Sympathy for Sandy among Pakistan's forgotten flood victims

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While the United States recovers from superstorm Sandy, away from the glare of the international media, five million Pakistanis are struggling to get by in the country's third successive year of massive floods. Two years after the worst floods in Pakistan's history captured the world's attention, this summer's monsoon rains once again inundated huge areas of the Indus Valley, with rural parts of Sindh province the worst hit. At the floods' peak in September, more than quarter of a million were in relief camps across the country. Many have now gone home, but in Sindh, 160,000 remain homeless.

Abdur Razzaq Mirali is among them. As hundreds of thousands of Americans wait for their electricity to come back on after Sandy, 55-year-old Mirali's ambitions are rather more modest. "Look, this is my house," he told AFP, pointing to a small mudbrick building half-submerged in filthy brown water. "I am waiting here for the water to recede so we can start our normal life again."
Mirali and his family have waited two months so far and still their village -- also called Mirali -- swims knee-deep in foul-smelling water polluted with human and animal waste, where snakes dart around.

The 80 families of the tiny hamlet in Sindh's Jacobabad district, around 500 kilometres (300 miles) north of the metropolis of Karachi, shelter in makeshift shacks on a patch of higher ground overlooking their waterlogged homes and fields. The world has paid scant attention to Pakistan's flood victims this year. No blanket media coverage, no benefit concerts by pop stars, just foreign aid organisations doing their best on the ground with limited resources. But among Mirali's flood victims there is no resentment of the global attention lavished on America's eastern seaboard, only gratitude for US help and a feeling of solidarity not always present in a country where anti-American feeling often runs high.

"We should not be jealous of them. They are very generous people who have always helped us. They deserve the attention now when they are in duress," said farmer Ghulam Ali, 26. "What we just want is to be helped to restore our normal life." In this remote rural area, foreigners are a rare sight and so all white aid workers are regarded as "Americans". "It is really amazing to see these Americans are helping us here despite having a much worse storm in their own country," said Hashim Mugheri, dressed in a worn-out shirt and loincloth and sporting a grey walrus moustache. "The Americans are helping us here and some of our people are still abusing and hating them," he said.

National Disaster Management Authority says five million people have been affected by this year's floods, three million of them in Sindh, and more than 1.1 million acres (450,000 hectares) of crops destroyed. With so much farmland under water, there are fears for food supplies. The World Food Programme (WFP) is working to supply 1.2 million people with rations for and hopes to extend the scheme for 700,000 of the most vulnerable for a further two months. "This three-month intervention will ensure continued unconditional food support as lands are inundated and crop planting remains unlikely in many areas," said Nicole Carn, WFP Emergency Response Coordinator in the region. "While floodwater is slowly receding in many areas, food insecurity remains a major concern in the affected areas." The NDMA says it has handed out more than 230,000 37-kg ration packs with rice, flour, lentils and other essentials -- more than 50,000 of them in Jacobabad district.

But food problems look set to continue. The floods mean the "rabi" crop -- planted in the winter for a spring harvest -- will be disrupted, threatening supplies next year. NGOs are warning that more help is needed, and quickly, and Wahab Pandhrani, who heads local aid group Pirbhat said Islamabad had let its people down by not appealing for foreign assistance. "The government committed a huge blunder by taking the disaster too lightly," Pandhrani said.

"There is still time to launch an appeal for international help as we could face a huge problem in food security and malnutrition shortly." Stacey Winston of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said nearly $170 million was needed to support families for up to six months with food, water, shelter and other necessities, particularly with winter approaching.

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Desperate for Shelters: New York to turn Jail Cells into Homes

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People affected by Superstorm Sandy wait in the

cold outside an aid distribution site (John Moore/Getty

Images/AFP)

With nowhere else to go, New Yorkers displaced by Hurricane Sandy may have no choice but to sleep in jails. As hundreds of thousands remain without power, a Staten Island prison may serve as a temporary home for storm victims. ­About 100,000 homes and businesses will remain without power for the next several months, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday in a news conference. About 434,140 homes are currently still without power in the region that was in Hurricane Sandy’s path – mostly in New York and New Jersey. The second storm, a nor’easter that hit the region last week, brought snow and frigid temperatures to a city already devastated by the effects of the first storm.

With the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) having only provided housing to two dozen of 5,200 applicants, thousands remain without a home as the winter months approach. As many as 40,000 New Yorkers are in need of shelter from extreme weather and rapidly decreasing temperatures, the city estimates. The city is in desperate need for shelter – so desperate that even a desolate jail is being considered a possibility, the New York Post reports. The Arthur Kill Correction Facility on Staten Island may serve as a temporary home for up to 900 displaced victims of the storm. The medium-security prison was closed last December and with some fixing up, it could once again be fully functional.

“It’s empty. They might as well use it,” 39-year-old Rob Conigatti, who lost his home and is living with family, told the Post. The prison currently lacks boilers and a working wastewater system, but would be repaired, probably with generators installed, before serving as housing.

Arthur Kill Correction Facility (Image from www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com)

The problem with the emergency housing facility is the stigma associated with sleeping in a prison. Some people refuse to sleep in a jail cell because of what it once was. Some – especially senior citizens – are afraid of sleeping next to homeless people and substance abusers who are also likely to check into the free housing facilities. “I lost everything, but I still have my pride,” said 44-year-old Wally Martinez. “We don’t have to stay in a prison. My brother was once in that very prison, and my mother used to visit him regularly. She used to tell me how miserable he looked and how filthy and disgusting that prison was.”

There are currently 2,700 evacuees living in emergency city shelters. While New York City officials have not made a decision on the use of the prison, and the Staten Island Borough President is strongly opposed to it, Councilman James Oddo supports the initiative. “We have not got into the discussion of longer-term transitional housing,” he said. “If there is no other viable option, it shouldn’t be taken off the table because of a quote-unquote stigma. Between being cold and having people dry, in a warm, secure place, I know what my choice is.”

Staten Island Senator Andrew Lanza also said the prison was being considered as a possible transitional site, even though newly appointed press liaison Peter Spencer said Tuesday that the facility “is not on the table” as a temporary shelter. As lawmakers and city officials weigh the need for housing against the situation and the options, the prison could very soon undergo repairs and be turned into a place to live.

100,000 homes, business face months without power

Long-term housing facilities like the Staten Island prison may be crucial in the months ahead: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said some properties are so damaged that it will be a long time before electrical service is restored. Although power has returned to 96 percent of the region, about 100,000 customers will likely go several months without power. “You have people without power for a very long time,” he said. “It’s gotten cold. It’s uncomfortable.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday estimated that as many as 30,000 people in damaged homes will need temporary housing to survive the winter.

Most of the severely damaged homes are on Long Island’s South Shore, on Staten Island and the Rockaways district of New York City's Queens department.
“You have some people who have buildings and have homes that you cannot turn on the power until that building or home is repaired or replaced,” Cuomo said. “Those are going to be the most difficult situations." FEMA will pay for expedited repairs in damaged homes starting November 13. The Empire State Relief Fund, put together by Cuomo, will also distribute cash for rebuilding homes. But until the thousands of displaced New Yorkers are able to return to heated homes, they will be forced to find alternate housing, and those with nowhere to go may choose to spend the night in jail.

(RT)

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Hurricane Sandy Tames Israhell, Puncturing its Anti-Iran Balloon of Lies

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LONDON  - Iran has drawn back from its ambitions to build a nuclear weapon, Israhell’s defence minister was quoted as saying on Tuesday, while warning that his country may still have to decide next year whether to launch a military strike against it.Tehran denies its nuclear work has any military dimensions but governments in Europe and the United States are increasingly concerned over its intentions.Diplomacy and successive rounds of economic sanctions have so far failed to end the decade-old row, raising fears of Israhelli military action against its arch-enemy. Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that an immediate crisis was avoided when Iran chose to use more than a third of its medium-enriched uranium for civilian purposes earlier this year.

He told the paper that the decision “allows contemplating delaying the moment of truth by eight to ten months”.“There could be at least three explanations. One is the public discourse about a possible Israhelli or American operation deterred them from trying to come closer,” he said.“It could probably be a diplomatic gambit that they have launched in order to avoid this issue culminating before the American election, just to gain some time. It could be a way of telling the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) ‘oh we comply with our commitments’.”

Analysts say Iran already has enough low-enriched uranium for several nuclear bombs if it were refined to a high degree, but may still be a few years away from being able to assemble a missile if it decided to go down that path.Western diplomats say Iran appears to have nearly finished installing centrifuges at an underground nuclear plant, potentially boosting its capacity to make weapons-grade uranium if it chose to do so.Asked by the British newspaper whether, if Iran had not pulled back, the crisis would have peaked “about now”, Barak said: “Probably yes”. He added however that he believed Iran was still resolved to build nuclear weapons.

“We all agree that the Iranians are determined to turn into a military nuclear power and we all share the declaration that we are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear and all options are on the table,” he was quoted as saying.“We mean it - we expect others to mean it as well. So it’s not something just about us. But we, for obvious reasons, see the Iranian threat in much more concrete terms.” He said Israhell reserved the right to act alone.“When it comes to the very core of our security interests and, in a way, the future of Israhell, we cannot delegate the responsibility for making decisions even into the hands of our most trusted and trustworthy ally,” he told the Telegraph.“It doesn’t mean that we would be sorry if the Iranians come to the conclusion on their own. The opposite is true. But, if no one acts, we will have to contemplate action.”

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