🚀 go-pugleaf

 Articles
Today^s front page
Consumer Rates
Flight 93
Headlines by E-mail
	U.S. News
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.)
0[ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ]0
  Liars share with those they deceive 
  the desire not to be deceived.
                        --Sissela Bok
0[ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ]0