Posted on 01/01/2005 1:59:30 PM PST by Pikamax
Tsunami Survivors Mob U.S. Aid Copters
38 minutes ago World - AP Asia
By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Writer
ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN - Desperate, homeless villagers on the tsunami-ravaged island of Sumatra mobbed American helicopters carrying aid Saturday as the U.S. military launched its largest operation in the region since the Vietnam War, ferrying food and other emergency relief to survivors across the disaster zone.
From dawn until sunset on New Year's Day, 12 Seahawk helicopters shuttled supplies and advance teams from offshore naval vessels while reconnaissance aircraft brought back stark images of wave-wrecked coastal landscapes and their hungry, traumatized inhabitants.
"They came from all directions, crawling under the craft, knocking on the pilot's door, pushing to get into the cabin," said Petty Officer First Class Brennan Zwack. "But when they saw we had no more food inside, they backed away, saying `Thank you, thank you.'"
"The mob decided how we distributed the food. There were so many hands outstretched I don't think any package touched the ground," added Zwack, of Sioux Falls, S.D.
The helicopters took off from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, staged in calm waters about three miles off the Indonesian province of Aceh along with four other vessels to launch the sprawling U.S. military operation.
More than a dozen other ships were en route to southern Asian waters, with the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault vessel carrying Marines, headed for Sri Lanka, which along with Indonesia was the worst-hit area. The mission involves thousands of sailors and Marines, along with some 1,000 land-based troops.
Governments and global organizations have pledged about $2 billion in tsunami disaster relief, the United Nations (news - web sites) said Saturday. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi raised Japan's offer to $500 million from $30 million, topping President Bush (news - web sites)'s pledge Friday of $350 million.
Thailand's Vietnam War-era air base of Utapao has become the airlift hub for the region. C-130 transport planes were already conducting sorties to Jakarta and the Sumatran cities of Medan and Banda Aceh, according to a statement Saturday by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
U.S. Navy (news - web sites) medical staff are also on the ground in Meulaboh, a decimated fishing village where several thousand bodies have been recovered. The Navy is considering a request from Jakarta to establish a field hospital there.
As many as 100,000 people are feared dead on Sumatra, which was closest to the epicenter of last Sunday's catastrophic quake and tsunami. Although aid has been piling up in regional airports, officials have had trouble getting it out to the areas in need and the U.S. military was expected to ease the bottleneck.
The Lincoln's operations officer, Cmdr. Matthew J. Faletti, said the New Year's Day effort off Sumatra was focused on ferrying emergency relief, including biscuits, energy drinks and instant noodles, to communities along the 120-mile stretch of seacoast south of the city of Banda Aceh.
Most of the 25,000 pounds of aid supplies delivered Saturday were picked up from Australian and other foreign shipments at Banda Aceh and then rushed by the helicopters to coastal town, where tens of thousands were killed by the giant wall of water.
U.S. military medical and damage assessment teams were also landed with helicopters flying in heavy winds, rain and low clouds. Supplies had to be dropped from craft hovering over some water-logged areas where landing proved impossible.
"There is nothing left to speak of at these coastal areas," said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Vorce, a pilot from San Diego, California. The tsunami left a swath of destruction as deep as two miles inland, with trees mowed down like grass and the only evidence of buildings in many communities the bare foundations, pilots said.
Many residents were camped out on high ground, either afraid to return to the seacoast or having nothing to return to.
The town of Meuloboh, where some 50,000 people had once lived, was about 80 percent destroyed, Faletti estimated.
The pilots encountered a number of foreign and Indonesian aid workers but distribution of supplies was difficult since the vital coastal road, most bridges and two small airports near Meuloboh had been washed away. "It looks like the sheer force of the water buckled the road from underneath," Vorce said.
Officers said information was being gathered on how best American resources could be used including the skills of machinists, masons, carpenters, divers and general laborers among the more than 6,000 crew members on the giant carrier.
"Everyone is champing at the bit to go out and help," said Vorce. "Today wasn't about a paycheck."
There's definitely a long list of freepers to avoid. We should compare notes sometime. LOL
A lot of these people are leftists who come here pretending to be conservatives. Read the book for which Jim Robinson wrote the foreward and was mentioned prominently "Hillary's Secret War". How they operate is all outlined in that book.
One thing's for certain -- many of the folks who are loudly complaining about the relatively small amount of taxpayer dollars being spent on this particular (and much needed) relief effort are relatively silent when it comes to the monstrous waste of taxpayer funds in other spheres. Consistent, they're not.
But there may be critically wounded who need to be evacuated...it is a tough call...
That's for sure.
Actually, the most offensive stuff I've ever seen on FR was on this very subject. I'd also point out that "foreign aid" & "disaster relief" might easily be two different things.
Peach, I've read some of those threads too. The majority posting on those threads are debating whether it's constitutional for our tax monies to be spent for emergency aid.
Ignore them. After all, they don't have the military helicopters to make the food drops or to get needed supplies to those most in need.
I've also read a few posting on various threads saying we shouldn't help anyone who practices Islam. At times I've wanted to respond by asking them how we should differentiate between religous beliefs. Again, my best advice to you is to ignore those bigots.
I'm with you in that I can't begin to imagine how big this devastation is. It boggles my mind. I read the thread where 3 people hiked for 5 days and never saw another live human being. I try my best to put myself in that position by imagining what it would be like to experience that along the Gulf Coast and my mind can't grasp that amount of devastation. It breaks my heart.
Very often I do just ignore those Constitutional purists and faux freepers but sometimes I fear their ignorant comments reflect so badly on Free Republic, and we're quoted so often now in the MSM, that I want to have a counter-balance to the uglier threads and posts.
Happy New Year, Sally.
I replied that our contribution was the largest of all contributing nations, and that we even increased the pledge tenfold from $35 million to $350 million.
She agreed, but reminded me that "per capita, we're not the biggest contributors when compared to the Europeans". I replied that might be relevant if America didn't have more Irish than Ireland and more Germans than Germany. We've got more Scots than Scotland, and the list goes on and on. Besides, if the several dozen citizens of the wealthy little kingdom state of Liechtenstein each sacrificed a gold bracelet to the relief efforts, was she saying that would make Liechtenstein the world's most generous nation although it wouldn't make much difference in the grand scale of the relief effort?
Okay, she reluctantly agreed with that point too, and then I asked her whose aid would actually get to the victims first; America's, the United Nations', or the EU's?
Fast forward to video of US Marine CH-53 Sea Stallions, Sea Knights, and Seahawk choppers delivering at from offshore US Navy Maritime Naval Prepositioning ships. Who's got amphibious forces that can deliver the goods at a moment's notice anywhere in the world and essentially set up a small city anywhere we want? The United States, or Finland? Where's Kofi Annan's naval rapid reaction force, and can he captain them from the ski slopes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming?
I mentioned that at this very moment, we're assisting in several nations. We'll have for them generators, water purification, graves detail, agricultural development, emergency care services, innoculation from disease, and other rebuilding and lifesaving measures. All of this from a military that was so recently accused of being 'stretched too thin'.
You'll know when the EU/UN arrives on the scene when the column of ponytailed hippie ladies that look like Jane Goodall arrive on fancy passenger jets bearing backpacks of tofu sandwiches and carrying sacks of 'cruelty-free' rice.
... And by the way, isn't it interesting how although there are just nearly as many people dead on the shorelines of the tsunami-afflicted nations as there are bodies we've counted in Saddam's mass graves, the world instead bemoans the body count from a thoroughly unavoidable natural disaster and refuses to acknowledge the victims of an entirely preventable inhumanity caused by a mad dictator that much of the world was against us overthrowing?
At this point, my wife yanked me offstage like a dying Vaudeville comic getting the hook, much to everyone's relief.
The moral of this story is to never make any statement that can be even slightly construed to be America-bashing in the vicinity of where The KG9 Kid has been drinkin'.
I agree there is that appearance and today, on another thread, Powell was quoted as saying this is not an auction at which the higehst bidder wins. (Or words to that effect). I thought it was a good response to those of us who were concerned about the appearance of how this played out.
I suspect the picture of the dude walking around in the disaster aftermath in Indonesia sporting an OBL tee shirt gave many pause.
That bothers me too. ....immensely.
"Now, if you had told me a week ago that an American Marine expeditionary force would be in Banda Aceh on New Years Day, my first reaction would have been that the President had decided upon a bold and unexpected strike in the War on Terror, jumping ahead on the timeline of that effort's multi-generational strategy. I might have thought it was a bold and necessary move, and I would have believed you if you had said they had located and captured Osama Bin Laden there. As it was, in our shock, probing in from the parameter toward the epicenter of the Banda Aceh Earthquake, only a few have considered whether the hand of the Almighty reached out and sliced off a decade from what still promises to be a protracted conflict with Islamo-Fascism. "
That's why 61 million plus people voted for George W. Bush in November, despite all the words that the left could raise in anger.
Most of us get it. And the left hates it. Just a little sweetener.
Happy New Year to you too!
I agree with you that the MSM could come in and cherry pick some of the more hateful comments. Unfortunately, that's what makes news. Not how generous or how horrified we are about what the people over there are going through but how 'heartless' FReepers are.
I understand why Jim lets the threads about constitutionality stand since FR is a conservative website. I'm thankful for the posters on those threads who challenge the purists. Just remember, the purists are in the minority and while they're entitled to their views, it in no way detracts from America's response to this tragedy. After all, have we heard about any other nation's helicopters delivering needed aid?
Imagine all those Gore/Kerry voters in Florida. Next time a hurricane hits, let the whole state rot. /sarc
Not ONE other nation delivering food. The UN is holding meetings. Big whoop.
I'm proud of our response and won't let a few naysayers take that away from how I feel. Glad to "meet" you, Sally.
LOL! You tell 'em!
I saw an interview w/one anquished man who cried out, "We need help. Where are the Americans?"
Not 'Where is the UN?' Not even where is his own government, but "Where are the Americans?" They know who they can count on.
Possibly, but I've read too many posts prior to this disaster where certain posters state all who are Islamic should be obliterated from the planet. It's sad that one picture showing one guy wearing a t-shirt with OBL's picture would prompt people to decide not to reach out to other's of the Islamic faith.
For several years I had a next door neighbour who practiced Islam. He and his family were some of the best neighbours I've ever had.
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