Update - UN: 6,000 tons of food to be handed out in Haiti

[Turborama]

Source: Washington Post

Some 6,000 tons of food aid will be distributed shortly in Haiti, a U.N. spokeswoman said Friday, adding that reports that U.N. warehouses in Haiti had been looted were overblown.

Officials checked four U.N. food agency warehouses in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Friday after receiving reports from local partners of looting, said Emilia Casella, a World Food Program spokeswoman.

"The food is there," Casella told The Associated Press. "They are also working on getting a peacekeeper contingent to secure the locations."

Casella said 6,000 tons of food stored were found in a damaged warehouse near the capital's Cite Soleil slum, and the biscuits, ready-to-eat meals and other supplies would be handed out shortly. That is 40 percent of the U.N.'s pre-quake food stocks of 15,000 tons in Haiti.

There are six other U.N. warehouses outside the capital, and there were no reports of looting at those, Casella said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011500687.html?hpid=topnews

[Vincardog]

1. They better hurry up and get the food and water to the people. What are they waiting for a self

fulfilling prophecy about water/food riots?

[WriteDown]

2. Can't just charge in with no infrastructure...

They need to know the exact situation on the ground and the changes in the terrain. What roads are open, etc. Charging in would be beyond foolish.

[Vincardog]

4. They could put pallets of food/water on helicopters and set them down. Why wait for the riots?

What is foolish about handing out aid NOW?

[WriteDown]

5. Set them down where?

Just anywhere? What's to ensure proper distribution and not hoarding. How much food would you waste by just blanketing the area blindly and not using precision. You may not even end up getting food to the people who most need it if we used that method.

[Vincardog]

7. Why not start by putting them down in the soccer fields WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE?

[WriteDown]

16. And start a riot?

Also, you have to load the food and have a precision delivery method. Air currents are a pain. This insn't a looney-tune cartoon where a big wooden crate plops right down next to your house from Acme.

[BrightKnight]

17. No, provide food and water. - n/t

[Turborama]

14. Some good answers to the air drop question

In this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7467919

[BeFree]

3. Sadly

You may have hit on a point that we should not discount.

There are some who would relish riots breaking out. It furthers their racist agenda.

IOW, there are some who are ready to take advantage of the suffering. Rush and Robertson are leading that effort and it is nice to see that they are being lampooned.

[dgibby]

6. They are trying to establish a safe way to distribute the food per CNN.

The UN sustained many causalities when it's headquarters collapsed, killing many and injuring many more. There are also many UN personnel still unaccounted for.

The Haitian police, by and large, have abandoned their posts (and who could blame them?)in order to help their own families.

Handing out food and water to desperate people without adequate security is a recipe for disaster, and will result in many people being trampled to death, something everyone is trying to avoid.

Another problem is logistical. Roads are impassable, large trucks can't get through, and that's what's needed to transport supplies. Hopefully, now that the aircraft carrier is there, they will be able to transport supplies by helicopter.

Without express permission from the Haitian government, the US will not be able to deploy troops to keep the peace, so it would be better if the UN could do that, but that will require other countries sending in more UN assets.

Basically, it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Very sad, and a logistical nightmare.

[Vincardog]

8. funny early reports were that the roads were open and a few bridges were down. Why this insistence

that giving out food and water will cause riots?

[Dappleganger]

9. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Yet another DU armchair quarterback.

[Vincardog]

10. That answers which question?

[dgibby]

12. Have you even bothered to look at the pictures/video coming out of there?

You obviously have an agenda to promote here, and no amount of rational discussion will deter you, so carry on, but just know that you're making yourself look ridiculously uninformed as to the situation there.

[Vincardog]

13. What have you seen that have missed? I see hundreds of thousands of people that need food water

and shelter. I want to know why they are not getting it now.
That is the agenda I want to to promote.
WTF are you trying to get done?
Did you see the reports yesterday that supplies were stacking up at the airport and flights were being turned away because there was not room to unload them?
Did you see that they had decided not to take the supplies to where they were needed because they didn't know how the people would react?

[dgibby]

15. Read my first post again.

I gave you multiple reasons for why it's not happening immediately. Obviously, that doesn't matter to you. BTW, the port is also inoperable. No way to unload supplies there.

Do you remember last Christmas when the Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by crowds of shoppers? Is that what you want to happen to the Haitians? No doubt you'd be the first one bashing if it did.

If you think you have a better way to do this, why aren't you on a plane for Haiti? For that matter, why haven't you posted your plan here? It's easy to sit at a computer and criticize, much harder to be on the ground in a disaster (as some of us have been).

As for what I'm doing, I'm donating as much as I can to DRS Without Borders. What are you doing except criticizing?

[northernlights]

11. earthquakes don't just bring down buildings

they destroy roads, they destroy delivery trucks, the buildings themselves fall into roads and block them. And oftentimes, the on-site relief workers themselves were killed and injured.

Somebody needs to clear enough roads to get the supplies out.

I seriously doubt "they" are sitting on their asses waiting for a blessing from above to magically make the above happen.