There are a number of spots where people can “check in” so others can find them.
The Red Cross added one yesterday afternoon called Family Links.
You can go to www.redcross.org and click on Family Links on the right.
The direct url is http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/katrina
There is also an 800# where you can call in and have someone at ACR register you in the database or do a search for you. Call 1-877 LOVED-1S (1-877-568-3317)
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
INETA has added 9 new members to the speaker bureau. Although it’s “official”, it is not yet posted anywhere so I thought I would. Unfortunately, their budget limited the number of new people that they could bring on board. I know that they had a lot of wonderful people to choose from and had a difficult task. Hopefully, there will be more opportunities at some point to bring some of these people on as well and share them with user groups around North America.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Well, it was really FEMA’s boss, Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, who had the most astounding interview with Robert Seigel yesterday afternoon on All Things Considered. I listenened in the car on the way home. Seigel asked Chertoff why the thousands of people at the convention center with no food, water or officials in charge were being completely overlooked. Chertoff responded with disbelief – that the people were even there. Seigel said that NPR reporters were there and that is what they are reporting and it was a nightmare. Chertoff said well, you can’t believe all of the rumors. Oh my god. So Seigel replied that these are not rumors. These are experienced reporters that have covered wars and have been in refugee camps. Chertoff said, well, I’m not going to argue with you and the interview ended. It was astounding! Why couldn’t he just say “oh my god, nobody has come to me with this information. I will get on it immediately.” It was like he was a robot. The entire interview was incredible. Chertoff was on the defensive and kept saying “there’s food, there’s help…we have staging areas.” You can listen to it here. Siegel deserves a medal for keeping his cool. It’s a shame that it has to be this way. Our government could have been heroic.
www.acehaid.org
According to this page of the US Census Bureau stats for New Orleans:
In 2003, New Orleans city had 181,000 occupied housing units – 92,000 (51 percent) owner occupied and 89,000 (49 percent) renter occupied. Seven percent of the households did not have telephone service and 21 percent of the households did not have access to a car, truck, or van for private use. Twenty-six percent had two vehicles and another 6 percent had three or more.
21% of 181,000 is about 38,000.
38,000 households represents a lot of people who have no access to a vehicle.
Think about that when reading this statement from the FEMA director in response to the predicted death toll.
“Unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,” Brown told CNN.
“I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” he said.
“And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.”
I wondered too, at first. Why did so many people stay? But then the more you saw on the news, the more you realized that many people just didn’t really have any way to leave. And nowhere to go. And nobody came to get them.
www.acehaid.org
www.acehaid.org