Disasters Taxing Aid Capacity, U.N. Says

By Carol J. Williams and Maggie Farley

Oct. 15, 2005 12 AM PT

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Times Staff Writers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A string of disasters including the Asian tsunami, hurricanes, mudslides, intractable wars and now a massive earthquake is emptying the world’s aid warehouses and putting the newest of the needy in grave danger, the top United Nations disaster relief official said Friday.

As rescue teams wound down their search for additional survivors of last week’s magnitude 7.6 earthquake, efforts shifted to dealing with shortages of tents, food and medicine, as well as illness and the coming winter.

Government and private aid officials said their worldwide efforts were being stretched by unusually high demand. Survivors in Pakistan, they said, were threatened with a second wave of deaths that was largely averted in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people on the Indian Ocean rim.

“We’re in a bad year. There have been more international disasters than usual. All the wars are continuing. The Pakistan situation will have an effect elsewhere,” said Jan Egeland, the U.N.’s humanitarian relief director, who toured the region.

Even as news spread that an 18-month-old girl had been found alive in a collapsed home, a Pakistani army officer, Maj. Farooq Nasir, told reporters in Muzaffarabad that search-and-rescue operations had been suspended, and attention turned to retrieving corpses.

At the newly established Federal Relief Commission in Islamabad, spokesman Azir Abas said troops and foreign aid workers would continue to be on the lookout for anyone still alive amid the destruction.

Authorities suggest that 40,000 people might have died in the quake, but they caution that the number of casualties can’t be accurately estimated because vast stretches of mountain territory have yet to be reached.

Those marshaling aid to the region warned of the logistical challenges ahead. Many of the people there are trapped in remote and inaccessible mountain villages with no means of signaling their needs to relief centers as the bitter Himalayan winter approaches.

“In the tsunami, 1.5 million people were made homeless, but in this case, we expect more than 2.5 million,” said Hussein Gezairy, World Health Organization chief for the region.

“During the tsunami, it was possible to have some ships, and in this case only helicopters can reach the disaster areas. But they cannot transport a large number of people and equipment. It is much, much more difficult.”

With hundreds of injured still awaiting evacuation in devastated Kashmir, more helicopters have arrived to speed the transport, officials said. At least 50 large choppers will be in place this weekend, Egeland said.

“The situation is horrific. The job is colossal. One disaster occurred Saturday that couldn’t be prevented but a second disaster must be,” said Jan Vandemoortele, the U.N. resident coordinator here, warning that tons of aid and sturdy tent camps must be in place before winter descends next month.

Continued bad weather was forecast for the quake zone through the weekend. Shortly after dawn today, a powerful thunderstorm rolled into the quake region, drenching thousands of people who have been sleeping outdoors in freezing temperatures for a week. More aftershocks were felt.

Supplies, especially of temporary shelter and water-purification equipment, have been depleted by the huge demand placed on international relief organizations because of the succession of disasters in the last year. But Pakistan is a major producer of tents and should be able to steer more of its output to the north, officials said.

Aid agencies also are struggling with crises as disparate as hunger in Africa, mudslides in Central America and the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that struck the U.S. Gulf Coast.

On a visit Friday to Spain, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged those who had already contributed to the victims of other disasters to dig a little deeper into their wallets.

But Trevor Rowe, a spokesman for the World Food Program, noted that such high-profile emergencies account for only about 10% of world hunger.

“The rest are silent emergencies -- grinding poverty and chronic hunger that doesn’t get seen on TV,” Rowe said. “And their needs tend to go unmet.”

Pledges of aid for the earthquake victims are coming in much slower than they did after the tsunami, which occurred during the Christmas season when many people were in the spirit of giving, Rowe said.

“There should be the same kind of response, but ‘should’ doesn’t feed the hungry child,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fatigue, but governments and people are overstretched. They have already spent their allocations on other emergencies.”

Mike Kiernan, a spokesman for Save the Children USA, said the combination of the Central American mudslides and the earthquake had “stretched everybody to the extreme.”

A lack of funding, food, tents and helicopters to reach Pakistan’s remote mountain areas might mean a second wave of deaths that was largely averted in the rapid response to the tsunami, Kiernan said.

“Right now, we’re at the point where we could prevent that second wave,” he said. “But we’re fearful that we may not be able to reach enough people fast enough.”

Adrienne Smith, a spokeswoman for Oxfam America, said her organization kept vast stockpiles but the strain of responding to crises in so many areas was starting to show.

“We feel very stretched but certainly not broken,” she said. “Having so many challenges has reinforced our sense of mission.”

In Lahore, Pakistan, Oxfam took over a manufacturing plant to speed production of tents to a rate of 100 an hour, Smith said. The canvas shelters are being rushed to people left homeless. About 300 relief workers are also distributing water-filtration buckets that were warehoused in Britain, she said. Four cargo planes full of supplies have been sent to India and Pakistan.

Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmad Khan, the army officer heading Pakistan’s relief commission, said that workers were able to restore power to some parts of Muzaffarabad and that 22 mobile field clinics, 2 million blankets and 100,000 tents were on their way to the stricken region.

Helicopter crews and aid officials reported that thousands of people were on the move, walking down from highland settlements cut off by landslides in hope of getting food, water and medical care in bigger cities such as Muzaffarabad and Mansehra.

The sole road to the region from Islamabad has become clogged with traffic and hit by fresh landslides triggered by thunderstorms and aftershocks.

“Our biggest concern now is that we will have tremendous bottlenecks,” Egeland said of the rush of aid to the towns and villages of Kashmir. “Every day there are 60 to 100 trucks coming in from all over Pakistan.”

Relief has been slow to reach much of the affected population, he said, because of the absence of usable roads and functioning communications. Some highland hamlets can be reached only on foot or by mule.

Army troops have begun riding along with aid convoys to prevent desperate villagers flocking to the Islamabad-Muzaffarabad road from besieging and looting the aid trucks.

Authorities are also considering the designation of distribution sites for women, to protect them from the aggressive crush of men converging on arriving convoys, Vandemoortele said.

Williams reported from Islamabad and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writer Catherine Saillant in Ventura contributed to this report.

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