Liz McIntyre: Bringing help job for experts

Where do we start? New Zealanders opening their newspapers the day after Boxing Day were overwhelmed by the images of huge seas surging over tourist spots, cities and farmlands. It looked bad. Thousands, perhaps as many as 10,000 killed.

Now we know it was even worse than it first looked, with the death toll heading for 125,000. We wait for news of the thousands still missing.

Kiwis are a generous and pragmatic people. We want to help, and we want that help to count.

People want to pack a bag and leave immediately to lend a hand. They want to search for the dead, help in hospitals, comfort people.

But the reality is that money can do what people can't in these huge disasters. Aid agencies can't send inexperienced people into a disaster zone.

What we can do is send money to help supply clean water, food, utensils, shelter, medicines and transport. That's where the help starts, on the ground in the devastated regions, and it's funded by ordinary people far off who are touched, not physically but emotionally, by the disaster.

The first need is water, then food. Water is usually contaminated after floods and earthquakes. Clean water needs to be trucked in and distributed. Water containers are likely to be buried under the rubble, so new ones need to be distributed.

In the United States and Europe, World Vision and other agencies have huge warehouses with containers packed with emergency kits ready to airlift at a moment's notice. All of this can be on the ground in the needy country within hours.

In a well-fed country like New Zealand, most of us could survive quite a few days on just water. But in the countries affected by this disaster - Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India - millions constantly live on the edge of survival, only a day or so from starvation.

Within five hours of the Gujarat earthquake on January 26, 2001, when 20,000 people were killed, World Vision was distributing food.

Within hours of the tsunami striking on Boxing Day, cooked food was being distributed to survivors in Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. There's no point handing out uncooked rice or lentils - no pots, no firewood.

At the same time, logistics teams were moving to the devastated areas to make assessments: What is needed? Medical aid? Transport? Does a bridge need rebuilding for access? Where can emergency flights land? How to get goods into the country?

Who is co-ordinating the multi-agency response? Which victims get priority?

It is hard to describe the chaos after such an emergency. In Bam, where a devastating earthquake struck on Boxing Day last year - incredibly, the same day as in the previous year - the air was filled with white dust from the collapsed earth-brick houses. Half the city's population was wiped out, and barely a building left standing. Aid workers, had to sleep in tents in freezing conditions, along with the people they were helping.

The best people to help are locals and career experts. Locals because they know the land, the language and the people. They know what's possible and what's urgently needed. They have an eye on long-term rehabilitation as well.

In all the countries affected by the tsunami, World Vision and other agencies' staff on the ground are already working, as are locals who are experts in their field.

Skilled emergency workers are flown in to establish systems, set up emergency procedures, employ local people and fly out again to the next disaster. That's their specialist career. And Kiwis do this very well: Duncan Gray in East Timor; Mark Mitchell in Gujarat; Judy Moore in Kosovo and Albania, Iraq and Iran, and most recently in Sudan ... the woman is a Kiwi can-do legend. James Addis supports communications in Rwanda, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Chad.

Former nurse Heather MacLeod works all around the world in situations where child protection is needed, particularly in refugee camps. Alex Snary, a Kiwi who is an emergency/relief manager in Nepal, has just been called away from his holiday with family in New Zealand to help with logistics and security in the Andaman Islands, a hard-hit archipelago in southern India.

These experts see a big part of their job as training locals to carry out the aid distribution. In Afghanistan we employed hundreds of women to conduct household surveys - their first employment after 12 years of Taleban rule. Not only were they earning much-needed money for their families, they were able to help their fellow Afghans and free up aid workers to carry out other tasks.

Men were employed as couriers and guards to ensure food was distributed in an orderly manner.

World Vision, which has the second-largest UN-recognised international rapid-response team in the world, puts together strategists, logistics people, trauma counsellors, media communicators, and photographers who always have a bag packed ready to fly into a disaster situation and help at a moment's notice.

They're a huge boost to the workers on the ground. Once the critical relief phase is over, local staff will continue the work.

Local people in poorer communities are often resilient after a catastrophe. Despite terrible personal loss, they somehow, in time, find the strength to pick up and rebuild. And they are always grateful for the help rendered in their time of need.

* Liz MacIntyre is World Vision NZ's Communications Manager