Flood Plan

United Nations leaders are scheduled to announce tomorrow a $460 million relief program to deal with the Pakistan flooding disaster, according to a cable today from Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad, that is being distributed in military and diplomatic circles.

According to the missive, the 90-day Pakistan Initial Flood Emergency Response Plan (PIFERP) will address seven sectors: food ($156 million), water, sanitation and hygiene ($110 million), shelter ($105 million) health ($56 million), logistics ($16 million), nutrition ($14million) and protection (less than $2 million).

After 30 days, officials would review the plan in light of “humanitarian needs and gaps,” the cable states.

The missive asks recipients to keep the information “on close hold” until tomorrow, when UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Sir John Holmes is expected to announce the plan in New York.

The relief plan follows an initial position by the Pakistani government, which “questioned the duration of the U.N. plan for emergency flood relief and also required that the U.N. scale back the plan to limit the clusters involved and to deal only with relief and not early recovery,” the cable states.

As for the role of the U.S. military in the disaster, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters flew eight relief flights yesterday, delivering goods and evacuating 565 flood victims, according to the cable. That brings the total number of helicopter sorties to 40, with 221,000 pounds of supplies delivered and 2,305 victims evacuated to the city of Khwazakhela, according to Patterson's cable.

In a briefing with donors in Pakistan today, U.N. officials stressed that “a nationwide response” is necessary to deal with the crisis, Patterson's cable states. Also needed is an “emergency response capability” in the provinces Sindh and Punjab, where such capabilities are “nascent at best,” according to the document.

“[W]hile access is is not the issue in Punjab and Sindh, the sheer number of affected individuals -- estimated to be more than 8.8 million collectively -- will create significant problems in the coming weeks,” the cable states.

U.N. officials plan to set up a command and control center “at an Islamabad hotel” to manage the crisis, the missive adds.