Water Mission, a Christian engineering nonprofit based in Charleston, South Carolina, is flying a disaster team to Nepal. Flash floods and mudslides along the Nepal-China border have killed more than 500 people and left more than 1,500 missing, the group said.
Those numbers are preliminary. Water Mission says the full scale of the disaster is still unclear, and the totals of dead, missing and displaced could climb as aid workers reach places that are now cut off. Roads, homes and other critical infrastructure took heavy damage.
The team’s first job is to find out what is wrong with the water. Its Disaster Assistance Response Team is working with regional partners and government officials, and it will run site assessments and water-quality tests to decide where it can start treating contaminated local sources. The organization points out that clean water matters most in the days right after a disaster, when waterborne illness spreads fastest.
Nepal is familiar ground. “Water Mission has nearly 25 years of experience responding to natural disasters, including a previous earthquake in Nepal in 2015,” said CEO and President George C. Greene IV in a statement. “Our Disaster Assistance Response Team will provide emergency assistance as quickly as possible where it is needed most.”
By the group’s count, it has answered nearly 90 disasters worldwide over the past 25 years and has served more than 8 million people since 2001. Recent work includes earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, drought and cholera outbreaks in several countries.
