Red Cross delivers clean water, sanitation to townships

The International Red Cross movement is mounting a major effort to provide clean water and sanitation facilities to quake-hit townships in Sichuan's Mianzhu prefecture as part of ongoing work to prevent a post-disaster epidemic.

Three Emergency Response Units, (ERU), one from Spain, one from the UK and a joint Austrian-French team are carrying out the work. But this understates the multinational nature of the enterprise. The overall coordinator is from Finland, and in keeping with the international spirit of the operation, the leader of the UK team is from Germany. Everything is being done in collaboration with the Chinese Red Cross who will take over the facilities after a few weeks.

The main Red Cross base camp is in Jiulong town, which was virtually leveled in the earthquake, with smaller bases in Xinglong and Banqiao. Jiulong is the hub of an area of scattered farming communities lying on flat land at the foot of the mountains, close to the earthquake epicenter, Wenchuan. Around 400 Juilong residents died in the quake, including more than 150 children who were crushed when their school collapsed.

Tiina Saarikoski, the overall project coordinator, and Jaime Bara, leader of the Spanish team, took us on a tour of their installations in the rubble that was once a town, where many of the residents live in tents erected beside, and sometimes inside, the ruins of their homes. They showed us the traditional wells that may have been polluted by chemical spills and decomposing bodies in the aftermath of the earthquake. Ongoing threats to well water safety are careless disposal of food waste and human excrement. The Red Cross is providing stand pipes to deliver clean and safe water that has been processed by their mobile treatment plants. Simultaneously hundreds of prefabricated toilets are being erected throughout the area.

As we walked, the Red Crossers took every opportunity to explain to residents that basic hygiene is of the utmost importance during the post-quake period. UK team leader Ina Bluemel said "We're spreading the message on how you handle hygiene promotion in an emergency situation. There are a few key messages that can help prevent disease." The local people were extremely welcoming, almost embarrassingly grateful for the assistance offered by the Red Cross.

Jaime Bara told us he had established an excellent working relationship with the authorities, including the local police chief who, he said, had become his regular lunch companion.

Francis Markus, China spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), explained that the ERU is a basic tool used by the Red Cross to intervene in crisis situations. A combination of up-to-date equipment and skilled personnel, ERUs may have a wide range of functions. In addition to the water and sanitation ERUs in the Jiulong area, the German and Chinese Red Cross societies have jointly provided a field hospital in Dujiangyan, near Chengdu. In all cases, the ERUs are handed over to the local Red Cross movement after a period of training and familiarization.

The leader of the Austrian-French ERU, Werner Meisinger, told us that overseas personnel would probably leave the Jiulong area after four to five weeks; the Chinese Red Cross would continue to operate the facilities for a further four to five months, after which the plant and equipment would be stored for future use by the Chinese Red Cross, possibly to equip Chinese ERUs overseas.

IFRC Spokesman Francis Markus (left), project coordinator Tiina Saarikoski and Spanish Red Cross team leader Jaime Bara. (Image: China.org/Wang Rui)UK Team leader Ina Bluemel told us that they have been overwhelmed by the level of response to their request for volunteers. Not only has every village and settlement delivered more than the required number of volunteers, but many of them have turned out to be skilled engineers. "Our sanitation engineer threw up his hands and said I can't teach them anything," said Ina, "which is a perfect situation for us."

Bluemel emphasized that the Red Cross was working together with villagers, not imposing solutions from above. "We've emphasized letting the community drive the decision making. We've literally asked them what they think is needed most and they came up with shelter first, then latrines, then hand washing, the ladies said they don't have an area where they can wash themselves, so we're going to put up some plastic sheeting that covers them from view."

The Red Cross acknowledges its efforts cannot rival the scale of the government response and they see themselves as complementing and plugging the gaps in the government's work. Evidence of the state commitment to reconstruction could be seen in the fields outside Jiulong where what looked like an entire division of the PLA Navy were on the way to completing construction of a vast area of prefabricated housing. Nearby was a large and orderly tented settlement, housing residents waiting to move in.