Pakistan Bound: Relief Worker Shares Her Expertise

Photo: Mercy Corps

From Heathrow airport, before boarding a plane to Islamabad, Susan Romanski, a member of Mercy Corps’ Global Emergency Operations team, stole a brief moment to call into the organization’s Portland headquarters.

“I’ll be in Pakistan to see that we operate the most appropriate continuing response possible,” said Romanski, who has worked for Mercy Corps in a similar capacity after other recent disasters: the earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001, the tsunami in Sri Lanka last year, and – perhaps most applicable to her current assignment – the earthquake in Bam, Iran in 2003.

“Bam was an overwhelming tragedy because 90% of the city was destroyed,” recalls Romanski. “Based on what I’m hearing from the field, we’re looking at a similar situation.”

Romanski says that that the most delicate part an effective relief strategy is the link between the emergency response and the longer-term recovery programming. Removing survivors from immediate peril, she points out, involves one set of skills; helping to see that improved civil structures are built back into a recovering community involves quite another. Romanski aims to make the two efforts complement each other.

It will come down to things like tents. If some earthquake survivors end up with nicer tents than others, that can cause or compound social resentments that will complicate recovery down the road.

“Look, immediate needs trump all other concerns - life needs to be sustained,” says Romanski. “But you’re just trying to be as far-sighted as it’s possible to be.”

Far-sightedness, in the razed cities and villages of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, means thinking about rebuilding even as the devastation is still sinking in.

“To the extent that we’re able to,” says Romanski, “I’d like us to influence policies about when and where it’s safe to rebuild.”

Far-sightedness also means allocating resources wisely, so that Mercy Corps isn’t duplicating the efforts of local government agencies or other NGOs. “We did this very well after the tsunami, said Romanski, her words occasionally lost against the thundering, synthetic female Announcer Voice declaiming behind her in a Heathrow terminal.

“You really can’t just assume that you know how to help in the long run,” said Romanski over the din. “You have to go there and listen first.”