Alarm rings across world for the over 2 million survivors-Int'l Response is 'Woefully Inadequate'
Alarm bells ring for Pakistan quake survivors
21 Oct 2005 03:53:46 GMTSource: Reuters
For full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20213526.htm
Other related articles:
Britain Sounds Alarm on Relief Response
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP107107.htm
UN CHEIF WANTS NATO TO AIRLIFT QUAKE VICTIMS: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20723986.htm
By David Brunnstrom
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Alarm mounted across the world on Friday for an estimated 2 million survivors of the Pakistan earthquake still awaiting help two weeks after their world collapsed, with a freezing winter looming.
The top United Nations aid official was so incensed by what he saw as a woefully inadequate international response to the most difficult relief operation the world has ever seen he called on NATO to stage a massive airlift to get survivors to safety.
That would mean helicopters, the only means of getting quickly deep into the rugged Himalayan foothills of Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province where 50,000 people are known to have died, a number expected to rise substantially.
"You must rest assured that NATO fully realises the gravity of the situation," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said. "NATO will act accordingly."
But NATO, which was to consider U.N. emergency relief coordination Jan Egeland's airlift demand in Brussels on Friday, doesn't have many of the kind of helicopters such an operation would require....
WORSE THAN TSUNAMI
Egeland and other aid officials with experience of both said the earthquake relief operation was more difficult than that in the wake of last year's Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more people but hit coastlines ships could reach easily.
"We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever," said Egeland. "We thought the tsunami was bad, this is worse."
"The world is not responding as we should be," Egeland told a news conference in Geneva.
Pakistan said the number of injured, now 74,000, could also rise substantially with large areas still not reached. How many bodies are still buried in the rubble, nobody knows.
Donor countries have pledged only $86 million so far to a U.N. appeal for $312 million.
Aid workers say the most urgent need is tents or people will soon start dying of exposure, a message reinforced by Britain's International Development Secretary Hilary Benn.
"Now we cannot buy time, because time is running out," he said in Islamabad. "We need more capacity on the ground to deliver support and the urgent need is for shelter if we are going to stop more people from dying."
"We need a second Berlin airbridge," Egeland said of the U.S.-led airlift in 1948-49 to keep Soviet-blockaded West Berlin supplied.
"We are humanitarians, we don't know how to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people in the Himalayas. But the most efficient military alliance in the world should be able to."
21 Oct 2005 03:53:46 GMTSource: Reuters
For full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20213526.htm
Other related articles:
Britain Sounds Alarm on Relief Response
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP107107.htm
UN CHEIF WANTS NATO TO AIRLIFT QUAKE VICTIMS: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20723986.htm
By David Brunnstrom
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Alarm mounted across the world on Friday for an estimated 2 million survivors of the Pakistan earthquake still awaiting help two weeks after their world collapsed, with a freezing winter looming.
The top United Nations aid official was so incensed by what he saw as a woefully inadequate international response to the most difficult relief operation the world has ever seen he called on NATO to stage a massive airlift to get survivors to safety.
That would mean helicopters, the only means of getting quickly deep into the rugged Himalayan foothills of Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province where 50,000 people are known to have died, a number expected to rise substantially.
"You must rest assured that NATO fully realises the gravity of the situation," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said. "NATO will act accordingly."
But NATO, which was to consider U.N. emergency relief coordination Jan Egeland's airlift demand in Brussels on Friday, doesn't have many of the kind of helicopters such an operation would require....
WORSE THAN TSUNAMI
Egeland and other aid officials with experience of both said the earthquake relief operation was more difficult than that in the wake of last year's Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more people but hit coastlines ships could reach easily.
"We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever," said Egeland. "We thought the tsunami was bad, this is worse."
"The world is not responding as we should be," Egeland told a news conference in Geneva.
Pakistan said the number of injured, now 74,000, could also rise substantially with large areas still not reached. How many bodies are still buried in the rubble, nobody knows.
Donor countries have pledged only $86 million so far to a U.N. appeal for $312 million.
Aid workers say the most urgent need is tents or people will soon start dying of exposure, a message reinforced by Britain's International Development Secretary Hilary Benn.
"Now we cannot buy time, because time is running out," he said in Islamabad. "We need more capacity on the ground to deliver support and the urgent need is for shelter if we are going to stop more people from dying."
"We need a second Berlin airbridge," Egeland said of the U.S.-led airlift in 1948-49 to keep Soviet-blockaded West Berlin supplied.
"We are humanitarians, we don't know how to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people in the Himalayas. But the most efficient military alliance in the world should be able to."
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10/21/2005 12:25:00 AM
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