Red Cross Blogs

Four deadly disasters, one Red Cross

By Claire Durham
October 3, 2009 at 6:35 pm

I was in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday assessing the life saving items we hold in our regional warehouse when I heard that an earthquake measuring 7.9 had struck the west coast of Indonesia. This brought the number of near-simultaneous disasters to rock the Asia Pacific region to four. The local Red Crosses started to respond immediately after the disasters to support the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless and injured and in desperate need of food shelter and first aid. The British Red Cross has launched a regional appeal and the money raised will support Red Cross National Societies responding on the ground.

On Friday morning I was woken by a text message requesting a logistics emergency response unit (ERU) to go to Padang in Indonesia to assist the relief effort following the earthquake.  We are ready to respond 365 days a year, so I knew that we already had a team and kit on standby.  The British Red Cross has sent ERU teams to earthquakes in Gujarat, Bam and Yogyakarta so we know the job that will face our team when they arrive. Their main task will be to find warehousing and trucks to store and move the large number of life-saving items such as blankets, water containers and mosquito nets that the survivors are most likely to need.

As the team packed their bags and made their way into the London office, there was still a lot of work for us to do behind the scenes.  It’s hard to know at this time if there will be any buildings left for the team to stay in, so basic camping equipment was sent down from our warehouse in Bristol.  We also packed up laptops, printers, mobile phones and other equipment to enable them to do their job.

Saturday morning was an early start for everyone. The team was given a briefing about the situation they would be arriving into.  Jamie, the team leader, gave a live interview to Sky News before the whole team piled into taxis and headed for Heathrow.  I met the team at Terminal 4 and we headed in with six trolleys loaded up with suitcases and kit boxes, each step being recorded by a photographer and film crew.

The airline kindly opened up a special desk for us and we set about the task of getting everyone and everything checked in. With one final interview completed and hugs all  round, the team headed off through passport control and into the departure lounge.  I know how they’ll be feeling as I was part of the ERU team that went to Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr. There is a certain level of trepidation as you don’t know exactly what things will be like when you arrive but there’s a calmness as you have been trained to do this job and a keenness to put your skills into action, as you know will really be improving the situation for thousands of people. Hopefully the team will also manage to get some sleep on the flight as they will be working very hard and very long hours for the month that they are away.

Like most people, I have kept one eye on the news almost constantly and the film clips from Padang, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Samoan islands shows a real need to support people in severe need.  I’ve just footage of the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) who have walked miles to make it into some of the remote villages that have been cut off as all the roads are blocked or damaged.  The emerging picture is one of wider scale devastation than first thought, as is so often the case in these situations.

I’ve worked for the Red Cross for three years and I still feel incredibly proud when I hear the name or see the emblem.  Nearly every country in the world has a Red Cross, Red Crescent or Red Crystal but we work together to form the world’s largest humanitarian organisation and we are there before, during and after natural disasters.  The work that we do really does save lives.

The next time I’ll hear from the ERU is when I get a phone call in around lunchtime tomorrow letting me know that they have arrived safe and sound. The team, like so many Red Cross staff and volunteers across the globe will be working tirelessly to support these operations over the coming days and weeks.  If you want to get involved then you too can help us to help others.

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Tags: earthquake, Emergency Appeal, emergency response unit, Indonesia, logistics, natural disaster, Padang, PMI, relief, South Asia, volunteers

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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