Pat Robertson and Operation Blessing are in N.O.: his letter to me:

If the Red Cross can't get in, then how is it that Operation Blessing is in there?


Dear Friend,

The suffering and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina seems beyond measure.
All indications point to an increasing death toll as search and rescue teams
make their way through the flooding and debris.

Operation Blessing is on the scene. As I write this letter, we are already
distributing food, water, cooking equipment, cleaning kits, and disaster
supplies to key staging areas in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. As the
sea of refugees flood into surrounding states, we have given grants to help area
organizations purchase food, cots, blankets, and other necessities to meet the
enormous need.

We are providing food and refrigeration for the mobile kitchens and canteens
from our key partner, The Salvation Army. Together we will supply up to 310,000
meals each day.

As you can see, Operation Blessing is involved at the highest level of emergency
planning. I will be traveling to the disaster area in the next few days,
working with area officials and partner agencies to help coordinate this
massive-scale disaster relief operation.

If you have been touched by the events of these past days, please respond with
your expression of support. We need your help now to ease this unimaginable
human suffering. Your gift will help rush life-sustaining supplies to those who
desperately need your assistance. God bless you, and thank you!

Help those devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.cbn.com/redir/OB_HurricaneKatrinaGive.asp

Pat Robertson

Chairman/CBN and Operation Blessing



Unsubscribe:
http://www.cbn.com/community/af/mailcategory.asp?l=brownground&a=3

half the money goes in his greedy goddamn pocket.

Besides, my understanding is OB is largely a scam.

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 . 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.

instead of food and water. Yep, that's just what those poor starving, parched people need, a spanking new bible. :eyes:

Anyone who donates a cent to him is a sandwich short of a picnic.

He merely says they've arrived in AL, MS and LA. He does not specify NOLA. I doubt much he cares about NOLA at any rate.

water in NOLA, we'll know that he is on the scene.

from another DUer:

live in New Iberia Louisiana, which is less than 150 miles from New Orleans. We have been working day and night for the last 7 days trying to help all the people that evacuated to here from New Orleans. We got a lot of people that evacuated before the storm, as well as after, since many of the evacuees have relatives that live here. We have approximately 4,000 people that are sheltered here in relatives and friends homes, not in the community shelter we have set up. (We have 1,500-2,000 people there and are maxed out, we can't handle any more in the shelter)

The Red Cross is refusing to assist people that are sheltered in relatives and friends homes! In order to receive Red Cross assistance (food, clothing, personal care items) you must be staying in the Red Cross Shelter. I know people that are sheltering 5,10 or more people in their homes.....and the Red Cross will not help them! A majority of the people that are sheltering relatives are poor themselves, and really can't afford to feed, clothe and maintain a household with 20 additional people without assistance! If they enter their relatives into the Red Cross system, the Red Cross will bus them to God-knows-where because our shelter is full, and they don't want to break up their families.

Why can't the Red Cross help these families? Does anyone see a reason why, if these people could show that they were from the evacuated area, the Red Cross could not help them? This, to me, is outrageous!

who knew? :shrug: