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Church World Service Expanded Tent Village will Shelter 2,500 Pakistan Quake Survivors

A father and son forced to live away from their home, Balakot. Photo: CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan

October 27, 2005

Army Helps CWS Teams Drop Aid to Inaccessible Allai-Battagram

NEW YORK/ISLAMABAD – Following the United Nations meeting with donor nations yesterday to press for more and immediate funds for relief in earthquake-shattered northern Pakistan, humanitarian agency Church World Service today reports that it is expanding the capacity of a new tent village it has established in Bisyan for the most vulnerable quake survivors.

The tent village will now be able to provide shelter and medical services for 2,450 of the devastating October 8 quake’s most vulnerable survivors. The Church of Pakistan will provide medical services within the camp.

Forty families have already moved into the tents, in a shelter village that will have the capacity to set up 350 tents to accommodate almost 2,500 individuals. CWS's plan for the village includes field training for camp security staff.

Church World Service (CWS), other aid agencies, and government military support are accelerating efforts to rescue the injured and bring relief and temporary shelter to those in remote areas of the Himalayas who have yet to be reached.

Yesterday, the U.S. military began setting up a mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the quake-devastated capital of Pakistani Kashmir, and treated its first patients.

But despite the significant ratcheting up of response by world bodies in the past few days, tens of thousands of survivors and wounded have still not been reached or served in some northern Kashmir villages.

In three weeks or less, winter's bitter snowfalls and freezing temperatures will cut off roads that are already impassable from the earthquake. More than one million people are still homeless from the quake.

Meeting these challenges, Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan Regional Director Marvin Parvez says CWS and its partners have been able to mobilize and distribute shelter kits and food packages in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

"With help from the Pakistan Army, we have been airlifting relief goods to survivors in Allai-Battagram, one of the areas still not reachable by road," says Parvez.

Church World Service and its partner agencies who are members of Action by Churches Together (ACT) have been the largest donor of shelter and food packages in the area, says Pakistan Army Lt. Col. Ahmed Zakeer.

"With each tent provided," Zakeer said, "a family is being saved."

Global CWS, whose Pakistan/Afghanistan office has served in the region for fifty years, is assisting more than 20,000 of the worst affected families with shelter kits and family food kits and is providing medical assistance to 100,000.

To date, the agency and partners have distributed 3,185 shelter kits to serve 22,295 individuals and 2,563 food packages to serve 17,941 individuals in the affected areas of Shangla and Balakot.

Scrambling for tents

Church World Service is calling for national governments to release tents from warehouses throughout South Asia.

Pakistan's Col. Zakeer echoed the plea for tents, saying "Temperatures will drop in the next fifteen days, making survival next to impossible for those people living out in the open."

Responders say more than 450,000 tents are needed.

"Even though we have very little food and the water is dirty, we do manage. What we need are tents. Without tents and blankets, we will freeze to death," Fazi Akbar, from North West Frontier Province told Church World Service aid teams. Akbar is headmaster of a small school completely destroyed in the earthquake.

A NATO-UNHCR airlift from Turkey has so far flown 22 sorties and dropped approximately 250 metric tons of aid to Pakistan and is getting further support from a chartered Boeing 747 cargo jet that will join the operation.

The Indian army has said it can airlift supplies to the Line of Control that divides the long disputed region, and on Saturday India agreed to open relief camps for earthquake survivors from the Pakistani side of Kashmir, at three points along the Line of Control. Pakistan is examining the proposal.

Today the U.S. and NATO agreed to provide more helicopters to accelerate rescue sorties and air drops of supplies,

'Everywhere, the children's eyes are breaking our hearts.'

CWS's Parvez says, "Everywhere, the children's eyes are breaking our hearts. Most have lost at least a father or a mother," he says. "There is no clear figure as to how many children are displaced."

"We are receiving reports," he said, "that the limbs of quake-affected children are being amputated at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Polyclinic, and other hospitals because of a lack of plastic surgery experts."

"According to experts," he said, "many quake-affected children in Pakistan are suffering from mental disorders and physical disabilities owing to a lack of psychiatrists and plastic surgery experts in the country."

In addition to emergency relief, CWS is already beginning to put pieces in place to provide psychosocial services for quake survivors, especially the children, and the agency's long-term response will include shelter construction materials.

As chair of the Pak-Humanitarian Forum (PHF), Church World Service reports that in an emergency meeting yesterday, forum member NGOs discussed action plans to handle such priorities as: improving capacity at the airport in Islamabad to process aid shipments; the need to bring women physicians into the region--who would be guaranteed safety and security--particularly to care for pregnant women affected by the quake; and special attention to the needs of women and unaccompanied children

Church World Service's regional offices throughout Pakistan, whose staff members are Muslim and Christian, were on the ground and able to respond immediately after the quake struck and have been working in collaboration with the Pakistan government and other international relief organizations.

Sparked by Pakistan's immediate needs, Director of Microsoft Humanitarian Disaster Management David Roberts visited the country this week to offer technological assistance in helping set up a data management system deemed crucial for future community-level disaster planning and preparedness. Data gleaned from the current earthquake disaster will be stored as baseline information in the system, which Microsoft sees as part of a long-term partnership with Pakistan.

Sources: United Nations, regional authorities

Contributions to support earthquake survivors may be sent to:

Church World Service
Southern Asia Earthquake--#6979
P.O. Box 968
Elkhart, IN 46515

Contributions may also be made online, or by calling 800.297.1516, ext. 222.

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;

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