British Red Cross delegate Sue Le Mesurier was part of a team sent to Pakistan in August 2010 to respond to the devastating monsoon floods. Sue describes what she saw and how she felt in her first week.
“What I noticed first was the water. There was an immense amount of it everywhere. In the worst affected areas, flood waters were 10m high and still rising. The force of the water broke through protective bunds (dams) and poured through the land, destroying crops, homes, businesses and livestock in its path. It was worse than some scenes I had witnessed following the Asian tsunami.
"As part of the field assessment and coordination team (FACT), our job was to assess people’s needs and to kickstart the relief and early recovery operations. This meant travelling around to visit the worst hit areas and talking to people who had been forced to leave their homes and move to safer areas.
Living in public buildings
©Info"One day, we went to a village near the town of Sukkur in the Sindh province. The area had been badly hit by the floods. People had fled their homes with just the clothes they were standing in and nothing else. Any spare bit of land had been turned into a camp. But a chronic shortage of tents had meant many people had to move into public buildings such as schools, which the government had turned into temporary accommodation.
"At one local high school we visited, there were 2,000 people living there. Families with seven or eight children were sleeping on the floor in passageways and classrooms. They had no bedding so most were lying on the concrete with only a scrap of cloth to cover them. One woman I met had lost her husband in the floods and had six children to care for. She had one child on her hip and another clutching her hand. She was desperate for food, milk and clothing. It was heartbreaking.
A humbling experience
"The Pakistan Red Crescent has done an absolutely fantastic job. They gave any help they could to people – providing trucks to move them to higher ground and setting up temporary relief camps, where possible. People we met were immensely grateful for the help they received from the Red Cross. Whenever we arrived or left somewhere with Pakistan Red Crescent staff – people were very appreciative and full of hope, which made us feel very humble.
"The experience has made me appreciate how lucky I am. When you see the pain and suffering in a mother’s face, your own problems go out of the window. Most of the people in Pakistan who were affected were poor and had very little even before this disaster. After the floods, they had nothing. But they are very resilient and hardworking. They will go back and re-establish their lives again. Seeing them do that, and knowing I have helped in some small way, is the reason why I do my job.”
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