Emergency response
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Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps
Life can change for millions of families in an instant: natural disasters can take loved ones and the outbreak of war drive families from their homes. When the unthinkable happens, Mercy Corps delivers rapid, lifesaving aid to hard-hit communities.
All stories about Emergency response
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Indonesia: Panic in my neighborhood November 23, 2009
It was Sunday, September 27, 2009 and I was rather sad. That morning, my family and I intended to visit some of our extended family in another city, but our car stalled.
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Honored to be back among a people I love November 4, 2009
It had been 33 years since I had lived there. When I heard that an earthquake and resulting tsunami had struck the Samoa Islands on September 29, I was taken back to a time when I had lived among the Samoan people as a young missionary.
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Cash-for-work begins in Samoan villages October 27, 2009
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Indonesia: Restoring the flow October 17, 2009
Electricity is back up and the cell phones are mostly working again — at least as well as they ever did — but there is still no running water in Padang city.
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Indonesia: Landslides make isolated Indonesian villages resemble 'lost continent' October 15, 2009
Two weeks after the earthquake, my colleagues and I got on motorcycles and headed north out of Padang and up into the mountains around Bukit Tinggi. We were going to check out an isolated area that we had heard was badly affected by landslides and had barely been reached.
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Indonesia: Doing the (sometimes) heavy lifting October 12, 2009
The trucks arrived at night, pulling up at our warehouse one by one. They had driven for four full days from Jakarta, pausing only to sleep from 1 A.M. to 5 A.M. in the truck on the side of the road.
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Indonesia: The team behind the emergency response team October 12, 2009
This morning when I arrived at the office, I got a call from one of my team members, Hasdi — a Community Facilitator for our Community Development Program here in Banda Aceh. He’s one of the members of Indonesia Response Team (IRT) in Padang, as a volunteer from our office.
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Delivering aid to Samoa's survivors October 11, 2009
It has been an unforgettable week. As a starter, let me share this photo of the formally picturesque village of Lalomanu where South Pacific Business Development (SPBD) once had 21 thriving micro-entrepreneurs. After the tsunami, Lalomanu is gone.
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Indonesia: Lake Maninjau October 10, 2009
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Indonesia: Lead them to a better future October 9, 2009
I started my day with a cup of tea while reading a local newspaper, Padang Ekspres, this morning. The headline for today’s edition read “70 percent of the business economy is destroyed.”