Jehangir Malik: When the news of the earthquake was announced, my first reaction, at five o’clock in the morning, was to call home, call Pakistan and call Kashmir and see if everyone is ok. My family lives about two and a half hours away from the quake. They said they felt a severe tremor. When they called my sister, they described it like judgement day; it was so violent as if the house was going to come down. They were scared and screaming and windows were shattering and minarets from mosques were falling and all of this kind of stuff.
 | | Jehangir Malik |
After discovering everyone was ok, we started calling and working out what was going to be Islamic Relief’s response. We went into our emergency response. We graded it as a very serious emergency, right from the word go. EMERGENCY RESPONSE Although the initial response from the international community and the media was a bit slow, to realise the extent of it, our people on the ground knew how serious it was. When we were hearing the figures 1,000 or 1,300 dead in the first day, we knew that it was an extremely low figure – it was going to be much higher. At the time the British government allocated £100,000 and the US government allocated $177, 000, and the EU allocated 3,6 million euros. Islamic relief allocated £2 million pounds. Ours was the largest one and we’re only a grass-roots, community based non profit organisation. But we saw the scale so we took it from our reserves and now fortunately others are increasing their figures.
 | | Taking donation calls at IR HQ |
When I heard our office in Muzaffarabad, Kashmir had collapsed, and the people got out barely, through the rubble, I realised the scale of the devastation. I’ve been out to this area, I know how difficult it is, what kind of terrain it is. So we realised we’re on for a very very serious emergency crisis situation. Our office managed to scramble out alive. You can imagine what they’re going through right now. They’re in this area. They’ve got themselves, their family and their loved ones to think about, and on top of that they realise they’ve got a huge task before them. This area is prone to disasters, there’s mud slides and this is the line of control, there’s shelling… on one previous occasion I went out there and shelling had occurred, basically mortar fire, whilst I was there. I was petrified for my life but to these guys it was just a brief pause, then they were talking to me about almonds on the trees and how they are providing food for the local area. To these guys it was normal life, for me I thought it was the end to it; that’s it, this is my last trip.
 | | Donations at IR's Coventry Road shop |
This particular violent earthquake has really shaken even them, because it really brought down a lot of damage, caused a lot of destruction; it has really, really taken its toll - some of the areas – 50%, 70%, 80% destruction; and this was already one of the poorest areas so we’ve got a lot of rebuilding ahead of us. FUNDRAISING IN THE UK In the UK we’ve got warehouses and six branches; London, Birmingham, Bradford Leicester, Manchester and Glasgow. I’m responsible for coordinating all of the fundraising activities that are taking place throughout these branches. That’s about 15 staff working from the early morning to late at night, every night; I’m in constant contact with them.
 | | Donating at IR's HQ |
Primarily, at a time of crisis like this, people contribute money, the biggest thing is funds. We receive the funds then turn them over to our field offices, to buy the necessary aid, to get into the necessary development. We also have charity shops; we receive a lot of clothes, some of which we sell on, but for the vast majority of these clothes we have a recycling operation. Basically, we recycle these clothes into cash, then the cash gets sent over to the field. It’s extremely important to note, that what might be the need, this moment, this hour, this day, might not be the need tomorrow, the situation is so fluid, that you might find twenty agencies on the ground providing the same thing, so you need to have that cash in position, so that the local teams on the ground can make instant decisions, when and where needed; they can best do that with cash in their hands. When we’re talking this kind of situation, we need to get money onto the ground. After a lot of disasters we’ve purchased supplies from this area; from Kurachi, from Pakistan. This is a normal area that we go to, to purchase supplies. We’ve already purchased 10,000 tents, 10,000 hygiene kits and enough blankets for 10,000 families – which is about 50,000 blankets.
 | | Sorting clothes - IR's Saltley warehouse |
Now the biggest challenge is to get the aid to the remotest and difficult of areas. We have a health clinic, which has treated in the last two days 2,000 affected people from the earthquake. It takes 13 hours in a good 4x4 to get to from Islamabad. I’ve done that journey on a summer’s day. Now it’s raining, the roads are bad and the infrastructure is weak right now, it’s going to take a lot longer on a truck. CALLS FLOOD IN Once again, British society as a whole has responded, the wonderful thing to see here, it’s not just Kashmiris, it’s not just Muslims; it’s a disaster, it’s a crisis and the calls have been flooding in, as you can see we’re setting up more phone lines. We urge people to continue calling in. If you can’t get through, keep trying and get your donation in. Encourage your friends, family, colleagues and workmates. Eventually, as well the £2 million that we’ve allocated, I can see us spending £8-12 million pounds on the area. We’re going to need a lot of donations, a lot of support to make that happen. Our 24 hour donation hotline is 0121 622 0622 Our website: www.islamic-relief.org.uk | 
