Emergency shelter kits after the Hatay aftershocks

Buildings that survived the first time did not survive this

The aftershocks last month did what aftershocks do: they finished buildings that were damaged but standing, and they emptied buildings that were sound but that nobody is willing to sleep in any more. Our assessment teams have counted just over nine hundred families in three districts now living in vehicles, in tents that were never meant for winter, or in the unheated ground floors of buildings nobody has certified.

The critical fact is the calendar. Night temperatures in these districts drop below freezing from the second half of November. We have about six weeks, and after that the problem changes from shelter to hypothermia and respiratory illness in children, which is the sequence we watched unfold in 2023.

What a kit contains and how it gets there

One kit shelters one family of up to six for a winter: an insulated tent liner that converts a summer tent into something survivable, four thermal blankets, two sleeping mats, a safe catalytic heater with three months of fuel, a solar lamp with a phone charger, a hygiene set and a basic cooking set. Kits are packed in Adana and distributed weekly through the district crisis committees, against a registered list rather than by turning up with a lorry.

• Nine hundred kits, targeted at families with children under five or an adult over seventy.
• Packed in Adana from mostly Turkish-sourced supplies, so procurement takes days rather than weeks.
• Distributed against the district registration lists, with each kit signed for.
• Weekly delivery reports published here, including the numbers we did not reach.

Where the money goes

A complete kit costs $158 delivered. That is the number that matters and everything below adds up to it.

• $61,200 — 900 insulated tent liners The single most important item. Converts an unheated summer tent into shelter that holds temperature overnight.
• $34,600 — Thermal blankets, mats and sleeping bags Four blankets and two mats per family, rated properly rather than to a price.
• $26,800 — Catalytic heaters and three months of fuel Flueless catalytic units with automatic shut-off, which is the safe option and not the cheap one.
• $14,900 — Solar lamps, chargers, hygiene and cooking sets A charged phone is how families find each other, so this line is not a luxury.
• $11,400 — Packing, transport and distribution Warehouse in Adana, six weeks of trucking, and the teams who sign each kit out.
• $6,700 — Assessment, monitoring and platform fees Post-distribution verification on a ten per cent sample, and the campaign costs.

We have six weeks. After that this stops being a shelter appeal and becomes a hospital admissions problem, and we have seen exactly how that goes.

Who is behind this

Sahel Medical Relief has worked in Hatay and Gaziantep since the February 2023 earthquake, initially on medical referrals and since then on winterisation. We are not the largest organisation here and we are not trying to be; we work in three districts where we have standing relationships with the crisis committees, and we distribute against their registration lists rather than building our own. Our field lead in Antakya has run every distribution we have done in the province.

Risks and challenges

The controlling risk is time. Every week this campaign takes to fund is a week closer to freezing nights, and we are procuring in tranches as funds arrive rather than waiting for the target, which means the first three hundred kits have already shipped. Supply is the second risk: insulated liners are being bought by every organisation in the region simultaneously and the price has already moved eleven per cent since we costed this page. If it moves again we will reduce the number of kits rather than the specification, because a kit that does not hold temperature is not worth shipping. Access to one of the three districts depends on a road that has closed twice this year.