Posts Tagged ‘disaster relief’

FUBAR – Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.

A story from the WSJ Online tells about the inability for NGO’s to get the food that is IN Haiti delivered to the people who are starving. As I had mentioned in a previous post, Obama put a USAID bureaucrat in the lead for disaster relief in Haiti. Here’s what has happened to distribution efforts when you have bureaucrats in charge instead of the military, especially in a 3rd world country.

Haiti Aid Efforts Go Awry in the ‘Convoy to Nowhere’

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Scott Lewis hoped to deliver more than one million meals to Haitians on Wednesday via a 15-truck convoy brimming with beans and rice.

Instead, “It was the convoy to nowhere,” Mr. Lewis said. Well after dusk, the 52-year-old founder of a U.S. disaster-relief organization had barely delivered any food, other than some bags left at a missionary hospital, and a few more bags that got looted from the convoy as it crawled along crowded streets.

Trucks conked out. Communication with the U.S. military broke down. Traffic snarled the streets. Hungry crowds made handing out food unsafe.

It’s not typical for so much to go wrong on a major operation like this—in fact, on Thursday, the Army successfully delivered the cargo, in the largest single-day food distribution here. But a diary of Wednesday’s journey reads like an anthology of the obstacles stifling efforts to deliver aid since an earthquake turned the Haitian capital to rubble two weeks ago.

Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos for The Wall Street Journal:A relief worker stared into the night after the failed distribution effort.

Continue reading…..

Now you can to the list of FUBARs – Military Evacuation Flights Suspended

The New York Times reports today that U.S. military flights to evacuate Haitians who need urgent medical care have been stopped. Most of those flights were taking patients to hospitals in Florida for care which have quickly become saturated and overwhelmed. Governor Charlie Crist, in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, has asked the federal government for financial help in providing that care.

Lucianne posted this story today (Jan. 31), one of the commenters confirmed my thoughts on this situation:

Reply 26 – Posted by: mrduc, 1/29/2010 12:55:58 PM (No. 6227404)

No, the problem is that there is no leadership, no direction regarding rescue and relief efforts coming from the White House. I have inside info from a neighbor who was in direct communication with the brass at the Pentagon regarding getting aid to Haiti, that there is nothing coming from obamao to the generals on how to tackle the problems there. 11000 troops were sent in, with no instructions on what to do first, next, where to set up, no relief plans, nothing. This general said the whole thing is a rudderless rescue sham and a farce. So our troops are plunked in the middle of this mess, each outfit pitching in as they can, where they see fit. A joke rescue effort led by a joke of a president. Hopefully things have improved since this neighbor spoke to the Pentagon a little over a week ago. Pray for our brave troops and the Haitians. Pray for obamao, Psalm 109v8. BTW, where’s the presstitutes screaming like they did after Katrina? Sobbing Shemp Smith, Wimpering Whorealdo, anyone???? Why no obamao bashing by the LSM or the Black Caucus or JJ or Al ‘Tawana Brawley’ Sharpton on this travesty?

It’s a rudderless relief effort because the bureaucrats are in charge!

Haiti, disaster relief, fubar, Obama, USAID, US Military