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Disaster Relief Update
2010 Floods – July 2011 Update
Along with our local partners, over the last eleven months we have distributed 1218 tents, 3294 two-week family food rations, 204 kitchen sets, and 200 mats, as well as helping to support several field teams of local men to be in the villages and help them plan their recovery.
In the southern half of the affected area (see map at right), 22% of all children under five years old are malnourished. The World Health Organization considers anything over 15% to be a hunger emergency.
"We were short of food after last year’s floods destroyed so much. It is now eight months later, but the situation is not improving," says a young father as he waits in line to receive a food package from the Pakistan Red Crescent Society. "It is still difficult for us to find enough food for our children."
Aid agencies are helping with distributions of food items, seeds, and fertilizer. But farmers say the next crops won’t be ready for harvest until October.
The Disaster
The 2010 Pakistan floods began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains all over the country. Property was destroyed, livelihoods were washed away, and infrastructure demolished, in the red and orange areas of the map at the right.
Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, said during a press conference, looking visibly shaken, “This has been a heart-wrenching day for me. In the past, I have visited many natural disasters, but I have never seen anything like this.”
The number of people directly affected by this disaster was more than the total of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, combined.
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