WESTPORT, Conn. (3 September, 2009)
Save the Children is deploying an emergency response team and preparing to distribute relief items to children and families affected by the magnitude-7 earthquake that struck off the western
coast of Java on Wednesday, 2 September. The earthquake damaged more than 25,000 homes in Tasikmalaya and neighboring towns, according to the Indonesian government. The quake killed at least
57 people, caused landslides burying at least one village and damaged infrastructure. ave the Children, which launched humanitarian responses to the Yogyakarta earthquake of 2006 and to the 2004 South
Asia tsunami, had relief items pre-positioned near the earthquake’s impact area and plans to begin distributions to help families through the aftermath of the crisis. Save the Children
is moving quickly to provide assistance to children and adults who survived this latest disaster in Indonesia,” said Ned Olney, vice president for Save the Children’s global humanitarian
response. “We are hearing reports of families who have lost their homes or who are too afraid to return to them. Children are very vulnerable — many of them sleeping outside as aftershocks
continue — and we will do everything we can to support them through this crisis.”Save the Children has been working in Indonesia for more than three decades.
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Please contact Kate Conradt, (+1 202 640 6631) Director, Media and Communications, Save the Children US for media enquiries.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
A woman carrying wall decoration walks past a damaged house in Pangalengan, West Java September 4, 2009. More than 25,000 people have been displaced in West Java since the earthquake, which ...