Relief for Indonesia Earthquake Survivors

Amy McCulla, Technical Officer in CHF International’s Health Unit, is in Padang as part of CHF’s response to the recent earthquake in Indonesia. She is working as part of an Emergency Response Team to undertake a preliminary assessment of the situation on the ground and craft CHF’s response to the disaster. These are her updates from the field.

October 10th

After some trial and error, we found a hotel near one of the large markets that collapsed during the earthquake; many people lost their lives in there. Even with that information flying around, a few days following the earthquake vendors returned to the area and set up small makeshift stalls in the road and resumed business. Today it’s a bustling area and we were happy to see people resuming life as usual.

We were surprised to learn that our hotel doesn’t normally take foreigners but since the earthquake they had relaxed their policies to accommodate the influx of people and the lack of hotels, MANY of which collapsed in the earthquake. The lovely Muslim woman at the counter typed me a receipt on an old fashioned typewriter and we were on our way to the Governor’s Resident to start our day of meetings, planning and writing.

Once we arrived at the Governor’s Residence the guys (all shelter and construction experts) went off to a meeting and I found an air conditioned spot where the UN had set up shop. One of our Indonesian team members brought me a snack and I settled in to wait.

After lunch I met up with the team to work on our strategy, assessment questions and our concept. Things are looking good in that arena and I’m interested to see what information we collect out in the field. Half of the team will head out to the field and the other half will stay here to research and write, write, write. It’s now 6:30 pm and I’ve got a lot to do still but at least we have a nice place to sleep tonight.