Delays and diversions: international aid confusion
September 9, 2005 - 10:22PM
US federal emergency officials are directing hurricane-aid supplies to areas where they aren't needed, according to a US Air Force official.
This has caused delays that have left international aid shipments for Hurricane Katrina victims sitting at an Air Force base in Arkansas.
Civilian truck drivers hired to transport goods to Louisiana and Mississippi have been diverted to areas that don't need the items they're carrying, said Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Bret Archbold, who oversees the transfer of international shipments onto the trucks at Little Rock Air Force Base, in Jacksonville, north of Little Rock.
"We're backlogged now because the trucks are supposed to run two missions a day, but most of them have been down there for two days and haven't come back yet," Archbold said.
A fenced off area on the base is filled with pallets of emergency food rations, some of which came from Russia, Italy, Spain and Britain...
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Those truck drivers who have returned, describe frustrating journeys through hurricane-hit areas searching for relief workers willing to accept their supplies.
One trucker who make it back to the base for a second run, two days after her first, was Cheryl Neal of Jacksonville, Florida. She said she was directed from Camp Beauregard in Alexandria, Louisiana, to Gonzales, Louisiana, just west of New Orleans, with meals ready-to-eat - only to find they already had plenty. She said she went to two more stops before finding an abandoned Kmart in New Orleans that had been commandeered by the American Red Cross.
"You know the things they're saying about FEMA," Neal said.
"What I saw was FEMA people haven't been able to establish mobile phone contact with the people it's going to."
