A piece of emergency work

A few of you asked me what it has been like to work in emergency. To that I'd first say that I came to Nepal a month after the second earthquake, when things are very different than in the first days. Still, fact remains that in some areas, over 90% of the houses had been destroyed or damaged; people lost access to water, food and livelihood, and all of that was still very visible when I arrived.

Jiri technical school

And so a few of my subjective impressions are herewith. 

To begin with, the timeframe. While in development context you think in terms of years, in emergency it's in terms of weeks. Makes sense, of course - lifesaving by definition, emergency provides assistance needed urgently. Starting to give food or shelter six months after a disaster wouldn't be very practical.

Connected to that, big part is about distributing material - food, shelter items, basic hygiene kits, blankets, solar lamps, kitchen kits, raincoats and similar, depending on what is needed most, to enable people survive, with dignity, the immediate period. With over half a million houses destroyed by the earthquake, provision of shelter materials was a major need (more so with the monsoon onset just a month after the second earthquake) and something a majority of the organisations in Nepal were involved in, including mine.

When I arrived, tarpaulins - the quickest temporary shelter solution - had already flooded a big part of the affected districts...

Tarpaulin shelters

... and we all were slowly moving into something which could offer better temporary refuge for monsoon rains (and potentially winter)...

Brand-new temporary shelter

I would not want to spend the monsoon in this

... CGIs. Corrugated Galvanised Iron sheets. I should have probably put this in big red bold letters. Unknown to me before I came to Nepal, this abbreviation now became something I'd dream about (generally nightmares) for quite a while.

CGI wherever you look...

The thing is, distributing stuff doesn't seem to be particularly challenging or thrilling - but actually, it can be quite... ehmmm, quite a task. There's finding trucks and loaders in the last minute when everyone needs trucks and loaders; haggling over the transport price which is increasing by the second; trying to plan the arrival-parking-offloading-storage-reloading-distribution chain when the wishful thinking of "please let us know 48 hours before the trucks arrive" is becoming a reality of a 7am call of "6 big trucks will be there in half an hour and need to be sent back immediately" when you have no storage and all the loaders have gone to UN who pay them more; finding out on the go the difference between a 16t truck, 8t truck, 2,5t truck, 4WD truck and how many CGIs fit into which; at the same time getting right the beneficiary selection in sometimes quite remote places, getting the beneficiary lists prepared, checked and cross-checked as the household numbers are changing constantly; finding the distribution sites; figuring out the access when everyone you ask tells you something different; organising the team to prepare everything for the distributions (a whole checklist there); fitting the distribution schedule with all the unknown factors in the road-trucks-loaders-weather-people range; while again at the same time going to plentiful meetings to coordinate with dozens of other organisations to make sure that you don't overlap; more meetings to get approval of local authorities; inform the police; finding a helicopter landing site in a region which is only forested slope in case a VIP visit wants to fly-in on last-minute notice to see the distribution (and looking for a GPS in the middle of nowhere to send the landing coordinates while your VIP visit is already waiting at the airport); trying to get at least roughly right the (substantial) supporting paperwork for all this according to the procedures... you might be getting my point.

One of the many...

Spacious site for a distribution is not easy to find...

... more likely it looks like this

Even better after the monsoon starts

Registration of the beneficiaries

Not easy to transport... the whole CGI shelter package weighs 128kg

A close relationship

With time, this insanity run of course slowed to a more acceptable pace and we even had time to buy some office furniture to stop sharing one table among all.

Shelter apart, water, hygiene and sanitation are another major issue when - in addition to collapsed houses - you also have collapsed latrines or destroyed water points; and if everything you have (including your toothbrush) stayed under a pile of rubble, personal hygiene isn't all that easy. That's where hygiene kits and emergency latrines were supposed to provide at least a temporary solution, complemented by hygiene promotion. That's not negligible: open defecation was a problem in many areas even before the earthquake, and frankly, I totally understand if someone prefers the bush instead of the latrine that's left standing and is used by half of the village - but it carries substantial public health risks. 

One of the relatively newer tools, in conditions where markets are functioning, is providing cash: people decide themselves what they need most, they support the local market and keep their dignity. Sometimes cash is provided unconditionally, sometimes based on series of conditions; sometimes in forms of grant and other times as cash-for-work on public infrastructures, such as road or path clearance (which is what we also did, on a larger scale, in Uganda).

My favourite cash-for-work photo

Earthquake and collapse of structures also means a lot of unsafe buildings...

... and a lot of rubble. While some smaller sites can be demolished and cleared manually, larger buildings need machinery and someone competent to demolish them safely, and that usually depends on the government or a UN agency (none of which are normally particularly fast). In Charikot, the capital of Dolakha district, it took several months for demolition of the big houses to be done and debris removal to be completed.

Demolition and debris removal: before and after

Demolition and debris removal: before and during

After the first three months I changed organisation and went back to the one I had been with in Uganda, now with projects in a different district, focusing again on shelter (more CGIs, but also trainings on earthquake-resistant construction), as well as on education. Because schools aren't any less prone to collapsing than houses, many were also damaged or destroyed during the earthquake - which affects not only the physical structure where children learn, but also the safe space and routine that school represents. That's why temporary learning centres are built for schools, to last the period while a permanent (or at least semi-permanent) solution is found.  

Awareness on what to do during an earthquake

The school latrine with the best view in the world

I could go on and on: relief, recovery and reconstruction work is huge and wide, and it goes far beyond distributing things: protection, for example, is an important topic in a place like Nepal where human trafficking was a big problem even before the earthquake. The first short-term humanitarian assistance is to save lives, reduce suffering, and maintain respect for human dignity, but ideally it should link to recovery, helping people rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

On my part, I'm really glad for the experience - it was intense, fast, dynamic, interesting, I've learnt a lot (and even got on a helicopter, whewww ;-) ), and I have to say respect to those who do it for living, especially in the immediate phase - but on the whole I still prefer the longer-term development world, with its time to develop policies, projects, and strategies, and build teams and relationships.

Nepal team 1

Nepal team 3 (... 2 is missing, yes)

Let's see what next!