What?
An earthquake happens when pieces of the earth's surface rub together, causing the ground to shake.

Why?
The surface of the earth is divided into a patchwork of plates. These plates are constantly moving although normally this happens much too slowly for us to notice.

Occasionally the plates get stuck as they try to move past each other. When they get stuck, pressure builds up until one of the plates is forced to give way - which can cause the ground across a wide area to vibrate violently.

What are the effects?
People sometimes think that the ground opens up and swallows things during an earthquake but this is not really true. Earthquake damage is most often caused by the ground shaking.
When this happens, poorly built houses may fall down or become too dangerous to live in. Injuries to people are usually the result of things falling upon them. Buildings are also damaged and destroyed by land-slides triggered by the earthquake.

Earthquake Fact:
The largest earthquake in the world occurred in Chile, South America, on 22nd May 1960.

How can ShelterBox help?
Damage to buildings is one of the biggest problems. Many homes are destroyed or become too dangerous to live in, meaning that people are left without shelter.

People are also often frightened of going back into their houses in case another earthquake happens.
ShelterBox has provided help for thousands and thousands of people around the world following earthquakes. The aid provided by ShelterBox includes a tent in which to shelter, warm blankets and insulated ground sheets to keep families warm, as well as equipment for making water safe to drink and for cooking.

The Kashmir earthquake on 8th October 2005 caused widespread destruction throughout Northern Pakistan and parts of India. The Pakistan-administered region of Kashmir was the worst hit, with several million people left homeless.
People who had lost their homes were left trying to survive outside in freezing night-time temperatures.
ShelterBox provided help for around 130,000 people affected by this disaster.

ShelterBox Response Teams

When ShelterBoxes are sent out to a disaster, a 'ShelterBox Response Team' is also deployed. These teams are all made up of volunteers, who have trained with us, and are ready to go with the ShelterBoxes anywhere in the world.They ensure the safe delivery and distribution of the ShelterBoxes. Our team members are men and women who usually work in very different types of jobs e.g.
policemen and policewomen,paramedics,firemen,chef,writer,accountant,graduates,ex-navypersonnel,businessmen etc.

The main person we deploy is Mark Pearson. Mark is a photographer and journalist, and his photographs are very important to our work. He sends back to our Headquarters up to date information and pictures and advises us where the greatest need is, and the type of aid required.Almost all of the photos that you can see on the website have been taken by Mark.

Below you will find some true stories of some of our 'ShelterBox Response Team' members, we hope you will enjoy them.

Hello my name is Andrew Holland. I am 26 years old and live in Falmouth where I work as a chef.

I started working with ShelterBox following the 2004 Asian Tsunami. The following October there was a very large earthquake in the northern parts of Pakistan and India called Kashmir. Many people in the Earthquake region had been affected very badly, some had died and lots had lost their homes.

I was asked by ShelterBox to be part of a team to be sent to the city of Muzafrabad. The journey from Cornwall in England was very long and took almost two whole days. When we arrived in Muzafrabad we saw that the city was very close to the centre of the earthquake so had lots of damage.

We worked with a local organisation and with heir help and the help of many others ShelterBox was able to deliver help to almost 17,000 families in Kashmir. ShelterBox tents are especially designed to be warm even in the snow so were excellent help to the Kashmiri people. As well as tents ShelterBoxes also contain blankets, cooking equipment, items to make safe drinking water and simple tools. Together with all this we also send Children’s Packs so that young children will be able to do fun activities like colouring, drawing or writing.

My job as a Chef helps me to keep organised so I can help people as best as I can. While we were in Muzafrabad I sometimes helped with cooking for our team and our Kashmiri friends.

My name is Ken Wilkins and I’m a policeman. I also do some work for ShelterBox and last year I went to Pakistan after the earthquake to help take some Shelterboxes to the people of Kashmir.

One of the things that I remember very clearly was that the children all wanted to go to school very much indeed, so much so that many returned to school only three days after the earthquake. Nearly all of the schools had been destroyed or very badly damaged in the earthquake and so they had to have their lessons outside.

At that time of year, November, the weather was usually quite cold as Kashmir is high up in the mountains, so I think that it shows how much the children wanted to go to school.

Here are some photographs:-

This one above shows the damaged school in the background.

It was very cold on this day!

Even now, a year since the earthquake many children still have to go to school like this in Kashmir.