As a member of the American Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program, an AmeriCares Annual Emergency Response Partner, and Corporate Sponsor of both Team Rubicon and All Hands Network, Southwest Airlines proudly provides proactive and ongoing support, helping enable these organizations to respond immediately to the needs of those affected by disasters at home and worldwide, including the Nepal earthquake. Here are their stories, and ways to help. American Red Cross
Red Cross volunteers in Nepal are providing first aid to those impacted by the weekend’s devastating earthquake, along with helping with search and rescue and supporting first responders.
One of these volunteers is Sammeer Bajracharya, 22, an engineering graduate. He was part of the team deployed in the early hours after the earthquake to provide first aid and search and rescue support. When the earthquake struck, Bajracharya was in Bhaktapur. “As soon as the earthquake started, I knew what was happening,” he said. “I made sure my family was OK, and then as soon as the shaking stopped I went out to direct people to safer places.”
Bajracharya went to Kathmandu to join a team of first aid volunteers which worked in collaboration with emergency services treating victims and injured rescue workers. Their crew found a woman who was trapped in the rubble. One of her legs had been crushed by the falling building. Bajracharya said “We worked with the rescue teams and did our best to give her first aid, but unfortunately, we couldn’t save her.”
Bajracharya has been a Red Cross volunteer for two years, in an earthquake preparedness project. Additionally he is trained in first aid, search and rescue, and became a passionate advocate of volunteering. “I have become more and more involved and I love helping people,” he says. “I’ll keep volunteering for as long as I can, providing first aid and support to people who cannot go back to their homes.”
How you can help: http://www.redcross.org/cm/southwestairlines-pub
AmeriCares
An AmeriCares emergency response team negotiated rough roads Thursday, driving eight hours to reach Aruchghat, a heavily damaged rural village near the epicenter of the massive Nepal earthquake. “You are the first people to have visited us since the disaster,” residents told them.
Their emergency response team is coordinating with local government officials and international organizations to provide health care, deliver life-saving medicines and relief aid, and assess health needs in high priority areas.
A shipment of 15 tons of medicines and supplies critical for the treatment of earthquake survivors, including intravenous fluids, wound care supplies, infusion sets and antibiotics, is scheduled to leave AmeriCares Amsterdam warehouse and will arrive in Kathmandu early next week. AmeriCares India is preparing a shipment of medicines, blankets, and hygiene kits from Mumbai and is also mobilizing medical teams, the first of which will arrive in Nepal today.
How you can help: www.americares.org/nepalearthquake
Team Rubicon
Team Rubicon has deployed 31 team members to Nepal, focusing on medical aid and wide-area assessments. With heavy cloud cover, it's been incredibly difficult for aid organizations to get good overhead images of the disaster zone and updated maps to know where aid is needed. As many agencies are focusing on life-saving operations, Team Rubicon is tackling the crippling lack of aerial imagery in the affected areas.
The team is equipped with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles - drones) to provide visual assessments of remote areas. By creating a detailed map of the disaster zone, Team Rubicon’s medical teams will be able to identify and deploy to the areas requiring the most immediate care and most importantly, these maps and data will be shared with other relief agencies, improving the overall response to the people of Nepal.
How you can help: www.teamrubiconusa.org
All Hands Volunteers
All Hands is on the ground in Nepal, utilizing local volunteers who are able to assist their own communities devastated by the earthquake. All Hands has currently deployed 30 volunteers to assist a partnering NGO, Catholic Relief Services, in distributing 2,000 shelter kits and 2,000 WASH kits (water, sanitation, and hygiene) to people who desperately need these supplies.
All Hands’ Rapid Response Team, a group who specialize in project management and volunteer coordination, is arriving in Nepal. This team will work to ensure that local volunteers wanting to assist in relief efforts will be as efficient and organized as possible as volunteers help in rubble removal, "safe-ing" of homes (bringing down structurally compromised homes in a way to salvage the materials), doing whatever needs be done.
“We work with local and government groups to identify “the gaps,” engage local volunteers, and when the time is right, international volunteers to fill those gaps, and then build out a long-term recovery plan,” an All Hands representative shared. “While we are not technically local, we embed ourselves in the community so we can understand what it needs. We partner with local groups to build their capacity and use our international network to match needs with resources.”
The size and scope of this earthquake already means we will be working in Nepal for at least the next 18 months to make it safe again and to start re-building.
How you can help: www.hands.org