Afghanistan suffered the worst earthquake in 1998 which killed more than 3,500 people and damaged many houses displacing thousands of people.

During this month, Afghanistan was shocked by many tremors. The last tremor was detected in Kabul, its capital, during the early morning on 18 this month. On 4 January a 6,2 magnitude earthquake shacked the same region and 6 magnitude tremors were felt in the 3 to 5 January period.

According to the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) there were no dead people but more than 10 houses were damaged in Badakhshan province.

The ARCS is preparing a contingency plan to minimize the bad consequences of earthquakes. This plan will be only for Kabul city by now. “The contingency plan has been prepared to respond to post-quake emergencies in time and effectively, and to alleviate the resulting human suffering,” said Abdul Rahman Kalantary, ARCS’s director of disaster response. The plan consists in rescue operations, training volunteers, relief delivery and logistics. There are more than 24,000 volunteers around the country, but a lack of adequate resources has been a major challenge in its quake contingency programme. The ARCS said there is not a safe place to store food and stuffs to be used in an emergency, but they will act quickly in a case like this. They have emergency kits for water decontaminating which would be distributed in case of need. The contingency plan will be applied for quakes beyond magnitude six (Richter scale).

This family lost its entire house because of the tremors. Weak buildings are threatening many people lives in the north-eastern area.

Parts of central, northern and northeastern Afghanistan are prone to seismic waves. This natural vulnerability has been exacerbated by prevalent illegal and substandard construction, weak essential infrastructure and widespread lack of awareness on the risks of earthquakes and other natural disasters.

                                                                                                                                                     Source: www.irinnews.org

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Bishow Parajuli, said that it will take three to four years for Myanmar to recover form the cyclone which hit the Ayeyard delta on early May. We have to remember this cyclone, Nargis, left almost 140,000 dead people and thousands of destroyed buildings such as houses, schools and hospitals.

Since the quick response from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) after the cyclone, they delivered food to more than 1 million people and a new assessment in February will determine the continuity of the support. By now the WFP will continue delivering food till April, supporting at least 450,000 people.

Nargis left this principal avenue destroyed. Everything looked like taken from a bad dream for Myanmar people.

There are 25,000 people engaged in a food-for-work programme. But the most important economic action is that the u$s 477 million budget designated to emergency relief and early recovery efforts, is 64% funded. This amount of money came from 23 NGO and 13 UN organizations.

The three-year plan will focus on restoring productive, healthy and secure lives at a cost of more than $230 million per year and cover health, livelihood, education, shelter, disaster-preparedness response, water and sanitation as well as the environment.

Source: www.irinnews.org