Pakistan October 2005

Tuesday 11th October 2005 (07:30 GMT)

Monday 10th October 2005 (09:00 GMT)

A team from IRC has recovered a 12 year old alive from a collapsed building in Muzaffarabad in Kashmir. A second team is also in the area and has searched 2 more schools, unfortunately without success so far. Both teams are currently at a local heliport for onward movement to another search area. They will be joined later today by remainder of team and equipment from Islamabad.

Monday 10th October 2005 (08:00 GMT)

A section of 5 IRC members have carried out a search in Muzaffarabad at a school and a university. No indications of live casualties have been reported. Team moved to Bilert to search secondary school. Initial search promising but, after further in depth search with other teams, no live casualties found. Moral remains high and they will continue to search throughout the night. The 2nd section of 5 people will move from Islamabad area to Kashmir at approx 0400 (local). The 3rd section will move with remaining equipment sometime later today.

Sunday 9th October 2005

The 14 strong team from International Rescue Corps arrived in Islamabad at 1050 (UK Time) this morning. Their flight made good time from East Midlands Airport and the team are in good spirits and fully prepared for the task ahead.

They have cleared immigration and are currently moving to Kashmir. The team has split into 3 sections and the first section is being helicoptered to Kashmir at present. Second section will move this evening and third section will move with remainder of equipment tomorrow 10 Oct.

Saturday 8th October 2005

A team of 14 volunteers from the International Rescue Corps are deploying to Pakistan to offer specialist Urban Search and Rescue skills following this morning's earthquake. The team will depart from east Midlands Airport this evening as part of a wider UK response. Members come from across the UK and from a wide range of backgrounds.

Below is the press summary report issued just after the team returned from Pakistan:

A large earthquake of 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Pakistan at 0900 hrs local time on Saturday Oct 8th 2005. The quake’s epicentre was approx. 150 kms from the country’s capital Islamabad but still managed to collapse buildings in the city.

It soon became clear that help was needed especially in remote areas of the country so The Department for International Development (DFID) formed a British search and rescue response team. 14 members of IRC (6 from Scotland, 6 from the north of England and 2 from Norfolk) were part of the team along with other Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and the UK Fire Service, (a
total of 76 rescue personnel). The teams were mobilised to East Midlands airport that very same day where a flight was chartered to take them to Islamabad.

Arriving in Pakistan within 24 hours of the disaster enabled swift intervention by the teams. One team was dispatched to a tower block, which had collapsed in Islamabad, but the other teams were dispatched to the capital of Pakistan Administered Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, the epicentre of the quake. This remote city could only be reached by air as the road network had been destroyed during the quake. An advanced team of only 10 people (5 from IRC) were sent on the first wave to begin the rescue effort with further teams following as and when transport became available. It took just 40 minutes by helicopter to reach the stricken city and what greeted the team was complete devastation – 90% of the city had been destroyed with virtually all the schools shattered (along with its pupils!), hospitals, shops, houses and seveal military establishments (with all its men!) In fact the first grizzly task for the IRC team was to search a school where 500 out of 700 pupils were missing! This was the scene throughout the whole mission – hundreds of dead and hundreds of casualties.

There were some successes, however, when IRC managed to rescue a 14 year old boy on the Monday following the quake – he was trapped in a collapsed hotel behind a bank and was virtually unhurt! He was whisked away by members of his family and the team never saw him again! The second success was on the Wednesday when a small IRC team working alongside a German dog team were airlifted up the valley to do a needs assessment for the UN of outlying villages also destroyed by the quake. Two boys, Imran 14 and Maqbool 16 were entombed deep within a 3-storey school building that had collapsed. It took 4 hours for both teams to dig the children out – both boys were unhurt but deeply traumatised having lain next to the bodies of their brothers and friends the whole time. For 5 days international search and rescue attempts managed to locate and rescue 24 casualties from the rubble – 11 by the UK teams – including 3 by IRC, by far IRC’s most successful mission to date. Unfortunately the shear scale of the injured and dead overshadowed this. The UN halted the search and rescue phase on the Thursday and the much needed resources were diverted to the agencies brought in to look after the survivors such as the Red Cross, Oxfam and UNHCR.

Upon leaving, IRC decided to donate £9000 worth of equipment such as tents, food and water purification systems to assist in relief efforts. The mission strongly demonstrated the need for outside assistance following a disaster of this magnitude. It also highlighted that some teams can work efficiently and effectively together even if there is language barrier! IRC were proud to be called upon to help in this disaster and hopefully have enabled 3 families to try to rebuild their lives together! There is still however a massive requirement to continue with assistance in Pakistan – otherwise the 73,000 death toll is only going to rise.

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