New Orleans: Fly low and slow over Convention Center to air drop?

You need to quit trying to freelance and contribute to an existing
relief effort. You are asking someone to essentially throw their pilots
license in the trash by assisting you in your well intentioned but
misguided ploy. Their certificate would be revoked on an emergency
basis, and likely permanently revoked. If you are lucky, the drop wont
hit someone on the head, killing them.

The COLD HARD TRUTH is that many people bear SOME of the responsibility
for the situation they are in.

They were told to get out. SOME couldnt. Many CHOSE not to.

Prudence dictates that you keep a ready supply of your prescription
meds, and TAKE THE MED BOTTLES WITH YOU when you leave home.

Common decency says dont shoot at the goddamn helicopters trying to
bring you food and water, and give you a ride out.

You cant fly relief in until the hurricane is gone. You cant truck
relief in over a demolished bridge. You cant snap your fingers and make
a division of guardsmen appear in 2 hours. It takes time to mobilize
resources.

Yes.. You are right.. people are dying. People died on the bus ride to
houston last night, and no, this wasn't on the news, and no, its not
heresay.

Send your 4 grand to the red cross and if you want to help, call them
and ask what YOU can do to help, UNDER THEIR DIRECTION. If you were
interested in helping people, you would have joined up with such an
organization ahead of time, being proactive, rather than REACTING after
the fact.

Dave


wrote:
The kits have picture diagrams for usage on the packaging.

Once one person figures out how to make drinkable water, I'm sure
others will copy what he/she did.

Wow, you have internet access inside the convention center?

wrote in message
ups.com...
I really can't stand the situation that is occuring in the Convention
Center. There are about two thousand at the Convention Center with NO
police or rescue personel onsite. Babies have no milk. At least two
dead bodies are there. An SUV with one police officer drove by and
raced away. One girl has been raped.

I don't know what the current flight restrictions are, but I'm looking
for pilot with plane who is willing to fly low and slow over the
Convention Center and drop out water purification kits, baby milk,
MREs, body bags, wire ties (for restraint).

There is a nurse in the crowd who needs Heart Medications and Insulin.

Campers use systems of two bags to filter the water. Put dirty water in
the top bag and it filters into the lower bag. Add some Emergency Water
Purifier (http://www.windupradio.com/Pristine/) and the water is
drinkable. One kit can make 60 gallons of drinking water.

It is obivous that the government can't handle this situation. I'm
willing to step up with 1000$ right now for an air drop and will have
4000$ available by Wednesday. The money can be used for fuel, items to
drop, etc.

Who is willing to step up with a plane and willing to go the extra
mile?


Duncan Moore

"Darrel Toepfer" wrote in message
...
wrote:

The Convention Center is not the same place as the SuperDome.

Mybad:

"30 people have now died in the Superdome, including one suicide and there
have been at least 2 rapes."

Source? (TV sensationalism?)

The airspace has already been declared off limits and you're going to need
to pay me much more than your offer for me to risk my ability to fly for a
case of water. Oh, by the way, some thugs would probably just steal the
water and then try to sell it for whatever they could get for it and it
wouldn't meet the intended purpose.

Calm down and realize help is on the way.

Maybe more of these people should have heeded the warnings and "MANDATORY
EVACUATION" that was DIRECTED prior to the storm.


wrote in message
ups.com...
I am familiar with restricted airspace. I live in Washington DC and
have seen his multicoloured maps of the area.

For New Orleans, obivously when the Pres visits or flies over is not
the time to be in the air space. I personally think he shouldn't visit
the area now. If he really does want to visit, he could slip in
'undercover' in a National Guard uniform. After he leaves if could be
made public.

As for being forced to land, I would take that and run with it
publically. It would embarrass the government that they haven't yet run
a few C-130's over the area and kicked out MRE pallets and water kits.

This is not rock science. At the current speed of evactions, many
survivers will be dead by the time a bus arrives for them.

Blanket the damn area with MREs and water kits from the sky.

Katrina is an enormous challenge in logistics. New Orleans is at the
southern end of a very large damaged area. It takes time to clear roads,
inspect bridges, etc. I saw one photo where every single power pole for
a half mile or so was snapped off and lying across the road. Whether
that was a main road is unknown, but clearing that kind of damage takes
time.

You can't just run the National Guard in without food, water, fuel for
vehicles, places to rest else the NG becomes refugees within a couple of
days.

wrote in message
ups.com...
I really can't stand the situation that is occuring in the Convention
Center. There are about two thousand at the Convention Center with NO
police or rescue personel onsite. Babies have no milk. At least two
dead bodies are there. An SUV with one police officer drove by and
raced away. One girl has been raped.

Dave S wrote:

Prudence dictates that you keep a ready supply of your prescription
meds, and TAKE THE MED BOTTLES WITH YOU when you leave home.

Some meds (insulin, for example) require constant refrigeration.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

Isn't it interesting that just this morning, the the governor of
Lousiana finally issued the order to shot to kill looters.

wrote:

The kits have picture diagrams for usage on the packaging.

Once one person figures out how to make drinkable water, I'm sure
others will copy what he/she did.

Walk across the Mississippi river bridge, good clean water can be had on
the other side... Thats where all the support stuff is being driven in
from...

John Doe wrote:

Source? (TV sensationalism?)

First responder via satphone...

Send your 4 grand to the red cross and if you want to help,
call them and ask what YOU can do to help,
UNDER THEIR DIRECTION.
If you were interested in helping people,
you would have joined up with such an organization ahead of time,
being proactive, rather than REACTING after the fact.

I am a local volunteer for the Red Cross computer, networking, and
communications systems. I am on low standby to go into the area if
needed. But computers don't save people, so they keep us out of the
area until the crisis settles a bit.

I also train with my local ham radio community for emergency
communications and assisting with public events.

Many CHOSE to stay? These are poor people without cars or poorly
working cars. They weren't offered a bus/train ride to a shelter above
sea level. The only ppl that could get away was well off people who
could pack up their SUV and go rent a motel room for 50$/night. I don't
recall too much warning over the levies breaking before Katrina hit. A
few did say it could. But it wasn't impressed on the population that
they would be underwater for several weeks.

Yes, these are poor people. There are bad apples in the crowd who
managed to get their hands on guns from what I can only assume was pawn
and gun stores which had easy to access merchandise.

The hurricane is over now, so there is air access now. The Air Force
has pushed MREs / survival kits out of C-130s over Afghanistan and
other places before. There are pallets designed for this type of
mission. We are talking about 6 hrs to get a plane with the pallets
over the area. The few ppl that might be killed by getting hit on the
head would far out weight the lives saved by the supplies.

As for bridges out, air drops allow ppl to survive until either
temporary bridges can be brought in or the existing ones repaired. The
Army has several different bridge systems that could be used. They have
been tested in combat. I've used a pontoon bridge before. I'd like to
assume convoys of gravel trucks from around the country are on their
way in to fill/raise the roads as needed and turn some fields into
staging / temporary housing areas, but I doubt it.

Right now I wouldn't be evacuating via helicopter anyone other than
sick children and serious injured. Those helicopters lifting ppl off of
buildings could be lowering a survival kit with food, water, water
purification, infant formula, field toilet bags, tent, a wind-up radio,
and a laminated information sheet. They could survive at at least a
week or two. Tell 'em this is what the troops in Iraq have to put up
with. Suck it up. And, to be blunt, I'm make rescue of the elderly a
lower priority. As in my system of ethics, the rescue of a child has
more 'Good' than rescuing an elderly person who has lived a long life
already.

This isn't just a crowd of people at the Dome w/ the red cross, but
people all over the city. Central food/water distribution isn't going
to work. They will be mobbed. The Convention Center 5 miles from the
Dome has NO supplies, NO aid people, NO police, NO National Guard. NO
Buses to get out. NO Food / Water deliveries. And this is 2K people.
The Convention Center, btw, isn't underwater.

I'm sorry for ranting on about this in your newsgroup. The BBC report
of infants being raped at the Convention Center just pushed me over the
edge. I know a private drop is probably out of the question now, I just
hope the officials have a damn good reason for not air dropping
supplies all over the city as their first response.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

After the Tsunami, I was working on a team to a design air deployable
survival systems for natural disasters.

One design was a package of four body bags, ID bracelet w/ a low power
transponder radio to go around the arm/leg/neck, a folded shovel,
Polaroid camera, dna swab, burial marker, gloves and bleach. Picture
instructions enclosed: photo the face, attach one picture to the
bracelet, take the dna swab, put ID bracelet on body, either bury with
or without body bag. Put the marker in the ground, with the picture and
dna sample attached. Gets one disease source out of the way, and allows
future retrieval / identification for his/her family and relatives. The
transponder radio would only squawk when pinged from nearby and is
mainly to find buried bodies whose markers are missing. We got 6 month
to 1 year battery life out of the system. I know this wouldn't be of
help in New Orleans as they are underwater.

Another design dropped a pallet by parachute that contained a tank on
the top to pour dirty water in and a lower tank/tap to dispense potable
drinking water. By being big and heavy, it forced the community to work
together and share the water. Another design added a solar heat
collector on top that used part of the water to cook rice or a high
density food pellets that was already in the unit. This was dispensed
slowly along side the water. By being cooked with water, the
rice/pellets expand and allow feeding of more people than just a stack
of power bars.

There was talk of adding a two way radio phone to the unit and even an
auto deploying antenna to turn the unit into a two way radio / data
network repeater w/ sat link. The networks would be for use when the
rescue personnel get to the scene and provide them reliable
communications.

A smaller air dropped water purification unit, briefcase sized, had a
collapsed frame that just required pulling it out for it to expand and
lock into place. Think of a fat hourglass shape. Folded canvas buckets
for filling the unit were included along with collapsed 1 gallon
plastic water containers to allow the families to take the water with
them. The canvas buckets are V shaped, to discourage their use with the
cleaned water.

Both units had several layers of filters and added chemicals at a
consistant rate, requiring nothing more than the user to pour water in.
We were even testing a detection system that would cause a skull and
cross bones to appear when it sensed bad things in the supposely clean
water. There was talk of making the unit's tap lock up as well or
trigger the addition of sulfur to the bad water to discourage its use.

After the Tsunami faded into history, we got less and less interest in
people to fund the project. The units would have to be manufactured and
sitting at strategic airports around the world waiting for the next
disaster to occur. Retainer contracts would have to be signed with
necessary air crews / Air Force that can do an air drop with 6 hrs
notice. People don't like to donate for supplies / equipment that sit
on shelves hopefully gathering dust. They don't get that warm and fuzzy
feeling.

I'm of the "an ounce of prevention...." mindset.

What saddens me most is that I haven't seen any ingenuity from the
stranded people. They are surrounded by water and in a hot / sunny
location. Making a solar water purifier would take two coat hangers, a
black plastic trash bag, and a small container to catch the drinkable
water. Didn't any of them watch MacGyver?

Anyway, thank you for letting rant.

Oh, and if you think the TFR b/c of AF1 are annoying, I live under the
route Marine One takes from the White House to Camp David. Let's just
say that flying model airplanes in the field beside your house on the
wrong day can cause a lot of flashing lights to show up.


d