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.)
