Go straight to the Earthquake Relief Information page, or read on...

Ameel Explains the How and Why

At 8:50am on 8th October, 2005, as Nadia and I approached the 8th Avenue traffic signal on Jinnah Avenue (in Islamabad, Pakistan), our car was rocked back and forth by an incredibly strong earthquake -- by far the strongest either of us had previously experienced. By the evening, the television had started to broadcast contact and bank account details for the various government and non-government organizations that had seen the magnitude of the earthquake's devastation and had realized that they needed a great deal of help in order to provide proper relief to its victims. Knowing that people -- especially those living abroad -- would want to help in any way that they could, Nadia and I began copying all this information down so that we could distribute it and also give it to anyone who asked for it.

As our list grew longer -- and as Islamabad-, Lahore-, and Peshawar-based friends, relatives, acquaintences, and colleagues started their own local relief initiatives (the information of which would never reach the people watching the news on TV) -- it occured to Nadia that it might be useful for us to upload all this information on to our existing website where it would be easily and centrally accessible to everyone (especially those living abroad). I agreed, quickly made the necessary changes, and, by about midnight, the Earthquake Relief Information section of our website had been launched. It started with following paragraph (though the statistics listed in it were much smaller then):

"On Saturday, 8th October a 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit the northern parts of Pakistan and India. With the death toll crossing the 73,000 mark, and with over 3,000,000 people left cold, injured, hungry and homeless, we need all the help we can get. Many countries and organizations have pledged and sent all kinds of aid, but your individual help is needed to make the difference. Please help in any way that you can."

The official death toll eventually crossed 80,000, by the way. That, according to the USGS Earthquakes Hazard Program, makes it the 13th most deadly earthquake in the world.

As the days flew by the list grew, our site grew, and as more and more people heard about it -- and as we heard about them -- the site grew some more. We then partnered up with Risepak, a group that was intent on taking relief efforts to the next level ("no village left behind"), and helped them collect and catalogue village-level damage and relief information. All in all, it was an incredibly busy time -- with the site sometimes getting updated many times per hour -- and it appears that our effort did pay off to some degree (at its peak, the site was getting over 12,000 hits per day).

We stopped maintaining this section in February, 2006 (20 weeks after the 'quake) but since the information we collected is still relevant (millions of people are still recovering from the event) and these pages represent a big part of our lives (and Pakistan's recent history), we have decided to keep an archive of the site online. Here, then, is the last updated version of our Earthquake Relief Information "page" (note: this section is archived and is, therefore, not completely linked to the rest of insanityWORKS.org so, when in doubt, click the top logo to get out):

• Earthquake Relief Information (home page)
• Donate Money
• Donate Goods
• Donate Blood
• Volunteer

[Last updated: 3 January, 2007]