Oxfam America Blog

The powerful undersea earthquake that struck near West Sumatra on September 30 killed at least 1,000 people and destroyed homes, bridges, and roads in Padang and villages north of the city. Oxfam’s Kate Thwaites describes the complex logistics of providing emergency aid to the Indonesian seaport.

There’s a strange feeling in Padang as the city begins to pick itself up almost a week after the devastating earthquake.

To a visitor like me, parts of the city look almost normal – houses are still standing, traffic seems to be moving again. Read the rest of this entry »

A resident searches for victims under a collapsed hotel in Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island. Photo by Reuters/Crack Palinggi, courtesy of www.alertnet.org

At a powwow here this morning, fund-raisers, press officers, and writers—not quite believing the cascade of bad news–huddled over the headlines sprawled across a table in one of the cubicles: “Quakes Ravage Sumatra and Samoas,” said one.

“Tsunami Came Too Fast for Warnings to Reach All,” said another.

“Typhoon Eases, Leaving More Than 300 Dead,” said a third.

And this one, which summed up the shock of it all best:  “Week of Tragedy for Asia.”

It’s a week that has left us here at Oxfam racing to help meet the needs of some of the countless people who have seen their homes crash down around them following the earthquake that hit Sumatra, their villages flattened by the tsunami that swept into Samoa and Tonga, and all that’s familiar washed away in the flooding unleashed by Typhoon Ketsana  as it roared across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Read the rest of this entry »

What a week to launch a blog about humanitarian work.

It’s been a week that has seen the death toll from the May 3 cyclone in Myanmar inch upward as Oxfam worries about the outbreak of disease among survivors and the United Nations warns that 2.5 million people are now in urgent need of aid. Read the rest of this entry »