Red Cross Blogs

Pakistan floods: from writer to relief worker

By Sarah Oughton
October 4, 2010 at 1:30 pm

Last week I was writing about our Pakistan Floods Appeal from my desk in London and this week I find myself deployed to help with the distribution of emergency relief in Sindh province – this job is never dull!

When the floods began in the north of the country in July the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies responded quickly, co-ordinating the emergency response with Red Cross National Societies around the world. A number of emergency response units (ERU) were deployed immediately to help with the distribution of food, tarpaulins, blankets and other items as well as to provide medical attention and clean water.

Over the last couple of months as the floods continued south and the disaster has grown (now affecting huge swathes of the country and one in eight people), more emergency response units have been deployed, including the British Red Cross logistics ERU.

Early on, the Finnish and Danish Red Cross set up a warehouse in Mardan, Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa province from which they continue to distribute emergency relief items to people affected in the mountainous north.

Last month, the British Red Cross set up two warehouses in the south of the country – one in Multan, Punjab province and one even further south in Sukkur, Sindh province. After working flat out to get the warehouses up and running the four member team has been reaching up to 14,000 households a week with food parcels and other emergency items. Each household has approximately seven people.

The first team has now returned and a second team is now in place – which is where I come in. I am replacing Kate Thomas – who has been blogging about her role in responding to the floods over the past month on Posterous.

Like Kate, my role will be to keep on top of what emergency relief items we are expecting to be delivered. This means tracking every movement of every aid item from the moment it arrives in the country by sea or air, it’s transport to our warehouse and finally delivery to the people who so desperately need it.

Tracking the goods is vital so that the rest of my team can keep the flow of aid smooth. The challenges when dealing with such huge quanities of stock include making sure there’s enough room in the warehouse when it needs to be delivered and stored and enough trucks, time and people to load the aid when it needs be distributed.

It may sound strange that the Red Cross has sent me – as someone who works in communications – to help with the delivery of relief, but it’s not quite as random as it sounds!

I also have a background in the operational side of the Red Cross’ work and I have undergone the training necessary to join our logistics emergency response unit. In 2006, I was deployed to Indonesia after an earthquake in Yogyakarta and in 2007 I worked in the Maldives on the tsunami recovery programme.

So, today, I’m in Islamabad being briefed about the operation and tomorrow I will go to Sukkur. I am here for three weeks and I know it’s going to be busy as already the plans are to ramp up our distributions to double the amount. But after sitting in London writing about the floods for the last couple of months it feels good to be here and to get stuck into the emergency operation.

Although the floodwaters are beginning to recede in most areas, the emergency is far from over. Millions of people have lost everything and desperately need ongoing support with food, clean water and healthcare.

So much land has been damaged and it’s unlikely it will be fit for the next planting season, which is fast approaching.

Although the Pakistan Red Crescent, with support from the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, has already reached more than one million people with emergency food and other aid, this support will be needed for months to come.

If you want to keep up to date with the work we’re doing in Pakistan, I’ll be uploading photos and blogging on our emergencies blog.

Images © Olav Saltbones/IFRC

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Tags: ERU, logistics, Pakistan

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Emergencies, International. 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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