Basic medical supplies top U.S. wish list from Canada

[iverglas]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050905/STORMCANADA05/TPInternational/Americas

The medical supplies announced yesterday are part of a widespread federal response, which now includes Red Cross workers, diving teams, four Canadian ships, helicopters, supplies and other assistance.

The basic medical supplies were requested by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt on Saturday, and are expected to be sent out immediately.

Canada, which will provide supplies ranging from blankets and batteries to surgical dressings and tongue depressors, had to wait for Washington to make the request first.

As everyone here knows, WE made the OFFER of ANY assistance needed IMMEDIATELY:

Sources said yesterday that Mr. Martin asked Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan to begin co-ordinating a Canadian response to the disaster last Monday, even before the full extent of the damage was realized. He then spoke to Mr. Bush on Thursday, making the offer and signalling to the Canadian bureaucracy in the process that Canada would do all it could.

(The PM-to-President offer was just the formality; various offers and pre-arrangements had already been made by provincial premiers and other Cdn federal and military authorities.)

Canadians want people in the US to know about this not because we are bragging or want gratitude -- but because it is important that people in the US know that the neighbours give a damn.

We are all neighbours on this planet, but we up here are in many ways the closest, and certainly the most able to help promptly and effectively, and we just expect to do it without even being asked. The US assisted us during the 1998 ice storm disaster -- camp cots for emergency shelters, generators for emergency power, telephone poles, electrical workers and forestry workers -- when the power grid failed in a huge swath of the country in the middle of winter. And individual Canadians fed and housed those stranded USAmerican travellers diverted to Canada on Sept 11 without a second thought.

It's what neighbours do. No matter what contempt large numbers of us hold your government in, or how forcefully we oppose what it does. And, very certainly, no matter what colour or class the people in need are.

The people of the US need to know these things because unless they know that the rest of us do give a damn, it will be that much less likely that they will ever give a damn about the rest of us.

If they know that we look at the victims among them and see people, and care about what happens to them, and will do what is needed to help them, it might be that much harder to manipulate them into not caring, when they look at the victims of their government's inhuman foreign policies, and into seeing the world at large as their enemy.

That's not why we're sending the aid -- but it's why the people of the US need to know we're doing it. So if anyone happens to feel like taking some of this information and putting it in a letter to the local paper or TV station (... or Bill O'Reilly), just noting the friends that the US can count on in a genuine crisis, please don't hesitate.


For those interested who may have missed some of the info about Cdn responses that has been posted here in the past week:

A collection of items in the Toronto Star about Katrina events (including scathing eyewitness accounts by Star reporters/columnists):
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Page&cid=1125655395608
"As the world watched the killer storm forming, New Orleans flooding, thousands trapped and begging for help, officials were - well, what were they doing?"

Canada's National Union of Public and General Employees' summary of the political background:
http://www.nupge.ca/news_2005/n01se05b.htm
"New Orleans: the ultimate catastrophe of government cuts"

(I really hope I'm not duplicating any posts about the aid now being sent by Canada; search is not available, and a visual scan didn't show anything.)

[Sanity Claws]

1. Hmmm --- but Bush keeps saying we can't trust Canadian drugs!

That's why we're not allowed to go across the border and buy their drugs. Gosh, I'm so confused by the flip-flop!!

[iverglas]

2. yeah ...

I couldn't resist mentioning that myself back when the request for an inventory of our stockpiled emergency medications was first made ...

[iverglas]

3. Canadian medical supplies arrive in Louisiana

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050905_monday_neworleans_050905/?hub=TopStories

Prime Minister Paul Martin is expected to be in Halifax on Tuesday to see off 1,000 military personnel and four ships headed for Louisiana.

Those ships will carry more emergency supplies to the U.S. Gulf Coast. A planeload of medical supplies from Canada arrived Sunday in Atlanta for distribution to areas of need.

... While there hasn't been any suggestion yet of Canada taking flood refugees into their homes, Maritimers are already offering their legendary hospitality.

"We have a house, and although we don't have lots of money, still -- we have someplace people can go and feel comfort for a while," <a woman in Halifax said>.

http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=3809636

In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a Canadian task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after the storm to help, St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.

"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams should be here faster than that," Stone said.

That team arrived because the Governor of Louisiana requested it directly from the Premier of British Columbia, who evidently responded faster than US federal authorities.

Commentary from Peace, Earth and Justice News in British Columbia:
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3235&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0
Feel free to do the poll:
Current Poll
Should Karl Rove be
forced out of the White
House?
Yes
No
Don't know
(81% yes, so far)

[iverglas]

4. CTV poll: "How do you rate your willingness to donate ..."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/HTMLTemplate

... to relief efforts in the U.S., as opposed to relief efforts for disasters in developing countries?
More likely 1877 votes (20 %)
Less likely 4108 votes (44 %)
The same 3303 votes (36 %)

I'm in the "less likely" category. The US needed, and still needs, expertise and materiel that we can supply collectively, the things that are the reason we pay taxes. I'm more likely to make an on-line donation to UNICEF or the International Red Cross this week, for Haiti or Africa, to make up for what will be an undoubted shortfall because of the flow of donor dollars to Katrina victims.


http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1125954465945_78/?hub=TopStories

Maritimers offer shelter to Katrina survivors

In the spirit of generosity for which Maritimers are famous, some residents of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are offering shelter to the homeless survivors of hurricane Katrina.

... From providing temporary homes for stranded passengers after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, to taking in over 5,000 Kosovar-Albanian refugees in 1999, this wouldn't be the first time Maritimers have extended a hand to those in need.

... "My view is that if there are displaced people who need accommodation, that we would be there," Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan told reporters Monday.

McLellan, also the minister of public safety, says her department is discussing with the U.S. national security advisor the possibility of Canadians billeting American storm evacuees.

Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer said it's not just shelter that Canada should be offering. "We could offer our services through our various airlines. We have our armed forces personnel. We could offer to send planes to bring people here if we so desire -- it's not that much," Stoffer told ATV News.

I've mentioned that I would have been driving down myself to haul a couple of families back to my spare rooms -- but it really is a bad idea, just like adopting Tsunami orphans to North America or Europe would have been a bad idea. Displaced people do not need to be further dislocated from their homes by removing them to another country, unless there is simply no alternative.

PEJ News has this on its page about international aid offers -- I do nto see the report in question at Kos, and I did not see the report on CTV News and can see nothing at its website, and doubt the veracity/accuracy of the report:

CTV Television News is reported late Monday, Sept. 5, 2005 that Vancouver's highly touted Urban Search and Rescue (USAR), the first non-American assistance in the disaster zone, have been told to leave the country. CTV has no link to the story I could find at this hour, but the story is being widely disseminated through website Daily Kos

[Spazito]

5. Thanks for the links

I am glad we are finally being able to help. I wish we had been let in earlier but better late than never for sure.

[iverglas]

6. Canadian team carries out rescues in St. Bernard Parish

As reported yesterday in Australia:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/stranded-towns-count-their-dead/2005/09/04/1125772409299.html

Sheriff Jack Stephens, whose department is now based on the Cajun Queen ferry boat, also said federal assistance had been minimal. "I have Royal Canadian Mounties who have gotten here faster than the Federal Government," he said.

"I have made more life-and-death decisions in the last four or five days than I have in 22 years."

The Canadians were members of a 47-member search-and-rescue team sent from the municipal government of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The team has gone from house to house, extracting survivors who have clung to their homes and weathered the storm and its bitter aftermath.

[iverglas]

7. more on the Vancouver team in St. Bernard Parish

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.html?id=43c5047a-6007-4a21-a94e-f7cb8e7ff576

URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE: Expert squad first into area, has saved 30

Matthew Ramsey
The Province
September 4, 2005

Friday, the team was designated to lead rescue efforts in St. Bernard Parish, where an estimated 30,000 homes were flooded to their rooflines.

... "There was no rescue effort. He was struck by that," said Vancouver deputy fire chief John McKearney, who spoke with Armstrong Friday.


AP

... Armstrong said the team will focus on searching for people, using four boats working 12-hour shifts. Rescue efforts are called off at 6 p.m. because of a curfew. All communications are going through an MCI trailer. The team's cell and satellite phones are barely functioning.

I am seeing the tin-foil reports about satellite phone blocking being connected to the Vancouver team's difficulties ...

[iverglas]

8. Vancouver city website - updates from search&rescue team in Louisiana

http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/usar/index.htm

Vancouver's Urban Search and Rescue Team is currently in Louisiana to assist in the search and rescue efforts in the areas of the state ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The team was deployed on August 31 and is working with the Louisiana State Troopers and the U.S. National Guard.

[Spazito]

9. Their reports were very interesting to read

I am so glad they made it to St. Bernard Parish, I very much recall their desperate pleas for help.

[iverglas]

10. Rescue team finishes job in New Orleans

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.html?id=9f87afc7-97c2-42d3-92a0-f41890a28f0d

They braved death and destruction of historic proportions, waded through toxic brown flood water and saved 150 victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Some of what they saw moved them to tears.

Now, with their mission accomplished as more American rescue teams move in, the 45-member Urban Search and Rescue team from Vancouver is to return home this morning to a hero's welcome.

... The team was deployed on Aug. 31 and was the first urban search unit to arrive in flooded St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans. U.S. troops and national guard members are now pouring into the devastated Gulf Coast.

... "Our presence here is very much appreciated by everyone we run into. People have expressed how they can't believe that a Canadian team is here to rally to their needs."

[steely]

11. My wife and I were in Canada on vacation when Katrina hit.

And from day one afterward, we saw on Canadian TV the willingness of the Canadians and their government to deliver anything the US needed for help. As a US citizen, I was honored by their selflessness, but I was bewildered and embarassed too, by the apparent silence on the part of the US authorities to accept such an offer. They offered supplies, water treatment systems, etc., and personnel.

I add: to all Canadians - Thank you very much!

[iverglas]

12. thanks accepted!

although not necessary ... although one should never decline thanks even when they make one feel embarrassed at being thanked for something one should never want to be thanked for, because people want and need to say thanks just as much as they want and need what they're offering the thanks for ... ;)

Which is kinda why the US should just accept, and say thanks, for offers of help from "third world" countries, too. It's another way of saying "thanks".

[ShockediSay]

13. While they're at at some reasonably priced Rx drugs too

Uninflated by US lobby lawyers and their bagmen.