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Hurricane relief underway

Just over two weeks since thousands of homes were literally blown away by Hurricane Felix, hundreds of homeless families in Nicaragua's mining triangle now have clean water supplies as part of Nuevas Esperanzas' disaster response.  Working jointly with the Ministry of Health in Rosita, Nuevas Esperanzas has focussed attention on three shelters for displaced families where hundreds of men, women and children are crammed into the corridors and classrooms of small village schools.  In consultation with the health authority's epidemiologist, these shelters were given the highest priority in view of the risk of outbreaks of diseases amongst the displaced families.

Of the greatest concern was a shelter in the community of California where 32 families living in two classrooms had access to water only from a muddy spring a few hundreds away from the school.  Babies clutched bottles of the cloudy and contaminated water whilst the same buckets used for bathing and drinking contributed to the poor state of hygiene in the shelter. Nuevas Esperanzas immediately contacted Action Against Hunger working in the neighbouring municipality of Puerto Cabezas to borrow a collapsible water tank.  The tank was installed and later the same day a water tanker arrived to provide an emergency supply of treated water to the shelter.  

Deliveries of water to the shelter are only a temporary solution and at the same time as the water tank was installed, work began on clearing away fallen trees from the spring source.  After a rapid assessment of the flow from the spring and the quality of the water, Nuevas Esperanzas' water and sanitation team designed a structure to filter and store water from the spring. This source will replace the need for deliveries of clean water by tanker and will serve the needs of the displaced families while they are living in the school.  One of the problems of disaster relief work is that it is often very difficult to estimate how long displaced families will stay in temporary shelters.  The Nicaraguan government has declared the first six months following the disaster an 'emergency phase', after which reconstruction work will begin.  From the experience of previous natural disasters in Nicaragua, it may be years rather than months before longer term solutions to housing needs are addressed.

In addition to the emergency water supply for California, Nuevas Esperanzas has begun rehabilitation work on contaminated wells, starting with communal wells used by displaced families.  Where the water in the wells is not too cloudy, chlorination is a reasonably effective means of treatment.  However, many wells filled up with muddy floodwater and in these cases, contaminated water was first pumped from the wells with engine-driven suction pumps.  When the water in the well started to become clear again, chlorine was added.  The Ministry of Health has provided Nuevas Esperanzas with a list of nearly 400 wells in the municipality of Rosita which were believed to have been contaminated by the storm.  There is clearly much more work that is still to be done, and Nuevas Esperanzas will continue to address the urgent needs for water and sanitation of those most badly affected by this natural disaster. 

21/09/07