DRUDGE:
NAVY SHIPS AND MARITIME RESCUE TEAMS SENT TO REGION
Tue Aug 30 2005 21:33:11 ET
The Pentagon late Tuesday ordered five Navy ships and eight maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations as worsening conditions overwhelmed the initial response.
The NEW YORK TIMES plans to report later tonight: One Navy amphibious assault ship, the Bataan, with six Sea Stallion and Sea Hawk helicopters that could be used for search and rescue missions.
The ships will carry food, fuel, medical and construction supplies, as well as hovercraft that can be used for evacuation and search-and-rescue missions.
The Navy was also considering sending the hospital ship Comfort.
"To: STARWISE
DRUDGE:
NAVY SHIPS AND MARITIME RESCUE TEAMS SENT TO REGION
Tue Aug 30 2005 21:33:11 ET
The Pentagon late Tuesday ordered five Navy ships and eight maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations as worsening conditions overwhelmed the initial response.
The NEW YORK TIMES plans to report later tonight: One Navy amphibious assault ship, the Bataan, with six Sea Stallion and Sea Hawk helicopters that could be used for search and rescue missions.
The ships will carry food, fuel, medical and construction supplies, as well as hovercraft that can be used for evacuation and search-and-rescue missions.
The Navy was also considering sending the hospital ship Comfort. "
For the next few days, the primary focus has to be WATER.
Each person still alive in New Orleans needs one gallon of WATER per day. If all 100,000 who stayed behind survived, that is eleven 18 wheel truck tankers full of WATER everyday.
But New Orleans isn't the only issue. There are refugees along a strip the Gulf a mile wide and 166 miles long who also need WATER and it needs to be DELIVERED.
The military is headed in, under a two or three star general, and we need to hope they can do all the jobs we need to have done, in the ORDER that allows the most survivors possible to live out the week.
This is a classic triage situation, on a very large scale.
The sooner every American understands this, and faces reality, the sooner we can harness ALL of our respective talents and accomplish what we can.
We can whine about hard truths and ugly reality or we can save as many and as much as we can, but we can't each do both.
Decision time, accept reality and then try to put whatever smiles we can on it, is right around the corner, and crunch time is hot on its heels.