Terry Raines, who heads disaster relief for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board left for Hungary and Pakistan on Oct. 16. After spending a couple of days in Budapest with Hungarian Baptists planning their work, Terry left for Pakistan. Following are reports he emailed Oct. 24.
Thursday, Oct. 20
The situation here is desperate.
I am here with one Hungarian Baptist Aid staff member and one of their volunteers. We have secured supplies (tents, beds, blankets, rain coats, lamps and oil) for a village of 100 made homeless by the earthquake. The village will be set up on the grounds of what was a “degree college” in the province/town of Bahg-maybe 30 or so kilometers from the quake's epicenter. We saw the supplies loaded on a truck this evening. The truck will roll into Bahg tomorrow.
As the proverbial crow flies, it is not so far from Islamabad. But with the Himalayan roads and the landslides, it is about a 10-hour travel by truck. A Pakistani driver will have to make that trip alone. We will fly up Saturday via Army helicopter (Pakistani? U.S.? We shall see. It will be the luck of the draw) to see to the set up and get some pictures.
These supplies with transport will be about $5,600. We brought in $15,000, ($10,000 from Hungarian World Aid/
Baptist World Aid and $5,000 from the Virginia Baptist Mission Board). These funds will pay the tent village bill and buy some other supplies for distribution, if we can find them.
There are several significant problems with getting relief in:
• The roads are very bad.
• There are no facilities left from which to base good relief camps/distribution centers.
• The significantly-effected quake zone is enormous, approximately 50,000 square kilometers, I am told. The people lived in very spread-out fashion all along the sides of the mountains. Along with the fact that most public facilities (all in Bahg) were destroyed-meaning there is no good base-there are few central points where clinics, feedings, etc., can be set up to reach many from one spot. Workers must go from house to house or, at best, from tiny village to tiny village.
• It is very difficult to find relief supplies to purchase and distribute. They must be ordered in from other countries.
• There is no centralized coordination of efforts. Add to this the desperation of the people and you get near chaos. Efficiency, at best, is an issue. In some cases, security is as well.
Sunday, Oct. 23
Saturday morning, my Hungarian colleagues and I hopped a Pakistani Air Force helicopter and flew into the mountains to Bahg. Unfortunately, the expected 4 p.m. [return] helicopter did not materialize, so we ended up having to stay the night. Bedrolls on the floor of a warehouse tent weren't so bad-not nearly so hard as the absence of bathroom facilities when one is surrounded by homeless people watching closely for aid to appear! At any rate, we survived both the night and the truck ride back today. (The helicopter flight was about 45 minutes. The truck ride was an amazingly quick five hours, thanks to good weather, no mud or rock slides and no dead animals in the road. The trip has been known to take more than 10.)
The situation is very difficult. Springs and rivers provide the only running water. Rubble is every place the eye falls. And the air is filled with, as the Pakistanis say, “the smell of death.” Few of the dead have been removed from the collapsed buildings. The reason? Very little machinery. I saw only a handful of helicopters and only a few pieces of heavy road equipment to repair the way by land. The result is great difficulty in getting supplies in.
You probably know of the conflict between India and Pakistan over the region of Kashmir. One effect is that, when it comes to services and development, Kashmir is literally “no ones” land. Neither Pakistan nor India really take care of it. You can tell a drastic difference in the roads when you cross the river that is the border between Kashmir and Pakistan. Topographically and politically, this earthquake could not have come to a worse location.
Because of donor fatigue caused by the tsunami and the U.S. hurricanes and because the U.S. military is spread so thin between our Gulf area and the Iraqi area, the earthquake could not have come at a worse time. The situation is pretty desperate.
Along the road from Bahg back to Islamabad, we stopped at a site where apparently three houses had once stood. All were flattened. These had been the homeplaces of three related families. More children than I could count were scurrying about amidst the rubble. As we talked (through an interpreter) with the survivors, we learned that several family members had died and still lay beneath the rubble. One of the children, a young girl, looked me in the eye and said, “My mother died.” She was one of those that lay beneath. Another said his little brother, age 1 and a half, had died as well. Proudly, one pointed to a hole in the rubble and said that another, more fortunate, child had been rescued there. These families were living and sleeping amidst this scene. We told them that we would bring for them some tents. The women made a mad dash to dip cups in a kettle of water boiling above a fire and then to make for us hot tea with goat's milk. They proudly extended to us trays serving the tea with biscuits (cookies) from their relief rations, gifts for new friends. It was a humbling time.
An unforeseen problem has arisen. People are not willing to leave their destroyed homes to find shelter in the tent village. In some cases, they have occupied land they have no deed to and are fearful that if they leave they may not be allowed to return. In even more cases, however, family members lie buried beneath the rubble and they will not leave them.
A strong and compassionate Pakistani Air Force captain has taken leave and gone on his own to Bahg to try to organize care for the people there. He has a good strategy and plan. The question is, “Will it work?” The people are more than hesitant to leave their home plots to go as “refugees.” Instead, they are trying to sleep amidst the rubble. Ideally, smaller, family-sized tents will be delivered. But, they are hard to get due to the fact that they are needed for some 2.5 million homeless. The five large tents, mattresses and blankets we delivered are intended to be homeless shelters. We are now trying to secure 150 family-sized tents.
The “plan” is this: The coming family tents will be used as incentives for families to leave their homes and go to the shelter we have provided. They will be told that the tents, when they arrive, will be given to families staying there. In other words, the large shelter tents will be transitional housing until individual tents can be secured, delivered and set up. Our hope is that we will have our order in hand in a week or so. We can purchase a five-person tent, five mattresses and five blankets for $250.
Terry will return to Virginia on Thursday, Oct. 27. He hopes a team of six to 10 Virginia Baptist men can return very soon to help distribute and set up tents. He emphasizes that the weather will soon turn cold and cause additional suffering to people who have little left. Terry asks Virginia Baptists to remember the suffering in their prayers.