseminate it to all the relevant actors, including
NGOs, civil society groups, the media and government officials."

That generates discussion, CWS officials hope, about the structural
problems that translate into vulnerability at the local level.

According to Bishop Samuel Azariah of the Raiwind Diocese of the Church
of Pakistan, the hundreds of school buildings that collapsed during the
quake, entombing thousands of children, are a dramatic indicator of how
nature can't take all the blame for the suffering.

"The quake reveals problems of bad management. Many of the schools that
collapsed were built with World Bank money, and there was bad
management, lack of foresight and probably corruption in the
construction of these schools," he said. "They often weren't constructed
with the best materials available. It's a nightmare that will take us
many years to get over."

"The contractors who built the schools wanted to make as much money as
they could," Joseph said, "and they didn't always use the right
materials. And most of them aren't engineers, they're just a guy with a
pickup truck who knows how to pile up bricks until they make a house or
a school.

"As we reconstruct, we need to rethink the style of buildings we build,
and start making them earthquake resistant," he explained.

Raza, who directs the Emergency Response Center, suggested the quake's
destruction highlights the hard structural questions that need to be
asked by NGOs, civil society groups, and other stakeholders in the
emergency response.

"After 57 years of independence from Britain, why does a man in the
center of the North-West Frontier Province not have even a road into his
village? If there's a health unit there, why is there no doctor? These
kinds of shocks are expected in this region, but why did planners seem
unaware of this? Why weren't there plans on how to deal with this
crisis?

"The biggest lesson learned in this earthquake is that we have to put
pressure on the right circles to spend rightly on the right people," he
said.

One of the most important tasks for private relief groups is to realize
the limits of what they can do, he added. "In a disaster, NGOs can only
fill the gap. It's the responsibility of the government, not the NGOs,
to protect its citizens."

Solidarity, Azariah noted, is needed for the long haul. "The work of
rehabilitation and resettling people will be the most tedious,
difficult, and costly part of responding to the earthquake," he said.
Money and professional help will be needed long after the quake ceases
to be news.

"We're preparing to do what we can," he said, "but we're also going to
need our sisters and brothers to help us."

*Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary and senior correspondent for
Response Magazine.

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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