Subject: RE: Hurricane Relief: How can I help?
From:
GUEST,'Nother Guest
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 01:14 PM
You can support your local volunteers who are being dispatched to help in the region, as I saw mentioned locally last night on our news.
I can vouch for this. My nephew and his wife are a paramedic and EMT respectively, and they have answered a national call for trained emergency medical personnel to serve a two week stint at the airport in NO. They are given a leave of absence from their employer (a private ambulance company right now), but we are doing informal private fundraising through our & their family and friends network to financially support them while they are there (so they don't have to use up aid money and resources that can otherwise go to victims, not rescue personnel), with the cost of their trip down and back, and to help defray their bills back home while they are gone.
My daughter has already leaped upon the organizing bandwagon and is helping organize two benefit concerts for October, funds to go to a non-government organization yet to be determined, to help with long term assistance. Catholic Charities does really well with their relief funds, and they do long term disaster relief assistance (after the minor celebrities and network news anchors leave town).
I would wait to donate money right now. Of course, I was badly flamed after providing information during the tsunami disaster that was critical of some American charity sacred cows, like the Red Cross. I don't wish to get into that here again, but for those who are interested in some good information about disaster relief donating, you might want to hunt up those threads, rather than reinventing the wheel.
The reason I say hold off on making donations is this: the majority of aid will be needed to resettle the evacuees, and they are currently spread out all over the southern US. We can't tell yet where the aid will be most needed. Hard as it might be for people to do, I say sit on your money right now. The immediate relief is going to be paid for by donation money and resources that were already in the pipeline and warehouses before the storm hit. It is the long term where the money will be most needed, and no one knows yet where that will need to be sent.
Also, one of my cousins is head of the MN foodshelf network, and I can't tell you how devastating the "big" disasters are on local community needs, be it in Boston or Burundi. If you are making donations through the foodshelf network, please don't stop with just donating to the "big" disaster.
Finally, I can't say strongly enough how much the Red Cross has been a large part of the problem in NO this week, and not the solutions. If you doubt that, have a look NOLA.com (the New Orleans Times Picayune site), which is truly the best source of information on the web on what is happening in New Orleans. There you will find interviews with local emergency officials (including local Red Cross officials) who are thoroughly disgusted with the Red Cross' refusal to come into the city, claiming their workers aren't safe.
So you know, please flood the White House email system with your complaints. Also the email systems of your US senators and congressional reps. Bush's visit actually stopped food deliveries in New Orleans yesterday. I understand "celebrity" and media visits are also having similar effects on the disaster relief efforts.
From NOLA.com:
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush's visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon's chief of staff, Casey O'Shea.
"We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won't let helicopters fly," O'Shea said Friday afternoon.
The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.
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This media spinning shit at all levels by all parties has to stop, because lives are being lost. Time is now the biggest enemy. We are five days out after the storm. Tens of thousands of people have not yet been rescued. People are dying of dehydration, exposure, and suicide.
Email the CNNs, MSNBCs, et al and tell them to get the hell out of the way and use their resources for something that benefits the evacuation and rescue efforts rather than hinders it.
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sj
