Theos-Talk Archives (September 2005 Message tt00078)

	And here is a more balanced version, from a REAL newspaper (with 
editors and fact checking and non-anonymous authors and all that other 
stuff which the left hates so much):

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

Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food

Saturday, September 03, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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.

(Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416.)


Daniel H. Caldwell wrote:

> Posted for what it is worth.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Red Cross not allowed in New Orleans 
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/2125/04978
> Daily Kos