ICRC and Red Crescent help tackle sewage threat to northern town – ICRC press release/Non-UN document

Gaza: ICRC and Red Crescent help tackle sewage threat to northern town

The ICRC and Palestine Red Crescent are taking emergency action to help avert a new disaster, following the collapse of a sewage reservoir on 27 March that wrecked some 250 homes.

The move comes in response to a request from the water authorities in northern Gaza to try to reduce the threat to Beit Lahiya and surrounding communities from the main sewage reservoir. The facility, which contains about 2.5 million cubic metres of semi-treated waste, is already full but continues to receive a daily inflow of up to 30,000 cubic metres.
A smaller reservoir nearby, where some of the inflow had been diverted, burst on 27 March, flooding the surrounding area, destroying or damaging some 250 houses and leaving six people killed and more than a dozen injured.

The ICRC is bringing in equipment to pump out the main reservoir and divert the sewage from nearby houses. The unit serves a population of about 180,000 people.

"It could overflow at any time," explains Anthony Dalziel, head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza, “threatening the town of Beit Lahiya or other surrounding communities."

ICRC and Palestine Red Crescent teams were on the scene of the disaster within an hour. The PRCS set up a mobile health clinic while the ICRC provided tents and first-aid dressing kits for Ministry of Health treatment centres and gave tents to the United Nations (UNRWA), which is caring for families that have been displaced.

It has also distributed personal hygiene kits, food parcels and kitchen sets along with bottles of propane gas with cooking and lighting attachments to 300 families.

Further information from: 

Bernard Barrett ICRC Jerusalem: +972 526019150.

Iyad Nasr: ICRC Gaza +972 599603015,

Yael Segev-Eytan, ICRC Tel Aviv, +972 52 275 75 17, 

Bana Sayeh ICRC Jerusalem + 972 526019148