October – December 2006: Somalia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea & The Philippines
12 months, 12 countries
22nd December - Worldwide: The year 2006 has proved a busy one for ShelterBox, with the charity responding to disaster situations in 12 different countries – providing emergency accommodation for more than 82,000 disaster victims.
The year began with aid still being delivered to earthquake victims in Kashmir – who also received further help in November. The biggest emergency of the year, however, was in Java, where the island was hit by an earthquake, volcanic eruption and tsunami within just a few weeks.
Other countries where help was sent in 2006 included: Afghanistan, Ecuador, Kenya, Lebanon, Romania, Somalia and Sudan.
During December alone, ShelterBox has delivered aid for 1,000 people displaced by a volcanic eruption in Papua New Guinea, 2,000 flood victims in Somalia and 6,000 typhoon survivors in the Philippines.
One ShelterBox Response Team is still in the Philippines, overseeing the distribution of tents to families left homeless after mudslides set off following the typhoon wiped out their homes, and will not return home until Boxing Day.
How 2007 will unfold remains to be seen but – on behalf of all those people that you helped worldwide during 2006 – we would like to thank every one of our supporters for making our work possible.
Help arrives for typhoon victims
19th December - Philippines: The first 200 boxes sent to help typhoon victims in the Philippines have now reached the worst affected area.
Most of the boxes were distributed to families from the area around Mount Mayon, where a number of villages were totally destroyed. Among those helped was Jenny Balderana, who is nine months pregnant, her husband Alvin and young daughter Gina.
After surviving in a makeshift shack that left them at the mercy of the wind and of mosquitoes breeding in flood water, a ShelterBox Response Team delivered a tent and other emergency supplies to Jenny and her family last Thursday – as well as around 35 boxes to other families in the immediate area.
Boxes containing emergency accommodation for another 4,000 people are due to arrive in the Philippines tomorrow, along with a second response team.
Team at work in Papua New Guinea
19th December - Rabul: A ShelterBox Response Team is also at work in Papua New Guinea, where aid has now arrived for villagers displaced by a volcanic eruption on the island of New Britain.
Team member Lasse Petersen said some of those displaced had been living in open-sided tarpaulin shelters at a place called Sikut, sleeping on a concrete floor. He added: “Sikut’s mountain location means temperatures are much lower than at sea level with tropical rain every afternoon. Conditions were not good for the old and sick.”
A consignment of 100 ShelterBoxes was sent in response to a request for help after around 2,000 people had to leave their homes following an eruption by 668-metre Mount Tavurvur. The arrival of the boxes has enabled tents, blankets and other supplies to be distributed to those islanders most in need.
Typhoon – a survivor’s story
13th December - Philippines: Jenny Balderana is nine-months pregnant and expecting to give birth to her second child any day. But Jenny’s house was destroyed by the recent typhoon and her nearest hospital is in a city with no electricity and clean water.
Jenny, who is 26, husband Alvin and their three-year-old daughter Gina live in the village of Broy Lidong, which was hit last week by a severe typhoon that brought devastating floods and mudslides.
Jenny said: “We left the house when the third typhoon warning came and ran for the higher ground. We heard strong winds like a jet sound and giant boulders came down from the volcano smashing everything.
“We stayed away from the house for eight hours - that was how long the typhoon lasted. We were really scared and lots of people were killed here. When we went back to the house it was flattened completely and all our things were wet and crushed under the house.
“We don't know what to do or where to begin: we are jobless and have nothing. If it is windy our makeshift house becomes cold and wet mosquitoes bite my child and I am 9 months pregnant, what if I get malaria? We have no kitchen, no toilet, no dry ground or money.”
ShelterBox is currently one of the few international aid agencies working in the area and says much more help is needed.
Photographer Mark Pearson is with a four-man ShelterBox Response Team in the Philippines and said many villages have just disappeared beneath a sea of black mud. He added: “Thousands of people are living in evacuation centres, all the power lines are down, the water is polluted and there are outbreaks of diarrhoea starting. This is as bad as any disaster I’ve seen, including the tsunami.”
Tsunami-like scenes of devastation
11th December - Philippines: Around 5,000 people are now feared dead in the Philippines, where devastation wrought by two recent typhoons is said to resemble the aftermath of the Boxing Day Tsunami.
ShelterBox photographer Mark Pearson is now in the provincial capital Legaspi, where a 10ft high flood has left the city without electricity, clean water or sanitation. He said the worst-hit area, however, is around the nearby volcano Mount Mayon, where torrential rain swept walls of rocks and black volcanic mud onto dozens of villages and small towns.
Mark, who has previously deployed to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan and many other emergencies, said: “This is as bad as any disaster I’ve seen before. It looks like a hurricane has gone through the middle of the world’s biggest coalmine. Everything is buried under black mud.
“In the area we saw, about 18 villages have been completely destroyed. They were hit by 30ft tall walls of volcanic ash and mud. You can’t even see the rooftops of some places and those that are left are completely uninhabitable. The people here have been left with nothing. I saw 1,000 people who are now living in a church.”
He added that very little outside aid has reached the region and that more help is desperately needed. “There’s nobody here: just ShelterBox, a few people from Oxfam and Care International and a team of US Marine Corps doctors from their base in Japan.”
The first ShelterBoxes have now reached Manila and are due to be flown to Legaspi by the Philippines military within 24 hours. Accompanying the aid will be a response team made up of volunteers from Cornwall and Devon.
Two new disasters spark emergency response
5th December - Somalia & Philippines: Just weeks after helping earthquake victims in Kashmir, ShelterBox is now responding to a devastating typhoon in Asia and extensive flooding in East Africa.
Over the next few days, emergency accommodation for 4,000 people – plus other vital survival equipment – will leave the charity’s Cornwall depot. Half will go to typhoon victims in the Philippines and half to victims of flooding in Somalia.
ShelterBox founder and general manager Tom Henderson said: “Following a direct appeal from the authorities in Pakistan we got help for 8,000 people into Kashmir just ahead of the winter snows. Now, we’re swinging back into action on two fronts. Situations like this stretch our resources but we’re doing what we can to help families left homeless as a result of these two natural disasters.”
In the Philippines, around 1,000 people were killed after Typhoon Durian created mudslides that swallowed whole villages, leaving around 800,000 in need of help. Mr Henderson said: “Many typhoon victims have not just seen their homes destroyed but also their livelihoods – the mud has wiped out orchards and rice paddies, as well as killing livestock.”
The aid for Africa will be flown to UNICEF’s regional headquarters in Kenya then airlifted into southern Somalia, where it is estimated up to 900,000 people may be at risk after widespread flooding. UNICEF reports that since 1st October the region has had three times its normal rainfall, leaving whole villages submerged and vast regions of farmland underwater.
ShelterBox Response Teams will accompany both aid deployments to oversee distribution and assess what other help is needed.
Open day at Helston HQ
16th November - Cornwall: ShelterBox will be throwing open the doors of its Helston HQ on Saturday 25th November and inviting members of the public to come and visit.
The event will be an opportunity to see behind the scenes for local people, who have been among the charity’s greatest and most loyal supporters since it began work less than six years ago.
ShelterBox founder and general manager Tom Henderson said: “The people of Cornwall have been solidly behind us since day one – without their backing we would never have got this far – and all our operations are based here in Helston.
“The open day is a chance for anyone who is interested to come and look around the warehouse and see for themselves exactly what goes into our green boxes. They’ll be able to see the tents and talk to some of the volunteers who distribute the aid to disaster victims.”
The open day runs from 11am to 4pm, with tours every half hour of the warehouse, which is at Unit 1, Water Ma Trout Industrial Estate, Helston.
Improving lives and chances of Kashmir children
11th November - Pakistan: Children in earthquake-hit communities in the mountains of Kashmir have been given some much-needed supplies for their schools.
ShelterBox Response Teams have been in Pakistan distributing tents to families facing a second winter living in the open following last year’s devastating earthquake.
The charity also sent some individual children’s packs and basic supplies for teachers. ShelterBox photographer Mark Pearson said: “We stopped at Balgran village and had to walk another 300ft up to reach the school. There were 50 children there. They were waiting for lessons but there was no teacher as he had gone to Muzaffarabad to get his pay.
“The school was an old UNICEF tent that had no floor, just hard earth. There were no chairs so the 50 children sat on the bare ground with only one blackboard and no teacher. We met the local doctor who helped us distribute the school equipment.”
Each pupil received a pack containing a small blackboard, as well as chalk, crayons, pencils, a geometry set and a notepad. The item that made the greatest impact was the blackboards, with many pupils using them to write out their names in both Urdu and English.
Aid being prepared for volcano victims
6th November - Papua New Guinea: A consignment of 100 ShelterBoxes is being sent to help communities displaced by a volcanic eruption on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea.
The 668-metre Mount Tavurvur erupted in October, driving around 2,000 people to flee the provincial capital of Rabaul as lava poured off the mountain’s southern slope and ash rained down from an 18-km plume.
More than 1,000 people were subsequently evacuated from affected towns and, although volcanic activity has subsided, the government has declared a state of emergency. ShelterBox has been asked to send aid to help those people unable to return to their homes.
Team fly out to begin aid distribution
26th October - Pakistan: A four-man ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) flies to Pakistan today to oversee the distribution of aid sent to help earthquake victims in Kashmir.
Following a direct appeal from Pakistan’s National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), emergency accommodation for another 8,000 people has been sent to the mountainous region.
The SRT is being led by Ken Wilkins, a Camborne police inspector, who was in a ShelterBox team that distributed aid around the town of Bagh in November 2005.
He said: “ShelterBox got aid to 130,000 people following the earthquake but, because of the scale of the disaster, we were unable to provide aid for everyone and with another winter coming on there are families out there who still need our help now.”
The other members of the team include ShelterBox photographer Mark Pearson, Simon Zeal from Padstow and Jonathan Cooksley from Wadebridge.
Plea for help in Kashmir
26th October - Pakistan: More aid is on its way to earthquake victims in the Kashmir region following an official request for more help.
One year after the devastating earthquake that hit Pakistani-administered Kashmir on 8th October 2005 many people are still living in flimsy shelters and canvas tents unsuitable for the winter conditions now approaching.
Last year’s earthquake destroyed the homes of around 3.5 million people and killed at least 80,000. In the months following, ShelterBox Response Teams (SRTs) provided emergency accommodation for around 130,000 people as they helped deploy the charity’s rugged dome tents – designed for extreme weather conditions – to villages across the mountainous region.
Now, Pakistan’s National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) has turned to ShelterBox for more help and asked for 2,000 boxes.
ShelterBox founder and general manager Tom Henderson said: “We’ve now got 400 boxes on their way to Kashmir, each containing two 10-man tents and we’re going to send an SRT to Pakistan. Our volunteers will work with the NRSP and oversee the deployment, ensuring our aid gets to the people who need it most.
“That will provide accommodation for 8,000 but without extra funds we’re not going to be able to help on the scale we’d like to. Sadly, we’re having to prioritise demands, as we’ve also got aid on its way to Africa, where we’re working with both UNICEF and UNHCR to help some of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by conflicts in Sudan and Somalia.”
He added: “Today, though, the most pressing need is to help those desperate folk in Kashmir.”
Further aid for Africa
18th October - Somalia: The next consignment of aid being sent as part of ShelterBox’s A Million In Africa initiative is now on its way to Somalia.
A sea container holding another 224 boxes, plus additional water containers, left the Helston warehouse yesterday. The boxes will travel by ship to Mombasa in Kenya, where they will be handed over to UNICEF for distribution to camps in Somalia.
The UN estimates that around 750,000 people have been displaced by 15 years of civil war in Somalia. Around 400,000 of these are now living in camps set up by UNICEF in the south of the country and around the capital, Mogadishu, while other refugees have fled into neighbouring countries.
A previous consignment of 214 boxes that was shipped from the UK in late August has now reached Africa and is with UNICEF ready for distribution.
