Welcome to Petarian - Abdalian Relief Efforts

Progress Report of Oct 18, 2005

• By the time we arrived into our camp and woke our key staff members, it was around 3am. Major Aamir and Aamir Mumtaz then sat down with us over a cup of tea and briefed us on what has been going on. We then took a break at around 5am for 4 hours to rest from our tiring journey.
  
• Since we had decided to walk up the mountain to see the villages with our own eyes, I decided not to fast. However, I must salute Air Commodore Nayyar who did fast despite this hardship.
  
• Our site relief work has come almost into routine now. The field hospital is working regularly with a daily stream of over 100 patients. With the passage of time, the number of critically injured patients is reducing. However we see some interesting phenomena as follows:
  
  We have camped in the damaged facility of the only main dispensary in Rera, which is the main bazar in the valley. This is the meeting point for all the villages in the vicinity including Samni. There are more than 20 villages that this point caters to. It is on the main road coming from Bagh, and is located around 30-35 minutes drive from Bagh.
  
  The main building of the dispensary collapsed completely. However, a couple of its smaller buildings survived.
  
  The medical and other immediate stores for our staff are located in two rooms that are still in tact in this complex.
  
  In addition, we are using one room as a dispensing unit to dispense the medication as prescribed by the doctors. The entire dispensing and stores operation is managed by Arif Masud. He has done a wonderful job of organizing this effort.
  
  The outpatient clinics are set up in the open under larger tents or under tree shade. 6-7 doctors work in parallel at the same time in different corners of the camp examining and treating patients.
  
  We have one female doctor at the moment who has been a great source of help to us. Female patients have been flocking to her and feel more confident in sharing their problems with her.
  
  The doctors do take their medical supplies from the dispensing unit. In addition, they do write out proper Prescriptions for the patients, who then are able to get the medication from the dispensing unit upon producing the Prescription Slip.
  
  We got the patients from the nearby villages who had better road access in the early few days.
  
  Now the patients are coming from remote villages, where the villagers have to travel as much as 5 hours on foot to get to our medical camp
  
  Most of the injured patients now are women and children. It seems that the men got their treatment first, and now the women and children are turning up in larger numbers
  
  We are still transporting 10-25 very critical patients (who we are unable to treat due to our limitations) everyday to the CMH in Bagh on our makeshift truck ambulance. We now have a proper Referral Service set up for these cases which we cannot handle. However, even in several of these cases, our doctors do administer some initial medical assistance which can range from suturing of cuts to cleansing of wounds and giving basic medication for relief against pain or other symptoms. The patients are sent to CMH along with proper Referral Slips with details of the initial diagnosis.
  
  
• We have a team of around 18 volunteers from Kohat provided by Air Commodore Nayyar (Abdalian Association), who have been a great asset in visiting the damaged villages and doing a survey. In addition, we have Capt. Altaf Rahman (Petarian) and Aamir Mumtaz (Petarian) who have also been scaling the mountain sides and participating in the surveys and distribution of the relief goods. Some of the points relevant to this activity are as follows:
  
  We are sitting in the middle of the valley at Rera which is indeed a central location. This valley runs East-West.
  
  There are mountains both North and South of this valley. Typically, these will rise up between 500-800 feet above the valley below. There are villages and homes all along the mountainsides. Most of these are dispersed. An entire mountainside would be considered to be a "village". Thus a village here is not a cluster of homes in one location with lanes between and other infrastructure.
  
  The assessments of our teams has been that the villages on the northern ridges have been hit far more badly as compared to the ones on towards the south.
  
  Samni village that we had initially identified as our prime target is on the southern side. Although most of the houses of this village have also been either demolished or badly damaged, they are still better off as compared to the northern villages.
  
  Our surveys also reveal that Samni village is a lot more affluent as compared to other villages in the vicinity. Based on this, our teams have started moving towards those villages in the same valley now that have a greater need as compared to Samni. We have already provided substantial assistance to Samni in terms of tents and other rations. Although Samni needs more assistance in terms of tents only, the other villages have greater needs, which we decided to concentrate on.
  
  We still do not have full numbers on the total population and homes in the valley. As you will recall, the initial estimates given to us was a population of 25,000-30,000 and 7,000 homes. It is likely that this number may increase as we move more into the valley.
  
  Our estimate now is that Samni village alone has around 400-500 homes and a population of around 5000-7000. Each home has between 8-15 people. Several of these homes have their male members working either in other main towns of Pakistan or abroad (probably UK). Therefore, it has been difficult to assess the exact number of people who were in the valley or the mountains when the catastrophe struck.
  
  Over the coming days, we will have better data on the population. We are also sharing information with the Army units who are also collecting data.
  
  Our data forms normally include information about each home - listing out the family members, dead, wounded and healthy, present assessment on condition of the house (damage and destruction), availability of food rations and clothing with the family, how much of aid has been received by the family and how long they can survive with present rations, etc.
  
  Realizing the manner in which we are moving, we have accepted that our relief work is now expanded from Samni village to the Rera Tehsil and to as many villages in the area as we can support within our means.
  
• We met the Brigade Commander - Brigadier Naeem Sadiq at around 10:30am. His camp is located around 2 Km from ours.
  
  Brigadier Naeem is from the Sindh Regiment. We found him to be a very conscientious officer and highly motivated to undertake the relief work.
  
  Brig. Naeem emphasized that we must all work together in order to achieve as much as possible. He offered to provide as much assistance to our teams as possible and to create further alliances if necessary.
  
  He shared a lot of information of the area with us and directed his teams to work with us. He confirmed much of the information that we had already received from our teams.
  
  He offered to move our camp into the vicinity of his camp to be able to provide better security and coordination between the Army and our teams. We are contemplating the advantages and disadvantages of such a possible move. The greatest disadvantage in this move would be that we would not be in the middle of the main bazar where most of the crowds gather. Otherwise, this would be an ideal situation for us.
  
  Brig. Naeem also encouraged that we should concentrate our relief efforts only on tents and kerosene heaters, which would be required in great numbers as the winter sets in.
  
  The other subject we discussed was a sandwich panel room that Umar Akbar (Abdalian) has developed in Lahore. It is a sandwich panel of steel sheets with some insulating material in between like styrofoam or thermopore, etc. Umar was in Lahore that day and we couldnt meet him. We are given to understand by the brigadier that a 12' x 12' room would cost around Rs. 75,000 only and such a room could possibly pull the population through the snows. It takes only an hour or so to assemble these panels into a room. We need to discuss this option further and see how far our resources can take us in this direction.
  
  Major Aamir has been doing most of the coordination work with the army in addition to dealings with the villagers and organizing the logistics.
  
• We also met around 30-40 "elders" of the Samni village for more than an hour to exchange views on the relief and rehabilitation efforts.
  
  We impressed upon these elders that the only way forward is if the affected residents would participate in the rehabilitation process themselves and take charge of the situation. They should not simply be sitting around and waiting for outside help. We observed throughout the day that the people of this area seem to expect that they would get 100% assistance while they sit or stand watching us. We tried to impress upon them that they must lend their manpower to clear up the debris everywhere and for the reconstruction and rehab programs.
  
  We also requested them to team up with us. They have hundreds and thousands of able hands, while we outsiders are few. We can guide them and manage the programs and arrange funds. But they must join hands with us.
  
  Despite this, we do see problems. It is not easy to change attitudes of a people.
  
  We also see that there is a great level of poverty. But there are some very affluent people as well. And it is these affluent people who tend to be more greedy.
  
  Among these affluent people are also the hoarders, who have been trying to capture as much of the relief goods and sell them back in the markets. It is a daunting task for the relief agencies like ours to ensure that the relief goods gets into the right hands - i.e. those who are poor and needy and are afflicted by this calamity.
  
  However, we also realize that there is a level of pilferage which cannot be avoided under such circumstances. We simply need to reduce this pilferage and get to the homes of the afflicted ones to give them aid in their homes.
  
  In the initial days, we were giving the aid to the "elders" of each family so that he can pass it down to his larger family. But we realize that he may have been the source of hoarding as well. Thus, we are also taking corrective action accordingly.
  
• In the afternoon, Mahmood Baweja, Air Commodore Nayyar and I along with Major Aamir, Dr. Mrs. Aamir, Capt. Altaf, Dr. Asad, Dr. Khalid, Hashir (Nayyar's son) went up the mountainside to get a first hand view of the Samni village. We took Nayyar's vehicle and our Potohar jeep on the track and were able to climb around a third of the mountain. The rest of it was on foot. We passed through Suwang village and then on to Samni.
  
  The mountainside is beautiful indeed. But the beauty is marred with the devastation of the earthquake.
  
  It was clear that the homes that were made of stones and mud and wood were the first ones to collapse. The structure was weak and probably none of the homes built in this fashion survived. We saw several of such homes. These are the homes of the poor, and they are the ones who have received the least aid.
  
  Then we saw the homes of the rich. These are homes with proper wooden pillars and tinned sheet roofs - painted in different colors. The cladding in most of these homes is of cement block or stone. Many of these homes are also damaged. However, what we could see was that few of these home have collapsed completely. The structural damage needs to be evaluated. What definitely was damaged in these homes is the wall cladding which has fallen. We are not sure whether these walls took any load or not. In most probability, these walls were not load bearing, and the homes can be fixed relatively easily. However, on the other hand, these same people have enough money to get these fixed as well. And they are well to do comparatively. And these are the people who through their strength were able to get the tents and relief first.
  
  This is the anomaly of the social structure there.
  
  Our challenge is to bypass this social structure and get to the poor and devastated population to provide them the relief that is needed badly.
  
  It was nearly sundown when we finally got down the mountainside. And as we drove back, another aftershock in excess of 5 on the Richter scale struck the region.
  
• We sat in the evening with our teams to evaluate our future course of action. Due to the complex nature of the activity, there were different views. But some of these were unanimous.
  
  It is clear to us that the field hospital will have to continue for some time. With the Army and other agencies moving in, the question for us will be whether the Petarian-Abdalian effort should continue to remain in the prime role, or we take on a secondary role. Or another option would be that we bring it to a stage where we are able to hand over the hospital to the civil agencies there and wind up our operations. I am sure that the coming few days will help us in assessing the developments when we will be able to take positive decisions. For now, we are very much into it and we will continue to do the same. We should make a second assessment in a week or so to determine the future course of action as far as the hospital is concerned.
  
  As for the relief efforts, hundreds and thousands of tents are being poured in by different NGOs, Army and other agencies into the entire region. At the moment there is a shortage, but we feel that within the next couple of weeks, there will be more than sufficient tents.
  
  Many of the villages have enough food. Some of the poor people need support, but this is not a major concern as of now.
  
  Most of the people dont want clothes. We have a roomful of clothes at our site which no one wants.
  Most people are also not keen to take blankets. They seem to have them.
  
  With winter setting in, kerosene heaters will be required.
  
  A solution needs to be found for these people to survive the snows. The tents wont do the job. The Govt of Pakistan and other foreign govts and agencies have been discussing solutions. Gen. Zubair has been appointed by Gen. Musharraf to head the rehab and reconstruction project. They are talking big money on how to get this area up and about. We also need to talk to the likes of Umar (Abdalian) and others who are providing solutions.
  
  We initial target was to participate fully in reconstructing the homes of these people. With all these options, we again need to assess how best we can perform our role.
  
  One option that is actively under discussion is that we offer the affectees to build their homes where the home owner provides his own manpower and we will assist with the deficient construction materials.
  
• We have been receiving pledges and some money has flowed in. As I mentioned in previous messages, a sustained donation campaign need to be continued for several months. It is our fund resources and manpower that will determine how much we can contribute towards the reconstruction of this area.
  
• After dinner, Nayyar, Mahmood and I left Rera at around 10pm. Arif Masud and Hashir also came back with us to Islamabad in order to give them a break for a couple of days. They intend to go back to the camp shortly.