U.S. Continues Flood Relief Aid for Pakistan

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23, 2010 — U.S. mil­i­tary and oth­er gov­ern­ment and non­govern­ment orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue to assist Pak­istani cit­i­zens bat­tling the effects of mas­sive floods that began July 29.

To date, accord­ing to a fact sheet issued today by the U.S. Embassy in Islam­abad, Pak­istan, the Unit­ed States is pro­vid­ing about $150 mil­lion to sup­port flood relief efforts in Pak­istan, includ­ing fund­ing for the oper­a­tions of the Pak­istan Nation­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Author­i­ty, the U.N.’s emer­gency relief plan, and the many local and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions respond­ing to this disaster. 

These funds are being used to pro­vide crit­i­cal sup­plies to Pak­istani cit­i­zens impact­ed by the flood. The Unit­ed States also is pro­vid­ing mil­lions of dol­lars of addi­tion­al in-kind and tech­ni­cal assistance. 

U.S.-provided aid to Pak­istan also includes the expan­sion of pre-exist­ing pro­grams in flood-affect­ed areas, pro­vid­ing tem­po­rary bridges, and mobi­liz­ing sig­nif­i­cant U.S. mil­i­tary and civil­ian resources to res­cue vic­tims of the dis­as­ter and deliv­er need­ed supplies. 

U.S. mil­i­tary and civil­ian air­craft con­tin­ue to sup­port flood relief oper­a­tions. Through Aug. 22, these air­craft have evac­u­at­ed 7,835 peo­ple and deliv­ered more than 1.6 mil­lion pounds of relief supplies. 

In oth­er recent developments: 

— On Aug. 22, U.S. Air Force C‑130 air­craft, based from Afghanistan, deliv­ered 79,000 pounds of food and relief sup­plies yes­ter­day from Rawalpin­di to Sukkur and Mul­tan. — The World Food Pro­gram has reached more than 1.3 mil­lion flood-affect­ed ben­e­fi­cia­ries with almost 16,000 met­ric tons of food assis­tance, about 50 per­cent of which is pro­vid­ed by the Unit­ed States. 

— The U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Development’s Office of Food for Peace has pro­vid­ed the World Food Pro­gram with an addi­tion­al $32.3 mil­lion for local and region­al pro­cure­ment of food, bring­ing the U.S. total con­tri­bu­tion to WFP to more than $51 million. 

— Since Aug. 8, U.S. water treat­ment units have pro­vid­ed approx­i­mate­ly 4.8 mil­lion liters of safe drink­ing water to Pak­istani citizens. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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