Pakistan Floods 2010: Worst Floods In Living Memory
by Reuters AlertNet
www.AlertNet.org
Pakistan’s worst floods in 80 years have killed more than 1,600 people and affected up to 20 million – more than a tenth of the population.
The United Nations estimates at least 8 million people need urgent assistance. The authorities and aid agencies are struggling to help survivors, many of whom have lost everything and say they received no warnings that raging waters were heading their way.
About a third of Pakistan has been affected by the floods, which have marooned hundreds of villages and destroyed power stations, roads and bridges, complicating relief efforts.
More than 4 million are homeless.
A New Future for ex-United.com
“Everything old, is new again.” I’ve taken a long time to get back to ex-United, which I regret, but the focus of my activities lately has been on Haiti after the magnitude-7.2 earthquake of January 12. I did disaster relief in Leogane, Haiti for a month in June and July, and was profoundly moved by the experience. In my lifetime, I’ve done a lot of traveling, including to many third-world destinations, but I have never seen a place of so much concentrated destruction and misery, still inhabited by some of the loveliest people I’ve ever met.
There are stories to tell about Haiti and its people, and I intend to tell them here. But there are also stories to tell of the “travel-expats” who give of their time, energy, and airline miles in order to go to places like Haiti, Pakistan, and DR Congo, just to help strangers who are in desperate need of locally-applied, hands-on help, from those unusual people who have the guts not just to care, but to go.
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Helping Haiti: The Need Is Still Great
I have previously written about the outstanding response of the commercial airline industry and organizations like Airline Ambassadors to the enormous slate of human needs that is Haiti after its magnitude-7 earthquake two months ago.
Although most of the media attention has drifted away from Haiti over the past month, as new quakes have occurred in both Chile and Turkey, the situation in Haiti remains dire even by third world standards:
• The death toll will top 300,000; 1.3 million people remain homeless and half of these are without shelter of any kind; sanitation and safe water supplies are critical needs everywhere.
• Haitian children are some of the quake’s most tragic victims: Hundreds of thousands of kids have been killed, injured, orphaned, separated from their families, or left without roofs over their heads or schools to attend.
• The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season commences in June, and is sure to wreak further havoc upon an already wretched situation.
Airline people are the salt of the earth for being among the first to say “Let’s get on the plane; let’s go; let’s help.” Please, if you have a moment, look at the photos and read the first-person account of a medical first responder.
“Good Night, Sweetie”: Now a Terrorist Transmission?
In yet another sign that exactly one airline is completely out of touch with customer-reality, the Twitterverse popped up a story today about media consultant John Battelle, who was recently stopped, on a wifi-equipped aircraft flying between New York and San Francisco, from using video chat to say “good night” to his wife and daughters.
Which airline is it? Here are some clues:
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“United Breaks Guitars,” Song 3: Rhapsody in Bluegrass
As promised, Dave Carroll has released the third and final song of his United Breaks Guitars trilogy. In a special webcast event that happened live last night (recorded & available here; things gets started at about 04:30), Dave introduced the last video and spent another 45 minutes or so telling a more complete, behind-the-scenes story of both his broken Taylor guitar and United Airlines’ profoundly broken customer service organization.
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