Unfortunately, that’s just what happened in September and October 2010. Abdoulaye N’Dao, a gregarious retired electrician with grey dread locks says the flooding in 2010 “was the most difficult compared to earlier ones… there was a lot more water.” He says his house had water up to his ankles in some of the rooms; he and his extended family of 25 people were bailing water out of the house and its courtyard for days. “Maybe crocodiles and frogs can live like that,” he says months later sitting in his now drier courtyard, “but not people.”
The heavy rains of 2010 triggered the fifth year in a row of serious flooding in Pikine, and capped off one of the rainiest years for Senegal since 1971. Dakar got a total of 20 inches, more than twice the normal amount of annual rainfall. Oxfam already was working with an organization in Pikine called Eau-Vie-Environnement (Water-Life-Environment, or EVE for short), and deployed $295,000 from Oxfam’s “Saving Lives 24/7 Fund” to help EVE respond.
The needs were urgent in Pikine: Oxfam and EVE estimated that 150,000 people in 3,600 families were badly affected, either completely displaced or living in flooded homes. With help from Oxfam, EVE planned an aggressive response, which included:
A fast survey of the worst-affected areas of Pikine, to identify families in the most need: EVE and Oxfam decided to focus its assistance on 2,812 families (roughly 30,000 people) primarily in seven of Pikine’s 16 districts.
Supporting 116 pumps, to remove water from 643 homes, 7 schools, and 18 mosques: EVE supplied fuel for pumps that moved more than a million cubic meters of water, which is something like 264 million gallons, enough to fill more than 400 Olympic swimming pools. This took 15,000 liters (about 4,000 gallons) of fuel. EVE worked with local authorities to help remove water from 228 roads in Pikine.
Removing waste: household garbage and other waste pose a severe health threat, so EVE supported the removal of 3,000 cubic meters (roughly 105,000 cubic feet) of garbage.
Delivering sand: to build up low-lying areas and shore up buildings at risk of being submerged, EVE delivered 10 truckloads of sand to each of seven districts in the city.
Promoting good hygiene: EVE distributed 2,806 hygiene kits with soap, bleach, clean buckets for storing water, mosquito nets, and water purification tablets. In follow-up visits, EVE estimated that 93.8 percent of the households it visited were using adequate methods to treat water, and that these and other measures likely helped reduce diarrhea cases from 3.12 percent of the households to 1.48 percent.
Direct financial support: With funds from Oxfam, EVE allocated 40, 000 CFA francs (about US$80) to more than 1,500 of the most severely affected households, so they could buy food, medicine, and clothing.
Abdou Diouf, the executive secretary of EVE, says Oxfam did not just provide some assistance during the crisis and then withdraw along with the flood water. “This is the first time since Pikine has experienced these floods, that an [international] organization has intervened during the flooding and has decided to continue intervening after the flooding,” he says during an interview in his office in Pikine in April. Diouf says EVE was able to use a small amount of money left over from a grant from Oxfam to deal with floods in 2009 to prepare for the 2010 rainy season. When the heavy rains hit in 2010, volunteer assessment teams were already in place and trained to take action.
Oxfam also is supporting EVE’s work in 2010 to help local governments to lobby for funding they can use to improve drainage systems, and keep the pumps running in chronically flooded areas of the city.
Diouf also says the cash transfers represented “… a revolution in our intervention this year. People really appreciated this; I had people coming to the office here to specifically thank EVE and Oxfam for the money.”
Each recipient got about 40,000 CFA francs, which is about US$85. It’s unusual for an aid organization to provide money instead of food, clothing, water, and other assistance. But it allows those affected by the flood to spend the money on what they need the most, rather than what an aid organization decides is best for them.
When Assiatou Niang got her cash, she immediately thought about food. “We had no food, so I bought a bag of rice,” she says. With 30 people living in the household, including most of her nine children as well as those of her injured sister, food was a priority. “I also needed cement to repair the house, and I needed money for daily expenses around the household.” Niang is 58, and recently widowed. The cash helped her feed her family and cover other expenses for about a month over the winter.
Distributing cash is also economically efficient, according to Isaac Massaga, Oxfam’s program officer based in Dakar. “If you distribute rice in a community, you are preventing the local dealers from selling their own stock,” he says. “By helping people access food in the local market, we also help suppliers, and at the same time it helps maintain the market.”
EVE and Oxfam found a credit union that supervised the distribution of the funds to only those with vouchers provided by EVE according to the results of its household surveys. EVE transferred more than US$130,000 to families in Pikine.
]]>"We are helping people who have walked for long days to reach the border, they are exhausted and in need of immediate assistance. Families in some poor border villages have been supporting refugees for months and have nothing left to give,” said Tariq Riebl, Oxfam's Humanitarian Manager in Liberia.
There are already more than 100,000 refugees who have fled to remote border villages in Liberia where Oxfam has set up water and sanitation facilities. The organization is working in transit sites in Grand Gedeh eastern Liberia and will be distributing essential relief to refugees, as well as helping families hosting refugees to restock dwindling food supplies.
Oxfam has flown in supplies for 70,000 people and will provide long-term support to local communities, many who have been generously helping refugees since the disputed election last November.
“This crisis has been kept in the shadows for far too long. Only now is the world recognizing the immense scale of the human suffering with more than one million people forced to flee their homes. Some have managed to make the difficult journey through the forest to some sort of sanctuary across the border in Liberia. We are getting aid to people who have fled but conditions for refugees are very difficult and we need a huge aid push to avoid a public health disaster,” said Riebl.
The full picture of the humanitarian crisis In Ivory Coast is yet to emerge, with close to one million people made homeless by the violence and insecurity hampering the few aid agencies operating in the country. Oxfam is sending in a team of experts this week to evaluate how to respond to the crisis, but the agency warns that any aid operation will be extremely difficult due to ongoing conflict.
“This aid operation will not be easy. Even when fighting ends, we know there will be months of work ahead to help people start to put their lives back together,” said Riebl.
]]>
More than 100,000 people have already crossed the border from Ivory Coast to Liberia and are living in dire conditions in border villages. Unless more is done to get people to safe and serviced areas further inland, they risk being cut off as the rainy season approaches.
“People have fled violence and are now living with families in Liberia in remote jungle areas along the border,” said Oxfam spokesperson Caroline Gluck in Liberia. “When the rains come, we will not be able to reach them with aid because the whole area will become inaccessible. The clock is ticking to get people to safe and reachable areas.”
As the situation in Ivory Coast changes daily, more and more people are crossing the borders of neighboring countries in search of help. Oxfam warns that the potential influx of refugees over the weekend could make the humanitarian situation in Liberia much worse.
The rainy season, which is starting now, will make roads to remote villages along the border impassable.
“People are walking four or five days before crossing a river to reach safety,” said Gluck. “Fathers are carrying their young children on their backs through deep forest and surviving on raw vegetables.
“Some are sleeping 35 people to a room, forced to spend nights sitting up when it rains. There is a severe lack of food, shelter and medical care.
“Most people have fled their homes after armed men stormed their village. Communities in Liberia are generously supporting thousands of people but they don’t have the supplies to provide help any longer. Much more needs to be done to help people who have fled violence and are now stranded with very little.”
Oxfam is providing clean water to refugees in Liberia and will help families hosting refugees to restock diminished food supplies.
]]>The Layyah district is among the worst hit in Punjab. Some 364 villages are completely destroyed, displacing 300,000 individuals, according to an assessment by the Doaba Foundation, an Oxfam partner providing relief to the affected communities in the district. The district government here has established 22 relief camps for displaced people.
With an Oxfam team, I visited a camp that houses 2,600 people in the Karor sub-district. It's a well-managed camp: there are water pumps and 16 latrines, eight each for men and women. A local philanthropist provides cooked food. Two police officials keep watch at the entrance.
In and outside the camp premises, we saw all kinds of animals: buffalos, cows, goats, sheep, and camels with their little ones. People were arranging fodder for their animals and were sitting close to them. "They are very poor people to whom a loss of a hen is unbearable, and they have lost everything, including their homes," said a relief worker from the same district. Most people living in the camp do not own any land, and animals are all they have.
The Doaba Foundation is doing wonderful work in coordination with the district government and rescue agencies. They have also helped to register 937 individuals in 20 camps and have distributed 445 hygiene kits. Each kit contains:
Zubair Iqbal, the camp manager, said that the heavy rains during the last three days have created difficult health and hygiene conditions.
According to locals, faulty building practices have contributed to the damage. Nazeer Ahmed, a volunteer working in the camp, said: "Traditionally, there were 10 tributaries to the Indus River that now stand blocked, thanks to building on that land. And since there had been no floods in years, people had moved into the river bed. The damage was inevitable."
Donate to Oxfam's flood relief and recovery efforts in Pakistan.
]]>The death toll has reportedly reached nearly 800 people. The quake has affected an estimated two million people. News photos show collapsed highways, crumbled houses, and pancaked floors of concrete from Santiago south to Concepcion, Chile’s second largest city.
Slowed by a closed airport and damaged roads, Oxfam's emergency response team arrived in Santiago Tuesday morning and made their way to Concepcion, near the epicenter. Reports indicate the city was one of the most affected by the disaster. Team members also traveled to Constititucion, a coastal community hit hard by quake-triggered waves.
Oxfam's five-member team, including water engineers and logisticians, are assessing the situation and will return to Sanitago while the assessment results are considered and a decision is made on what Oxfam's response will be.
“Chile is a developed country with a very capable government and while it is unlikely that this disaster will be as severe as what we saw last month in Haiti, we want to be in place to help if we are needed,” said Frank Boeren, deputy director of Oxfam America's South America office.
In addition to the assessment team, Oxfam is planning to send some relief supplies–blankets, water buckets, and water filters–to Chile from a storage warehouse in Bolivia.
More than 90 aftershocks—some with magnitudes of 6.3 and higher—continued to rattle the region after the quake.
The disaster comes just weeks after a 7.0-magnitude temblor struck near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on January 12, leaving 230,000 people dead and more than one million homeless.
Poor construction practices, weak building codes, and a very limited ability of the government to respond added to the scope of destruction in that Caribbean country, the poorest in the western Hemisphere. Oxfam immediately launched an emergency response in Haiti, which includes the provision of water, sanitation services, and shelter, and aims to reach more than 500,000 people.
Though the quake that hit Chile Feb. 27 morning was substantially more powerful than the one that leveled great swaths of densely populated Port-au-Prince, the South American country is far better positioned to manage the consequences—and that will determine the level of Oxfam’s involvement.
“While this was a massively powerful earthquake, the capacity of the government in Chile and the resources it has available are fundamentally different from those of Haiti,” said Michael Delaney, head of Oxfam America’s humanitarian response department. “The role that Oxfam will need to play there will be markedly different from the response we are now carrying out in Haiti.”
]]>While the team was at the mayor’s office, news arrived that two more bodies had been found—one of them, a 5-year old girl--which brought the number of dead to 16. Ten people remain missing.
“Seeing the devastation to the town caused by the enormous boulders, rivers of mud, and rubble that swept through I was surprised—and grateful—that the human cost wasn’t higher,” said one team member.
Living through the disaster was clearly a nightmare—the story of Emerita Rivas, 26, made that clear. The Oxfam team met her that day at the mayor’s office where she had been working for just two months when the disaster struck. Smiling and intelligent, she seemed already to be a crucial part of the local administration. She was meeting delegations, coordinating with the mayor and the secretary, and keeping tabs on where to send humanitarian aid.
Here is her account of the early morning hours of November 8 when the landslide hit:
“It was one in the morning and we heard a noise that sounded like heavy machinery that was getting close to us. But it was the mud and the rocks that were coming. We left quickly to knock on doors so that people would leave. Soon, we also heard the whistles, the sign that everyone had to get out. Ever since the earthquakes in 2001, people have been organized into eight sectors, and every sector has a leader.
“At around two in the morning, police cars and private cars started to arrive in order to bring people to the shelters, but there wasn’t anything there—the mats didn’t come until Monday. Thank God, the area where we live was not affected and we could help out during the emergency. We spent all day Sunday evacuating people. There were many injured people. People had to go up on the roofs or hang onto the walls, and those walls have broken glass in order to prevent robberies.
“Even though our neighborhood wasn’t affected, I am also sleeping in the shelter, because I am still afraid. Many people have suffered nervous breakdowns. One neighborhood and the town center ended up completely destroyed and the authorities have said that it’s not a good idea to rebuild the town.”
]]>Torrential rains the previous weekend triggered the landslide and spread devastation across El Salvador. The disaster has left 184 people dead, and in Verapaz alone, more than 800 people have sought refuge in shelters.
Oxfam has been responding to the disaster by providing hygiene kits, water tanks, stoves, and kitchen utensils. The organization is now helping about 4,200 people and assessing the damage to determine how best to provide support as communities work to recover.
]]>Cars lie twisted and half-buried in the mud.
White-capped waves appear in the torrent of water that sweeps past a gas station.
The scenes from the floods and landslides that struck El Salvador last weekend reflect a storm of almost unbelievable intensity.
“In San Vincente, more than a foot of rain fell in just four hours,” says Carolina Castrillo, regional director for Oxfam America.
These have been the deadliest rains since Central America’s storm of the century—Hurricane Mitch—struck El Salvador in 1998. More than 200 people are dead or missing, more than 2,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed, and crops that the rural population depends on for food have been obliterated.
“Where are we going to live, now that we have lost everything?” asked a woman in Verapaz, a town nearly destroyed by a landslide. “Where are we going to plant, what is going to happen to our lives?”
In the wake of Hurricane Mitch, many Salvadoran communities have joined forces with aid providers to reduce the deadly outcomes of violent storms and earthquakes. Over the past four years, Oxfam has supported local organizations to help form and train committees within the villages to operate early warning systems, develop evacuation plans, and administer first aid. This week, more than 70 Oxfam-supported community-protection committees were mobilized to help survivors reach the safety of shelters.
“Although this week’s storm was destructive, the partnership between aid providers and communities has made people less vulnerable than they were eleven years ago,” says Castrillo.
“Hurricanes, earthquakes, and landslides are all hazards in El Salvador, but the risks they pose to communities can be reduced,” she says. “That’s what we’re aiming for."
In the meantime, the needs on the ground are real and urgent, as survivors struggle to recover. Among their countless losses is peace of mind, as they live and relive the disaster. Days after the landslide, a boy from Verapaz describes his gripping fear: “I can’t speak because I feel my heart beating.”
Oxfam has built a warehouse stocked with emergency provisions in a disaster-prone area of El Salvador. In the November flood emergency, we were able to rush food, clean water, shelter materials, mattresses, first aid kits, and other essentials to shelters for displaced people, while making plans to help ensure longer-term food security when people return to their homes.
Donate now to Oxfam’s Global Emergency Response.
]]>The heavy rains that pummeled El Salvador on November 7 triggered deadly floods and landslides that have buried homes, collapsed bridges, and destroyed crops. By November 9, 130 people had died—many in a single devastating landslide—and more than 13,000 had fled to emergency shelters.
But it could have been worse. Oxfam and our local partners began helping communities prepare for this emergency long before it ever came to pass. Working in areas that are vulnerable to floods, landslides, and other hazards, our partners have helped villages form community-protection committees that they then provided with equipment and trainings in first aid, early-warning systems, shelter management, and evacuation planning. When the downpour began to signal danger, 71 Oxfam-supported community-protection committees swung into action and helped guide their people to safety.
Once in the shelter of schools and community buildings, many felt the impact of another Oxfam preparedness measure: a nearby warehouse stocked with essentials. Events like hurricanes and earthquakes that put communities at risk often damage and destroy the roads and bridges that connect them with outside help. The Oxfam warehouse, which is located in a hazardous region of the country, helped ensure that we could move emergency equipment to the shelters quickly and safely.
So when disaster struck, Oxfam aid reached three shelters in the hard-hit areas of Zacatecoluca, Melara, and Puerto La Libertad within hours of the arrival of displaced families. Industrial kitchen equipment and utensils and tanks of clean water helped ensure that there was food to eat and water to drink, and mattresses provided a measure of comfort.
Oxfam also quickly purchased materials for distribution, so other shelters in Zacatecoluca and San Salvador soon received deliveries of first aid kits, hygiene materials, and food, as well as pickaxes, wheelbarrows, and shovels to facilitate the clean-up effort around shelters.
Meanwhile, teams of staff and partners were fanning out across the affected areas to determine how best to meet the longer-term needs of those who have suffered the loss of homes and the means to make a living.
“Disaster preparedness can save lives and help alleviate suffering and economic losses,” says Oxfam America humanitarian response director Michael Delaney. “We hope our supporters will help us sustain and expand this program so we can continue to help communities and partners plan ahead.”
Read more about Oxfam’s preparedness work in El Salvador.
Donate now to Oxfam’s Global Emergency Response.
]]>
UPDATE: April 2011
This note is to briefly explain why Oxfam has revised its view of its 2009 forecast of a likely rise in the number of people affected by climate-related disasters.
Two years ago Oxfam did an analysis of the number of people affected by past climate-related events. From this analysis we made a forecast that by 2015 it was likely that the average annual number of people affected by climate-related disasters would be 375 million and this represented an increase of 54 per cent compared with the average figure of the decade 1998-2007.
Having reviewed the data and the method we used to analyse the data we are no longer confident in the specific approach we used, given the nature of the data, as described below, and so we are no longer confident of this specific forecast.
Our concerns are essentially two-fold: the limitations of the data and the limitations of the way we analysed the data.
The limitations of the data: The data we used was from EM-DAT, the international disaster database managed by CRED, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. This is a respected set of data which captures, amongst other things, the number of disasters that has happened and the number of people affected.
Like most sets of data it has its limitations. In EM-DAT’s case one of the key limitations is that the more recent data is more reliable. This was well known to us and we dealt with this in our analysis by using double exponential smoothing on the data (see the explanation of how we carried out the analysis and catered for the data’s limitation).
However one limitation we did not know at the time and have only recently discovered is that the number of people affected by climate-related disasters in China is unusually low in first half of the 1980s when compared with subsequent years. It is highly likely that this is the result of under reporting from China. Given the size of China’s population its disaster figures are significant when considering the global picture. The likely impact of this on our forecast may mean that we started our analysis with data from 1980 that was likely to be unreasonably low and therefore made our projected increase in the number of people affected artificially high.
We now know that there has been a significant increase in reporting from many other countries over the same period due to better information and communication.
Limitations of our analysis: Though we were clear in our explanation of the way we came to our conclusion that “different forecasting models could lead to different results,” what we should have done, particularly given the high volatility of the data especially in 2002, was run these different models to help determine the degree of confidence in the conclusion we came to.
It does not mean though that there will not be an increase in the numbers of people affected by disasters in the future. There is evidence to point to this likelihood.
According to EM-DAT the number of climate-related disasters has increased by 35 per cent from the 1990s to the 2000s. Floods have increased by 50 per cent over the same period. Munich Re’s database of global disasters also shows an increasing trend in climate-related events. It is not possible to know how much of this is an increase in events or better reporting of events and neither can we assume that an increase in events will lead to an equal increase in numbers affected.
Population growth means that there is a likelihood of more people being affected by climate-related events.
The number of people exposed to some climate-related events is also on the increase. According to the forthcoming United Nations Global Assessment Report 2011 the number of people exposed to floods and cyclones has doubled between 1970 and 2010. It is likely that many people who are ‘exposed’ to hazards are not affected due to measures that protect them, such as flood defences for example. However in many vulnerable countries investment and efforts to reduce significantly the risk of disasters is sorely lacking leaving millions exposed and likely to be affected by disasters.
Finally as the effects of climate change become more apparent there are more frequent and more intense climate-related events according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.
Oxfam is in the process of further research into the number of people affected by climate-related events and will be publishing the results of this research in due course.
]]>
I eventually made it to Mirogane, the main city in the department, which had also been severely affected by both Gustav and Hanna. Here things got interesting. As I made my way along Route Nationale #2, I began noticing trucks full of produce lined up on the side of the road. They were carrying avocados, bananas, and other fresh produce from the South and Grand Anse to be sold in the markets of Port-au-Prince. However, they would not make it to those markets because the bridge on the highway was 1.5 meters?or nearly five feet?under water. The women who had purchased the merchandise in order to resell it, were clearly distraught as the fruits and vegetables had already begun to rot.
As I neared the bridge, or where the bridge should have been, Haitian police officers were posted to prevent vehicles from attempting to cross. A few days earlier, the Haitian government formally closed the highway.
Already in the days following the closing of the road, a group of entrepreneurs had organized alternative transportation for foot passengers and small loads. A shuttle-ferry system had been established. For 15 Haitian gourdes—roughly 38 cents—a man carries you on his back or shoulders and puts you in a "chario," a small wooden boat. Once full, two or three men push the boat across the 229-foot stretch of water to the other side, where for another 15 gourdes, another man takes you on his shoulders to dry land. Here I was able to get on public transport into Port-au-Prince.
Despite this alternative transportation, the road closure combined with the extensive damage caused by the storms will have a great impact on the area. The inability of aid groups to use the road means that help will be slow to reach the isolated areas most affected by the storms. There are great public health risks and food security issues that will need to be addressed in the coming days, weeks, and months and access to the area is critical.
]]>