Relief workers prepare for winter in Asia

UM agency supports
Church World Service
in Pakistan, Kashmir

United Methodist News Service
MANSEHRA, Pakistan—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.
That decision saved Shaider’s life and gave him a chance to work saving other lives in his village of Thakot.
An earthquake that day devastated northern Pakistan, killing some 80,000 people and leaving 3 million homeless.
Shaider is one of more than 1,500 school teachers in northern Pakistan who 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. That’s the international alliance of churches and church-based agencies responding to emergencies.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief, also a member of ACT, is supporting Church World Service in Pakistan.
The most recent training, done by Church World Service, disaster-response arm of the National Council of Churches, took place Oct. 2 in Balakot, Pakistan, where some 100 teachers were coached in preparedness for emergencies.
And then, less than one week later, the big one struck.
In most places the preparation had little impact. The brisk shaking of the ground quickly knocked everyone to the floor. Concrete roofs collapsed onto classrooms full of children.
Some estimate that 10,000 classrooms collapsed in northern Pakistan. Most of the teachers that Church World Service had trained in disaster preparedness were killed, along with thousands of their students.
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.
Throughout Pakistan, people face the challenges of a variety of recurrent disasters, but the country’s mountainous north, Church World Service Director Marvin Parvez said, is Pakistan’s only multi-hazard area. It is subject to mudslides, flash floods, earthquakes and more.
That’s why the disaster preparedness and mitigation program of Church World Service, launched in 2002, had focused much of its attention on the north. Since 1981, the agency 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 when the Oct. 8 earthquake hit.
Even though 17 of its staff members lost relatives members to the quake, Church World Service 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.
Donations to help with earthquake relief work in Pakistan can be placed into church offering plates marked for “UMCOR Advance No. 232000, Pakistan Earthquake.”