Well, for starters, the entire constitution has been put in abeyance (read suspended). This is more synonymous to a martial law, which is not provided for in the Constitution and is in fact a serious violation of Article 6 of the Constitution which makes any person who “subverts or attempts or conspires to subvert the Constitution by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means guilty of high treason”.

All things Pakistan, admits that the extremism and violence has gone out of hand while society is deeply divided with religion having been high-jacked and is now routinely used to incite violence, however none of this is a justification for a suspension of the Constitution and for the declaration of emergency;

all this is damning evidence of government failure .

Pakistan is now over 52 hours into the state of emergency that was declared late on Saturday night, and given a media blackout which is in-effect, GEO News has responded by making the audio stream of its transmissions available online. Although cell phone services and internet access are still up and running, some bloggers like Alien, fear that this may change tomorrow:

All international news channels and local cable news channels are down. Only PTV State News is on the air. So far we still have Internet access and mobile phones but this might change tomorrow as the reaction to the emergency hits full throttle.

On the subject of cell phone jamming, during the early hours of the emergency, some news agencies were reporting that mobile phones were being jammed and SMS services had been suspended, however given our experiences with disaster relief communications, we now know that despite heavy interferences to cell phone reception, text messaging does work and in the event that Pakistan's cell phone carriers start enforcing mobile jamming, this will not effect SMS services since it has proven to be ineffective in the past due to cheap devices having been implemented and the fact that most of these devices and systems been banned by the PTA (Pakistan Telecommunications Authority) earlier this year via an official telecoms regulation to various institutions that were asked to remove them in a deadline which ended on 30th Jan, 2007.

A SMS 2 Blog (and blog 2 SMS) informational service is now in the process of being set up to allow those who wish to report news and happenings on the ground at Help-Pakistan, details of which will be posted shortly.

It is a case of the Taliban versus Pakistan at Pakspectator where Ghazala blogs that ‘Pakistan is himself eroding his own country and Pakistan is himself attack his own people‘:

Why don't we talk with our people in Waziristan and Swat and elsewhere? Why bomb them out? People in Pakistan feel the same way, as they feel in Waziristan and Swat, and so they better get prepared to bomb the whole of Pakistan.

One of the bloggers who are worried about events that may happen after the announcement of Musharaff's mini martial law is Bilal who stresses that Pakistan is at the brink of a political meltdown, while Monday's trading on the Karachi Stock Exchange saw Pakistan's biggest one-day decline (via BBC News) as a result of the emergency with economists fearing the loss of long-term investments into the country spelling out the nation's financial meltdown.

The wiki has the basic design and structure in place but they URGENTLY NEED online volunteers to help out with the wiki in terms of the following tasks:

1. Move relevant content from TsunamiHelp & the South Asia QuakeHelp Blog)
2. Scrape info from the blogs covering the quake on tehnorati and post it under relevant sections on the wiki
3 Post translations from the HelpJogja blog to the wiki (via Andy Carvin's link: toggletext.com)
4. Remove irrelevant info
5. Add static info on the main page
6) spread the word out about the wiki

…….etc.

The group have been and are in touch with ICRC, TSF & IFRC and are receiving important information such as assessments directly from them which shows that they recognize their relief efforts on the blog and wiki. Additionally, they are being provided with 24/7 info updates from aid workers and their teams in the field and are also blogging at World Wide Help. A couple of NGOs have requested them to coordinate and communicate with them in publishing their situational repors on the wiki.

Any help from all of you for the organization and management of content on the wiki is most appreciated. If you're interested in lending a hand please head over to the wiki or drop them a line to javaquake AT worldwidehelp DOT info

Since most of the information available is in Dutch and as there is minimal coverage by the mainstream media regarding the situation in Suriname, the World Wide Help Group have been blogging around the clock, after having made contact with people on the ground. Volunteers are also helping translate information from live broadcasts from Dutch into English.

Maya Matawlie, who's been doing an amazing job of reporting from the ground in Suriname says that:

“the National Coordination Center for Disaster Relief (NCCR) is the central point for the disaster relief in Suriname, NCCR is also known as the relief crisis center and their evacuation plan is being executed from the airstrips of the villages of Djumu and Godo Olo. In these villages relief camps have been set up and the army is already in the area. The size of the disaster and the amount of help that will be needed is not apparent yet. According to the statistics there are approximately 15,000 people living in the upper Suriname-river area and about 9000 people in the upper Tapanahony area. The villages that have suffered the most damage are : Botopasi, Pikin Slee and Asindonhopo. The newsflash that several children have perished is being denied by the Minister of Regional Development”.

Fons in Brussels, one of the translators assisting the efforts at the WWH blog, reveals that in the Netherlands the Surinamese community are distressed at the ongoing crisis and stresses that the media reports being televised paint a picture of governmental chaos amidst major destruction caused by the floods:

“I have seen pretty hapless authorities on TV, they have no clue what is happening, there seem very few contacts in the area. People are pretty upset about the government, it is thought that the president acted too late. Now the government is first moving in the whoever they have within the national army instead of providing aid to assist people. Although the main needs are food, medicines and shelter there are no planes yet to bring in aid. Although the country's relief crisis center has already been established at the Ministry of Defence in the capital — Paramaribo, the army wants to first set up relief operations in each of the affected areas as there is only a limited number of planes plus they want to have the army there before relief items are transported around”.

In her latest instalment, Maya Matawlie recounts her efforts to gather information from the authorities:

“I went off to find out how thing were going because the press in Suriname was not very helpful.

So I went to the ministry of defense (no pictures due to security). The NCCR (coordination center) is there. I found out that there are no casualties apart from the one person.

From there I went to the NDP (National Democratic party), the largest political party in Suriname; they had something on the radio urging all their members to donate goods and what not. Mr. Lachin, the coordinator for this, told me that they are trying to get dry goods (as in rice and milkpowder), bottled water, milk for babies, clothes and whatever else they can get - as much as possible. Since the NCCR wants the aid to go from one central point, the NDP will help them as far as possible. . . .”

If you speak Dutch, you can help the team at World Wide Help by translating to information into English or whatever other language you have in your linguistic arsenal. Any assistance you can point their way can be sent to suriname[at]worldwidehelp[dot]info.

At about 14 GMT, an aid agency on the ground which was monitoring the situation cited reports released by the local Government & Red Crescent and stated that there wasn't a death toll at the time but some buildings had been damaged and it appeared that the epicentre was in the sea. Later in the evening, after inter-agency statements, the aid monitor filed the following report:

11 earthquakes have hit the Hormozgan province between the first quake today morning till 13:52 GMT with magnitudes of 5.4 to 3.1 on Richter scale. The government officials and IRCS have not reported any casualties but few deaths and considerable damage in the area is expected. No confirmation of the possible dimension of damages in the area has provided but according to the media, communications was partly cut off. The earthquakes occurred in the Fin district of Hormozgan province near the Hormoz strait at the Persian Gulf. Fortunately the epicenter of the strongest hit was inside the ocean which has reduced the effects. Since the majority of affected people were aware of the disaster, they were able to take the necessary safety precautions. Basic relief assistance is currently being provided by the local IRCS while the local authorities are assessing the situation. The total population of Fin district is 39,000 and consists of 3 towns and 210 villages.

Several news agencies online have published various view points on the White House Katrina report such as the International Herald Tribune who stated that “the report recommends a more active role in handling major disasters for the Department of Defense but does not give details on how such changes might be made”, Reuters AlertNet commented “the 217-page report acknowledged inadequate preparation for the storm but it did not single out anyone for blame” while an article in the New York Times said that “the report indirectly echoed frequent criticism that the Homeland Security Department was too focused on possible terrorist strikes”. BBC News found that most reccomendations in the report “focus on the need for communication between government departments, federal agencies and relief organisations” and the online edition of TIME answered the question of whether the report says anything which hadn't been said before by stressing that it (report) “is hell-bent on looking forward as this happens to be politically convenient”.

I've gone through the 228-page report but I noticed that much of Main Stream Media have failed to give readers and viewers a realistic picture of the reccomendations stated in the report yet and so I decided to focus upon some of the reccomendations by asking the various people and organizations who were involved with Katrina relief efforts on what they thought of the reccomendations featured in the White House Report and their suggestions on disaster relief response on the whole. This blog posting is the first of a 4-part series on Hurricane Katrina: Rethinking Disaster Relief Response where I will be featuring interviews with Skype Journal, a telecom engineer from New Jersey, a paramedic at Ambulance Service of Manchester, a lawyer from Suburban Chicago and Internet2.

On page 104, Reccomendation#37 in Appendix A of the White House's Katrina Report, Communications has been identified as a critical challenge during disaster response where it is said that inadequate situational awareness during the response to Hurricane Katrina resulted in decision makers relying on incorrect and incomplete information. Now in order to restore operability and achieve interoperability, the report has found that there is a strong need for rapidly deployable, interoperable, commercial, off-the-shelf equipment that can provide a framework for connectivity among Federal, State, and local authorities.

So I asked the editor of Skype Journal, Philip Wolff, whether he agreed with the statement that although available technologies can provide short-term operability and support long-term interoperability for emergency responders, the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) should consider commercial, off-the-shelf solutions in order to keep pace with technology changes. I also asked him what are the other alternatives that the DHS should consider which can be implemented and here is what he had to say:

“I generally agree, but I think there are several other points which are important. First, by all means gear up; take your credit card to the store and pack up, understanding that your gear will be obsolete every nine months. Next, look at how policy changes may create entirely new capabilities”.

“For example, the president could have distributed mobile phones to evacuues and directed the local phone company to become a call forwarder for the duration of the emergency so calls to numbers in the impacted area would ring to evacuees in diaspora. This would provide communication continuity for millions in a day or two. This would, of course, involve temporarily altering the roles of phone companies with respect to numerous FCC regulations, but nobody will complain in time of emergency.”

“As more conversations take place over the Internet, emergency management must also assure continuity of those channels. What happens when a biohazard shuts down the teams that sustain Blackberry, Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo email, IM, texting and telephony? While the Internet plumbing may be more flexibile and resilient than traditional voice systems for many threats, they are exposed to distinct threats, risks, and points of failure of their own. So communications continuity plans and field response communications plans are incomplete without an Internet communication strategy.”

Reccomendation# 76 on page 117 states the need for a public communications coordination capability for crisis communications at the White House be developed. The report suggests that a senior White House Communications official will be tasked with overseeing the public communications coordination capability and one of his/her responsibilities include establishing a permanent strategic communications capability, to facilitate messages to the public, the media, and all departments and agencies.

At this point Philip stated that:

“First, sure, go ahead, create a White House office that specializes in speaking for the President on real-time disaster and military issues. I'd have thought this was already in place. “

Given that technologies like VOIP (Voice Over IP) and SMS played a major role in assisting post-Katrina relief efforts, I asked Philip what his thoughts were on the best system to facilitate these messages to the public and all other relief actors during a disaster response mission:

“Second, empower every agency to communicate, without clearing it with powers that be. Decentralize authority, trust people on the ground, and prepare. Provide scripts and templates for foreseeable announcements, test and wargame the effects of those announcements, and explore how different media channels work in different communities (where is FEMA's MySpace page?)”.

“Third, encourage a flood (excuse the expression) of news and information to emerge from every point possible, official and not. More information is not always better, but almost always. The Internet (and those who use it, like CNN) is better able than ever to collect, organize and share information. Channels now include Internet media like blogs, wikis (web sites the public can edit and update, the most famous being the million entry Wikipedia), phone trees, chat, and mobile phone texting. Publish everything that goes on (unless you have an active opponent with the ability to change tactics) as input to those who make sense of it all in real time, including the public.”

“Fourth, use software news aggregators to help people find their own way through the news. Tools like search engines like Google, PubSub, Technorati can help people find information. Is there a gap? Publish it and people will respond.”

Philip continued to comment futher on the report's reccomendation to develop a public communications coordination capability for crisis communications at the White House by stating that:

“The proposal for a White House office is not sufficient in that it presumes bottlenecking mass communication at a central point. While it makes sense to have a spokesperson for the disaster response, acknowledge and accept that this is a messy business and that you may not want to have the problems associated with pre-911 intelligence (warnings made but filtered out, information not getting to the right people, alerts taking too long from trigger to public warning). You are probably better off using existing PR systems but rehearsing them more effectively. “

*Thanks to Neha Viswanathan for helping out with the structuring of this 4-part series on Hurricane Katrina: Rethinking Disaster Relief Response

The first situation map of the area affected was produced by the OCHA Regional office at Bangkok in Thailand. UNOSAT then requested the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters to be triggered. A few hours later, their request was accepted by the Charter and UNOSAT began to supply satellite imagery derived maps of the situtation starting with a pre-disaster overview zoom of the potentialy affected area in Saint Bernard and more have been made available over the past few days with others in the making. Please go here for further updates on relief mapping efforts.

In terms of rescue efforts, a 24/7 operations centre is supporting the coordination efforts at capital level while the President of the Philippines has been calling for Emergency Meetings occasionally. On the ground, two Battalion Commanders led the relief effort at the mudslide area. At the time there were a total of approximately 250 soldiers on the ground, with 11 officers in leading positions while one battalion commanding officer focuses on retrieval, the second one on the relief operation, with a focus on survivors and established evacuation centres.

On the communications and connectivity front, TSF (Télécoms Sans Frontières) began preparations to send in a crew of logisticians specialized in emergency communications from its Asian Base at Bangkok in Thailand to restore the telecom network that had been affected as well as to strengthen local and international disaster response in St Bernard, Leyte. The crew who where carrying satellite communication facilities such as BGan and RBGan data transmitters, satellite phones and fax equipment departed Bangkok on Saturday morning in order to reach Manilla to liase with the National Disaster Coordinating Council and UN crews.

A reliable source embedded with a UN-OCHA unit indicates that the national disaster relief response is excellent: “Generally, I feel that the national response is professional, organized and focusing on saving as many lives as possible at this stage.” A volunteer with the IFRC mentions that since the media is streaming hints from rescuers on the ground that hope to find survivors alive is fading, other disaster rescue teams have been alerted to consider holding back with sending assets to the site until there is clearer indication regarding the direction of the relief operation.

This week, on Monday, at 5pm (local time) a spokesperson from UNDAC informs other teams, that local coordination of rescuers is going quite well and that there are regular coordination, geographic division of work and adequate communication among teams. In Saint Bernard, TSF has achieved complete Internet connectivity and net facilities are available for active aid agencies and other NGOs responding to the disaster. Meanwhile, the Australian Government, through AUSAID, is said to be fielding an Engineering Advisory Mission, the team consisting of engineers with expertise in geotechnical and structural engineering and water and sanitation, to help the Philippine Government assess the impact of the landslide and the risk of further slides while also helping the survivors.

Officials of Dept. of Health, Dept. of Social Welfare, and Office of Civil Defense in the Philippines have been advised to utilise TSF services to transmit data to Manila while the operation center in Manila have been requested to receive/relay the transmission. Other NGOs/SAR teams are also requested to make use of TSF facilities since road transportation between Manila and the disaster site takes a long time and choppers are focused on rescue. To date, there have been
limited requests from the humanitarian community for US/AFP military assistance other than transport, though as requirements are developing, crews are preparing to handle any requests for provision of water and sanitation at several of the Evacuation Centers.

Four days after the landslide, the discussions with various actors in Tacloban (Philippines Army, US Air Force, Presidential Assistant to Eastern Visayas and the Secretary of Department of Social Welfare & Development who is responsible for evacuation, post-disaster recovery) confirm that supply of relief items including food, water and medicine needs to stop immediately as all these are in abundance. Recovery and rehabilitation therefore need to be focused upon.

This suggests there may have been more intermediate steps that we might explore using different hypothetical subsets of 15-50 virii to see what the most-likely phylogeny leading up to them is. But the “k10″ subtree confirms an earlier comment by Dr. Niman that the Mongolian and Novobirisk strains are very closely related. The “k11″ subtree suggests that there was a transmission of virus between Korea and Japan with those very low numbers. Overall the S(T) score of 0.990241 means that the computer believes it has figured out the structure nearly perfectly. Now it's our job to figure out why.

(Suggestions for better choices of species to try are always welcome.) Rudi stresses that he would love to try more recent data and thinks that this is the most important use for this type of chart at the moment, i.e. to track which strains are going where and when new strains pop up we can match them to the nearest previously known strain in the hope that this can shed light on the epidemiology of the situation.

Rudi has clarified that the data sources for the sequence data and the distance approximation technique (read more about this on the FluWikie) were obtained from a fellow member at the Bird Flu Discussion Forum (AvianFluTalk) whose onlinse pseudonymn is “gs” and it is presumed that ‘gs' extracted the data from one of the two Databases at FluWikie. Rudi was trying to determine Normalized Compression Distance, a modern more robust measure than normal multiple alignment like you get from BLAST in certain situations and more information about this is available from Paul Vitanyi on the FluWikie as well as the web or just search for/google Rudi's complete name which has a bunch of papers tagged along with examples. More importantly his measure is a lot easier to operate as it is essentially parameter-free and so is a good choice as a first approximation analysis of a medium to large group of samples of unknown relation.

On a final note, readers and bloggers are kindly requested to suggest Rudi a better group of 30 samples to use in order to provide and gain more insight (please email your suggestions to cilibrar at ofb.net) on the situation.

There is fifteen to twenty per cent damage to Pakistani nuclear facilities and storage sites in the Northern Areas, especially in Skardu and Chitral, and the local population faces the risk of contamination, but a curfew has been imposed, and they are being actively prevented by the authorities from leaving the area. Because of the serious damage to the nuclear facilities in the Northern Areas, the Pakistan government has turned away international relief teams, prevented Indian Army relief work and Indian Air Force supply drops, and withdrawn the consent for Israeli assistance, fearing that Mossad agents would be infiltrated who would destroy the atomic establishments.

While Western sources did not say that reactors had been damaged in the 8 October earthquake, they confirmed that missile silos had developed cracks, and storage facilities had taken a hit, and since the epicentre is likely to be seismically active for another two years, they expressed fear of further collapse of the nuclear establishments. To prevent leak of this massive nuclear destruction, Pakistan both bottled up the local population by imposing curfew, and did not permit international inspection of the disaster-hit areas.

Source: NewsInsight via the South Asia QuakeHelp Blog

A Pakistan dynamic overlay containing 1-meter imagery and maps for

* Muzaffarabad
* Abbottabad
* Mansehra
* Murree

is available at http://jaga.gc.cs.cmu.edu/rapid/pakistan/.

Contents: 10 maps from DLR / Space Imaging, available from http://www.zki.caf.dlr.de/.

Here are a couple of screen shots:


Home of the Piffers? (KML file) Anne and Randy came across this while processing the satellite images. Anne wondered:

Do you supposed all cultures have analogs of high school glee clubs, or is this something else?

We asked around and are informed of this fascinating fact:

Army units in that part of the world “have a fondness for writing on hill-sides”!

(”Piffers” is short for the Punjab Irregular Force, regularized in 1865. What it signifies in 2005, we can't tell you.) Wow. So, as you look at the overlays, watch for secret hillside writing. Another correspondent tells of a hillside drawing:

There is a large engraving of Sir Lord somebody slaying a dragon “hidden” off the road to Muzaffrabad. I think I still remember how to get to it. Every local ten year old thinks that he is the only one who knows about it.

Here are a few move screen shots:

Manshera Helipad (KML file)

Ayub Teaching Hospital (KML file):

On a more somber note, here is a legend from a damage map of Balakot from the Eurpopean Commission's Joint Research Centre (do not follow this link unless your computer will handle an image 9000 pixels by 7000 pixels!) that you may find useful in estimating damage via these overlays [the link from the image leads to a bigger version, though not huge, so it's OK to click on]:

Thanks to Kathryn Cramer for the above blog posting as well as for hosting the images and kml/kmz files. Kathryn is also one of the many people behind the Pakistan quake relief mapping efforts and has marked up many disaster-specific maps of the South Asia Quake. If you're interested, you may check out more Google Earth overlays and maps of the Pakistan quake at Kathryn's blog.

The border openings begin Nov. 7. Relief goods can be sent in either direction and handed over to local authorities at the crossings, the joint statement said. Civilians will be allowed to cross on foot, with priority given to families divided by the border.

Procedures for crossing the border would be similar to those implemented earlier this year when the historic bus service between the two capitals of disputed Kashmir, Muzaffarabad and Srinagar, was restarted. People wanting to cross would have to apply for a permit from government officials on either side to verify their identities.

The five crossings would be allowed at the Pakistani-Indian border towns of Nauseri-Teethwal, Chakothi-Uri, Hajipur-Uri, Rawalakot-Poonch, and Tattapani-Mendhar.

Source: China Post via South Asia Quake Help

Internews has already dispatched a radio production unit with a team of 12 reporters to produce programmes highlighting the immediate needs for the people in quake-hit areas in the local languages. The programmes are being aired through a private FM station in Abbottabad city in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), with a signal that can reach almost all of the tremor-hit zone of northern Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

The major needs for broadcast/media infrastructure, production & training support are as follows:

- transmitters, antennas, mobile radio studios, and generators
- minidisk recorders, portable computers, satellite phones, transportation, and technical support
- field & mobile production equipment

If you are able to assist with this need or if you know someone who can help out with getting these emergency radio sets please contact Adnan Rehmat at +92(300) 850 6354 or contact the Internews Office in Pakistan at +92(51) 287 7984. Alternatively you may send an email to Adnan or Ivan Sigal.

Source: ReliefWeb & Contact with a team on the ground

This initiative is being carried out by a small group of friends across Pakistan, the United States and the United Kingdom. Comprising of young professionals and graduate students, the group has been informally documenting its progress at the TentDrive blog

The group is focused on -
1) Soliciting and channeling donations, especially cash donations from the U.S. toPakistan
2) Researching appropriate avenues of obtaining high-quality goods, specifically tents
3) Finding and implementing effective distribution networks and engaging in follow-up

The group has implemented a three-pronged strategy of fundraising and reaching the affected while purchasing a combination of different types of tents available in Pakistan. More about their strategy here.