A local humanitarian nonprofit is sending a disaster response team to southern Turkey and northern Syria after this week’s devastating earthquakes.
Santa Barbara-based ShelterBox has been working in the region for more than a decade, distributing packaged aid — called “shelterboxes” — to people in crisis. Now, they’re ramping up that presence in response to the massive death toll and structural damage caused by Monday’s quakes.
Kerri Murray is the president of ShelterBox USA. She said winter weather is a major threat to people displaced from their homes in Syria and Turkey, so they will be distributing things like tents, solar lanterns, thermal blankets and warm clothing.
“Just the basic things that people need to sustain themselves during what is a very difficult winter. It's freezing temperatures [and] heavy rain, which is causing even more complications on the ground in the disaster zones," she said.
There are thousands of confirmed deaths and tens of thousands of confirmed injuries reported in both countries, and those numbers keep rising. The World Health Organization estimates the combined death toll between both countries could eventually top 20,000.
This disaster is on top of all the other crises ShelterBox is actively responding to, including in Ukraine, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and more. Murray said like other humanitarian aid organizations, being spread out in so many places means they urgently need more resources.
"This disaster has made the headlines. We know that it's killed thousands of people, and I think it has captured the hearts and minds of people all across the world. I think that that is what also determines how large, and the scale, of the types of responses that we're able to have as a nonprofit organization — if people provide the charitable support to be able to do this work," she said.
Murray said on top of donations, ShelterBox needs volunteers who can join crisis response teams, help out in the Santa Barbara office and more. Their website is ShelterBoxUSA.org.
