Relief operation slowed by poor weather

Bad weather conditions were seriously hampering earthquake relief efforts in northern Pakistan on Monday, with dozens of helicopter flights cancelled. Millions of survivors without shelter were drenched by heavy rain and left freezing as temperature plummeted. Up 20 cm of snow fell in some high altitude areas. “The bad weather has cost us a day and a half of our operations with 30 flights cancelled,” said Walid Ibrahim, a logistics officer with the World Food Programme (WFP) in Muzaffarabad, close to the epicentre of the 8 October quake in which more than 86,000 people are known to have died. “That’s 270 mt of aid, which is food for 4,500 people for a month,” Ibrahim said. Relief flights for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Save the Children were also among those disrupted. “Our projects are mostly helicopter-dependent and if the weather conditions aren’t good we can’t fly, which is really bad for us,” said Claude-Andre Nadon, a logistics coordinator with the IOM. Nadon said that the IOM is now concentrating its efforts on areas that can be reached by road. With the rain loosening unstable debris and earth, delivering aid by mountain roads is a perilous option with risks of landslides and rock falls. But sometimes there is no other option. There is little flat land near the villages of Hariyola and Darbang, so even if weather conditions are good, there is no place for a helicopter to land. There is also no road leading to the village, only a rocky dirt path just wide enough for a jeep. The rain has turned the earth into a sticky mud soup. A thick, white mist hangs low over Hariyola as a downpour of rain pelts the crumbled ruins of the houses. Survivors crouch under fallen sheets of corrugated iron and under half-collapsed buildings for refuge. The IOM is the first international aid agency to reach these villages, but for some it is too late. “A few children have already died from pneumonia,” said Raja Mohammad Mumtaz Khan, a village elder from Darbang and the head of a local NGO working with the IOM. The villages are in desperate need of aid and medical attention. Both village clinics were destroyed by the quake and the female health worker in Darbang – who enables services to be offered to women - is without shelter and is contemplating leaving. “There are 25 children suffering from pneumonia and diarrhoea. If not treated in time this will kill the children,” said Ehtisham Ulhaq, a doctor working with the IOM. “The medical needs are urgent. Winter is coming and it’s getting colder and colder,” Ulhaq said. Most of the locals lived in traditional ‘kacha’ houses, made of timber and mud, with heavy earth roofs. These collapsed in seconds, crushing everything beneath them. The livestock that survived the quake escaped and the villagers have lost their goats, sheep and buffalo, a vital source of food and income. Food stocks for winter were destroyed as well as maize and wheat fields. Soon these villages – and scores around them - will be blocked off by up to 1.5 metres of snow and survivors will be forced to walk over five hours to reach the nearest town of Chatter Kalas. The IOM is providing shelter kits to 100 of the most vulnerable households and 3,000 blankets to the rest of the population in Hariyola and Darbang. Each family will get 12 blankets, which can also be used to insulate their tents, eight corrugated iron sheets, two different types of tarpaulin and tools for building. But, as with hundreds of villages in the region, getting aid to Hariyola is a logistical nightmare and delivery and distribution is a slow and arduous process. “The main problem lies in transport. It rains just one day and it’s tough to get even a 4x4 [vehicle] up here, so for big trucks it’s impossible,” said Nadon. The IOM will send four trucks a day for three days, packed with shelter kits. The trucks will travel as far as the road allows, and then the aid will be transported by foot to a distribution point near the villages. In Hariyola, a group of barefoot children wearing thin, cotton clothes huddle around a fire for warmth. Sitting in the ruins of a crumbling house surrounded by apple and apricot trees and overlooking mountains green with thick pine forests, they warm their hands. “The cold is our biggest problem,” says 15-year-old Ranaha Afaq. “Last night my baby sister died of the cold, of pneumonia,” she said. At four months old, Ranaha’s sister was too small to withstand the icy nights. Ranaha is used to walking in the rain. Her daily trek to school takes two hours, a journey she has made countless times in the bitter winter, although since her school was flattened by the quake she has not left Hariyola. But, like the other children around her, her clothes were buried in rubble of her home. “We just want to be warm,” she said.