CHAPTER IX
EMERGENCY RELIEF
63. This was a year completely free of major disasters-a welcome respite for the Department's emergency relief teams, following the serious mishaps in the previous year. Nevertheless, 69 minor disasters were recorded, and these claimed 46 lives and placed almost 10,000 people on the relief register. (see Appendix 18 for details.) This was an appreciably lighter toll than in the previous year when 80 persons were killed, 21 missing and some 65,000 placed on relief.
64. To feed the 10,000 disaster victims, the Department issued 287,000 cooked meals and 105,000 portions of dry rations, each person being fed normally for a month. A total of $149,000 was also paid out of the Community Relief Fund to assist victims who had been injured or had lost their homes.
65. The resettlement programme and the progressive rebuilding of old wooden tenements have tended to reduce progressively the scale of individual disasters on account of fire, although the risk of large-scale conflagrations in streets of crowded tenements remains very real. Squatter areas which are especially vulnerable to fires have been gradually reduced both in size and number over the years; consequently squatter fires are becoming less extensive. Only 26 out of the 41 fires which occurred last year, or 63 per cent of the total, involved squatter areas. During the previous four years, 141 of the 176 fires recorded, or 80 per cent of the total, occurred in these areas. Only two of last year's squatter fires involved more than 1,000 persons and today, except for typhoons or floods which might inflict Colony-wide damage, there is little likelihood that more than 5,000 persons would be affected by a single disaster. But a decade ago, the prospect of a disaster striking ten times that number was ever-present.
66. Notwithstanding the reduced scale of disasters, the co-operation of voluntary agencies remained invaluable in times of emergency. The British Red Cross Society, C.A.R.E., Lutheran World Service, Church World Service, the Kaifong Associations, Catholic Relief Services and the Salvation Army are among the most active. Their assistance consists mainly of cash grants and the distribution of blankets, used clothing, food parcels and cooking utensils.
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