by Seki Hirano, CARE shelter advisor
Palu Air, Pariaman District, West Sumatra
October 4, 2009

On September 30, Indra, a 20-year-old student in Padang, West Sumatra, received a desperate phone call from his mother. The island has just been struck with a massive earthquake. Indra left Padang and rushed back to his home in the remote village of Pulo Air.  Fortunately, he arrived to find his mother safe. However, he found that half his village, along with two neighboring villages, had completely disappeared under a four-hectare-wide landslide. The edge of the slide had stopped just four metres from his house.

On Sunday, October 4, CARE's emergency response team reached the remains of what used to be the village of Pulo Air, in the earthquake-devastated Pariaman District of West Sumatra. The village had not yet been reached by emergency aid. As CARE's team approached the village, the narrow rural path filled with crowds of weeping people fleeing on foot, in cars and on motorbikes. The team had to dismount their motorbikes and walk the remaining kilometer into the village.

There, I met Indra and spoke to him outside his home. It started to rain heavily and we crouched the palm thatch eaves to talk. Indra would not look at me. He just looked straight forward and replied.

"Just gone," he said. "I cannot believe this. There used to be my school, now you cannot even see a single desk. My friends I grew up with are gone. This village use to be on one level and now there is this 30 foot drop." 

Idra said his mother was still completely traumatized. After hearing the deafening thundering of the landslide, she had run outside only to hear sharp screams of "Help! Help!" She was powerless. She could not do anything. Other surviving villagers arrived moments later but were equally helpless.

Local officials estimate 140 people died in the destruction of three villages. There were only 5 survivors, who are currently in hospital. Indra's mother is one of them.

Indra looked on with a bewildered gaze. A medical mask hung from his chin. "I am confused. I hear rumors that we will be relocated as the land now in this area is unsafe. My paddy fields are gone and my house is damaged beyond repair."

I asked what the survivors need the most. Indra replied, "Food, water, clothes, blankets and housing." In other words, most everything that can be replaced.

The remains of Indra’s house in the remote village of Pulo Air,
in the earthquake-devastated Pariaman District of West Sumatra.

Rescue teams begin to clear the landslide that engulfed the
village of Pulo Air and two neighboring villages .

Rescue teams survey the landslide that engulfed the village of Pulo Air and
two other villages in earthquake-devastated West Sumatra.

by Adjie Fachrurrazi, CARE emergency coordinator in Indonesia
October 5, 2009

It has been raining non-stop for the past six hours. Heavy, heavy rain.

People are traumatized. They are asking for help. Everyone is suffering. People say to me, "Don't count the number of destroyed houses. Count the number of houses still standing. It will be faster." In most villages I have seen, only 15 percent of houses are still standing. Some houses are totally flattened. The roof is flat on the ground. People lost everything. Their houses are destroyed, everything in them is destroyed. And everyone is afraid so those with houses will not go inside. There have been aftershocks over the past few days but today was mostly quiet. Everyone is afraid of another earthquake.

So people are sleeping outside, living outside. We are all wet. They have no shelter. Some people are sleeping under broken pieces of roof. Shelter is the main issue. People also need mosquito nets. They are sleeping outside, and with all this rain, there will be mosquitoes and malaria. Children are already starting to get sick. They need blankets, mosquito nets and plastic sheeting for shelter.

***

People are drinking coconut juice, or river water. People in these village used to get their water from springs, but the pipes are broken. In Padang city, the municipal water is not running yet.  The water from the river is not clean, and people don't have stoves to boil water. They need clean drinking water or there is going to be a rise in waterborne illness. We have supplies to help 5,000 people to start, but we need funds to help more.

***

There are many injured people and people still buried under buildings. It is very hard to reach the affected areas. Landslides have blocked roads and there is debris everywhere. Our team went out by motorbike today. We have 20 people on the emergency team, including staff from our local partner. This damage looks worse than the Yogyakarta quake in 2006.

It has been five days now. It's not clear how many people are affected yet. We don't have all the information from the rural areas. There are many dead bodies. And the smell is coming.

by Celso Dulce

Celso Dulce is CARE's Project Representative in the Philippines, and he is leading CARE's emergency response to Typhoon Ketsana in Manila. Celso is from Manila.

It started to rain a few hours ago, and it's dark. Today we were supporting the government order to evacuate people from high-risk areas as a precautionary measure. I just returned from securing the warehouses for relief distribution, because the goods might be damaged. Another storm is coming. We don't know how bad, but the rain is getting harder.

Some areas are still flooded. In some areas, we don't know why, the water started to rise again yesterday. Some areas are still hard to reach. With the oncoming typhoon, definitely we will see the floodwaters rising again. So people who returned to their homes, but they will have to go back to the evacuation centers or whatever safe place they have identified. This is very difficult, because people were just starting to clean their houses and now they have to leave again. Almost 300 people are dead. This is my city. I have never seen it like this.

They call the new storm a 'super-typhoon', and people are becoming panicked. Just this afternoon, we received an SMS saying that the super-typhoon will hit by 9 p.m. tonight. Then we received another SMS saying it will hit Manila by 5 p.m. It creates a lot of fear and panic.

We need to teach people what to do to prepare for the coming super-typhoon. They need to move to a safer ground. They shouldn't wait for the strong winds and floods, that will be too late. They have to follow government warnings. Survival steps, prepare water, prepare food that will cover for one or two days. The electricity company has already said there will be cut off in electricity. There is a high level of awareness, and the government units are doing their best to prepare. I hope there are no deaths this time.

The biggest need right now is for food, safe water and emergency shelter, especially since it's raining again. People had been sent back home, because the schools were being used as shelters. Children have to go back to school. Classes had been cancelled for a week already. But now we will need emergency shelter again, mainly tarpaulins. Families have yet to rebuild their homes.
The urban poor are the worst affected. They live in housing made of salvaged material, plywood from the garbage dump, tarpaulin, sheets of advertising paper – flimsy shelters, and it's very easy for strong winds to destroy them. I was really shocked.

Two days ago I visited one area. One family had a shelter barely larger than two metres by two metres made of salvaged material. As many as 10-14 people lived in this. They have to take turns sleeping, some during the night, some during the day. And then they were hit by the typhoon. For me, it was so depressing, because even before the disaster they were living in such a horrible condition, and the floods made it worse.

The urban poor eat only twice a day, and have very poor quality food, maybe just plain rice and soy sauce. At times, they scavenge food from the garbage, but they can't now, because everything is contaminated by the flood.

CARE is distributing drinking water and food that will last them for a week. We are also distributing emergency supplies like blankets, jerry cans to store water and plastic tarpaulins.

One man said, we need assistance, my wife is sick. She was doing the cleaning after the floods, because a lot of mud and debris were in the households. It is the responsibility of the women to take care of the children and clean the house. They have to get food and take care of the children, and the children are getting sick. The requests for medical assistance is increasing.

It has been a long week. I think of those families tonight. I watch the news and the path of the new typhoon. The rain is getting harder.

Oct. 1, 2009
At 9:00 pm local time, on Thursday, October 1, CARE worker Bahtra Tarigan arrived at the airport in Padang on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia with the rest of the CARE emergency response team. There is no power and no functional communications. By texting on his cell phone, Bahtra has been able to send short updates to the outside world about what he is seeing in the earthquake-devastated city. Information in italics was added for clarity; all other text is verbatim from Bahtra's text messages.

 By Lisa Ognjanovic of CARE Laos

As we waited for Typhoon Ketsana to hit, our first priority was the safety of our staff. Any at risk were immediately called back and commonsense things like closing windows and doors, making sure we had enough drinking water and ensuring that our staff prepared their own houses were done so we were ready to concentrate on people’s needs as soon as the storm passed.

Yesterday morning the team in Sekong, where the Typhoon hit hardest, sent through pictures of how high the river had come. It really hit home what  kind of disaster the villages CARE works with along the river have experienced; they tell us the river rose from 7 metres to 28 metres high.  We are still to get access to many of those villages so the extent of the damage and human impact remains unclear.

I have been in storms in Laos before where rooftops have been blown away and trees uprooted, but this storm was far worse than what we have ever seen. I can only imagine what impact a storm of this size may have on these poor communities.

We have heard unconfirmed reports of people seeing houses washing down rivers. Houses in Laos along the river are constructed out of bamboo and wood and would not have been able to withstand a storm of this size – the homes of the poorest people are even flimsier. As always, those who are already so vulnerable will suffer the most in this emergency.

Today as news of the damage and the need start to trickle in, we are well and truly beginning our response. While we wait for the formal assessment we are preparing to reach very remote locations, procuring water purification tablets that will be essential to be able to provide clean water, finding out where we can get large quantities of rice.

I have seen on CNN and BBC reports of the Typhoon hitting Vietnam and Cambodia, but it has hit us here in Laos as well and hit us hard. The remoteness of the country means information is slow to emerge but we know that many people are going to need our assistance; now and well into the future.

Blog by Sarah Blizzard, Development Writer, CARE

After several days of traveling to and within Ghana, I finally reached the community of Yaroyiri in the Northern Region of the country. To get to this community, I took three flights and a several-hour drive. The community of Yaroyiri is extremely rural and most people make their livelihood through subsistence farming.

Blog by Rick Perera, Media Officer, CARE International in Pakistan: 

Blog by Thomas Schwarz of CARE Germany-Luxemburg, May 28, 2009: 

It is about noon up here in the northwestern province, or maybe a little later. In one of the camps for displaced people we meet a teacher, who is now volunteering to help his fellow countrymen. He tells us his story: "When all of the refugees arrived, I did not hesitate. I contacted the government to register as a volunteer. 'What can I do,' I asked them. 'How can I help?'"

Blog by Thomas Schwarz of CARE Germany-Luxemburg
May 27, 2009

While travelling to places like Pakistan, I naturally meet many different people. All of them have their own story and background, their traditions, cultures and personal experiences. Talking to the displaced people in Pakistan, I realized right away how different their path of life is compared to my own. Living in Buner, Kohistan, Dir and the village of Swat bears no resemblance at all to lifestyles in so many western countries. The gap could not be much bigger.

Blog by Thomas Schwarz of CARE Germany-Luxemburg
May 26, 2009

Today I visited a place close to Mardan, where tens of thousands took refuge from the ongoing fighting in Dir, Buner and the village of Swat. Their overall situation is horrible.

Blog by Thomas Schwarz of CARE Germany-Luxemburg
May 23, 2009

Recently, I accompanied our water and drainage specialist for an assessment of needs in the field. I love these privileged moments, to go in search of those with whom we will work hand-in-hand to develop projects. To form an answer to a problem is, above all, to talk with the people, to understand how they live, to take in their daily existence, and especially, to hear their problems, listen to their needs - to not show up with preconceived ideas.

Facts

A clammy heat that clings to your skin, a blazing sun that withers you to the core, I’m at the Télecom sans Frontières tent to send the latest news to CARE’s network. At the entrance, an alert announces that a storm system has formed from the ensuing rains and unfavorable winds in the Caribbean area. We have been following the weather development since yesterday, which we hope will not announce its lot of torrential showers on the country.

Chris Northey was deployed to Yangon on May 23 to begin her rotation as CARE's Myanmar Emergency Team Leader. She was one of the first international aid workers permitted into the Irrawaddy Delta, following the government's announcement that it would allow foreign emergency teams access to all cyclone-affected areas. Below, Chris shares her observations upon arriving on the scene.

As CARE’s emergency teams complete initial assessments in the Irrawaddy delta, gruesome scenes of bodies decomposing in the very ponds the Myanmarese use for drinking water are being reported. Corpses still cannot be buried and entire villages remain underwater, many with few survivors.