Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm


As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention
center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal
emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.

Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that
they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to
request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,"
said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local
authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for
access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."

Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.

Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move
people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep
them there. Security is so bad that she fears feeding stations might
get ransacked.

"It's not about fault and blame right now. The situation is like an
hourglass, and we are in the smallest part right now. Everything is
trying to get through it," she said. "They're trying to help people
get out."

Obstacles in downtown New Orleans have stymied rescuers who got there.
The Salvation Army has two of its officers trapped with more than 200
people -- three requiring dialysis -- in its own downtown building.
They were alerted by a 30-second plea for food and water before the
phone went dead.

On Wednesday, The Salvation Army rented three boats for a rescue
operation. They knew the situation was desperate, and that their own
people were inside, said Maj. Donna Hood, associate director of
development for the Army.

"The boats couldn't get through," she said. Although she doesn't know
the details, she believes huge debris and electrical wires made
passage impossible.

"We have 51 emergency canteens on the ground in the other affected
areas. But where the need is greatest, in downtown New Orleans, there
just is no access. That is the problem every relief group is facing,"
she said.

"America is obviously going to have to rethink disaster relief," said
Jim Burton, director of volunteer mobilization for the North American
Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Southern Baptists, who work under the Red Cross logo, are one of
the largest, best-equipped providers of volunteer disaster relief in
the United States. Most hot meals for disaster victims are cooked by
Southern Baptist mobile kitchen units. Burton is a veteran of many
hurricanes.

"Right now everybody is looking at FEMA and pointing fingers. Frankly,
I have to tell you, I'm sympathetic. When in your lifetime have we
experienced this? Even though we all do disaster scenario planning, we
have to accept the reality that this is an extraordinary event. This
is America's tsunami, that struck and ravaged America's most
disaster-vulnerable city," he said.

Because New Orleans remains under water, it is different from other
cities where Katrina struck harder, but where relief efforts are
proceeding normally. Agencies place workers and supplies outside
disaster areas before storms, to move in quickly. But there are always
delays, Burton said, because nothing is deployed until experts survey
the damage and decide where to most effectively put relief services.

The Southern Baptists operate more than 30 mobile kitchens that can
each produce 5,000 to 25,000 meals daily, as well as mobile showers
and communications trucks equipped with ham radios and cell phones.
They are supporting refugee centers in Texas and Tennessee, and doing
relief in Mississippi and Alabama. They have placed mobile kitchens
around New Orleans to feed people as they come out.

Initially they tried to drive a tractor-trailer kitchen into New
Orleans from Tennessee. It was stopped by the Mississippi Highway
Patrol because the causeway it would have to cross had been destroyed,
Burton said.

His agency has planned for missing bridges. The Southern Baptists'
worst-case planning is for reaching Memphis after an earthquake on the
New Madrid fault, which in 1812 whiplashed at a stone-crushing 8.1 on
the Richter scale. Burton envisions the Mississippi without bridges.

So when state and local Southern Baptists raise money to build a
mobile kitchen, he tells them to design it to be hoisted in by
helicopter.

After Katrina, he thought he would have to airlift a feeding unit to
one isolated town, but a road was cleared, he said. He doubts that
dropping a kitchen into the New Orleans' poisoned waters, filled with
raw sewage, dead bodies and possible industrial contaminants, would do
any good. It made sense to prepare meals outside the area and truck
them in or bring people out.

"The most important thing is to get the people out of that
environment," he said.

He expects unusual problems to continue, because victims of Katrina
flooding will need emergency food for far longer than the usual week
or so. He's planning on at least two months.

Like the military, relief work requires a supply chain. Because
business management favors just-in-time inventory, rather than
stockpiling goods in warehouses, there isn't a huge stock of food to
draw on, he said.

"When you go into a local area, it doesn't take long to wipe out the
local food inventories," he said.

The Red Cross serves pre-packaged food, including self-heating
"HeaterMeals" and snacks, that require no preparation. Yesterday the
Red Cross was running evacuation shelters in 16 states, and on
Thursday, the last day for which totals were available, served 170,000
meals and snacks in 24 hours.

While emergency shelters typically empty out days after a hurricane or
other natural disaster, in Katrina's case they are becoming more
crowded, Hosler said. People who had evacuated to the homes of
relatives or hotels are moving in because they're out of money or want
to be closer to what is left of their homes.





---
"If ye love wealth better than liberty ... servitude better than ... freedom,
go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or your arms ... May your
chains set lightly upon you. May posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams

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To send mail: remove hutch

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

They had to wait, big oil hadn't finished looting the country yet.