Five Years After 2005 Earthquake in South Asia, IOM Remembers Victims, Builds on Coordination Lessons
IOM is today commemorating the victims of the 8th October 2005
earthquake that devastated much of northern Pakistan and
Indian-administered Kashmir.
In Pakistan alone, some 75,000 people died and 3.5 million
people lost their homes in the quake, which measured 7.6 on the
Richter scale.
Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and
the town closest to the epicentre, was devastated, but the
destruction extended from India in the East to Pakistan's border
with Afghanistan in the West.
Thousands of families in remote, inaccessible communities in
Kashmir and North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa),
found themselves homeless and cut off by landslides, as
temperatures plummeted.
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IOM was tasked with coordinating an Emergency Shelter Cluster of
some 70 international and local aid agencies working with the
government and the army to rush emergency shelter to survivors of
the disaster before the onset of winter.
The coordination of aid in sectors including shelter, logistics,
health and water and sanitation – the first of its kind
following a major natural disaster – together with a
mercifully mild winter, saved lives that otherwise might have been
lost.
"The earthquake taught us the value of shared information and
coordinated action. In 2005 it brought together the UN,
international and local NGOs, the government and the army and
helped us to deliver emergency shelter faster to the people who
needed it most," says IOM Pakistan Emergency Response Manager Brian
Kelly.
"Five years on, IOM is using that experience and the lessons
learnt in coordinating the emergency shelter response of a similar
number of agencies to another vast natural disaster – the
2010 floods," he adds.
While the number of dead and injured in the floods at under
2,000 is far smaller than the death toll from the quake, the number
of people in need of emergency shelter is far greater.
According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA),
some 1.9 million homes have been damaged or destroyed and over 12
million people are now homeless.
Shelter cluster agencies have now reached a total of 455,212
families or 3.2 million people with emergency shelter. But an
estimated 7.3 million people – over 75 per cent of them in
Punjab and Sindh provinces – have yet to be reached.
"People here are incredibly resilient, as we saw after the
earthquake. But the international community must recognize that the
need for shelter created by the floods is huge – far bigger
than that generated by the earthquake. We need new funding now to
provide shelter both for the displaced and for those who have
returned to their ruined homes," adds Kelly.
For more information, please contact:
Eliane Engeler
IOM Pakistan
Tel: +92.300 852 6357
E-mail:
"mailto:eengeler@iom.int">eengeler@iom.int