Posted on 01/23/2010 10:59:39 AM PST by topfile
The parents of Britney Gengel, the college student from Rutland still missing after the Jan. 12 eathquake in Haiti, returned home yesterday from a nine-day vigil at her Florida campus after hearing from the US State Department that the mission has shifted from rescue to recovery, leaving slim chances of finding any survivors.
They will start pulling the building apart layer by layer, Leonard Gengel read from a statement yesterday at Logan International Airport, referring to the hotel where his 20-year-old daughter had been staying when the 7.0 earthquake hit.
His voice breaking, he said, We are asking our government to guarantee that every American dead or alive [in the hotel rubble] be accounted for and brought home in a dignified way.
The State Department did not immediately return a call yesterday.
-snip-
Leonard Gengel made an emotional appeal to President Obama last week, urging him to do more to aid the rescue effort.
Gengel told reporters yesterday that he never imagined he would be begging the federal government to bring his daughter home, dead or alive.
Its just unimaginable and unthinkable, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
My wife’s cousin died in the Montana.
These ladies were not accosted in the airport, or robbed at a restuarant.
They were apparently killed in an earthquake. Wouldn’t matter much if they were men, mature, or old.
I understand this, but what about the getting to our Citizens first. This family was so frustrated that they had to turn to the media for help.
topfile
Exactly WHAT was obama’s priority?
The school notified the State Dept immediately after tghe earthquake that they had people at that hotel.
And btw the gov’t prevented 3 Urban Rescue Groups from going down there, One of the groups was from Houston and has experience in getting survivors out of the rubble. These groups were told their help was not needed.
Tell that to the families of the dead still in that hotel.
Obama hates white people
I know, they must not have been allowed to go, what a nightmare, an absolutely nightmare.
So sorry for your family’s loss. I know 4 students and 2 profs from a college in Florida were missing and presumed trapped in that hotel.
That was my first reaction as well. However, they were likely prevented for m entering the country. I know they made it to the Dominican Republic who shares this island with Haiti.
They may have felt working the Media would be more beneficial, I don't know.
One excuse that was given them was that our military could not make it to the site. Yet a bus of middle aged volunteers had no problem getting there.
Don't get me wrong, but I'm just wondering what was the priority of US efforts.
They weren’t by themselves. They were with faculty advisors on a student trip. Here’s a log from the university of the events after the earthquake. There were evidently search and rescue missions going on at the hotel.
I don't think the rescuers in Haiti that have come from dozens of countries should give priority to looking for Americans and there cannot be a procedure whereby American rescuers save only Americans and Mexican rescuers save only Mexicans etc.
And when digging through the rubble, they cannot pass over Haitians and other nationalities in an effort to only extract the corpses of Americans.
Finally, the urgency to remove the bodies is not so that families in America can have proper funerals, but rather so that the corpses do not spread more disease.
BTW...we (my son and I) were told that we would not be allowed to enter Manhattan to dig at Ground Zero. That didn't stop us from finding our way in at all. We drove back streets to Brooklyn then walked in from there on the 12th.
This situation was and is truly sad: sad because of the earthquake, sadder still because the U.S. (read Obama) has left the project in the hands of the incompetent U.N. and U.S.A.I.D.
I don’t believe we should even be speculating on why they didn’t go, all I know is I have heard the father speaking and he is absolutely heart broken.
Since they pulled survivors form the Montana it wasn't a given they'd be corpses.
As to passing over other nationalities to get to our American Citizens.....Why not?!
My wife’s brother is in Haiti with Doctors Without Borders and has been there since two days after the quake. He and his people were able to get in there I imagine the last thing they need are more foreigners in Haiti who would be unprepared for the conditions and only using up the resources of the Haitians and the rescue workers.
They weren’t there by themselves. It was a university-sponsored service trip to Haiti. It was a group of students along with several faculty advisors.
I’m sorry.
I'm not advocating unprepared assistance.
I'm just asking... What were the Proirities set for our organized US government efforts?
It certainly seems to me that hopeful sites where large numbers of US citizens were known to reside should have been investigated first.
First of all, not all the rescuers are Americans and you would have trouble convincing rescuers from dozens of other countries that they should only look for Americans.
Second, it is standard operating procedure for rescuers and doctors to save people no matter what their race, ethnicity or nationality.
If we can find the bodies of these Americans that will be good, but the priority needs to be to "sanitize" these areas so that rotting corpses do not spread more disease.
So very sorry to hear this.
I cannot imagine the triage of this scale and not sure that rescuers could pass up a Haitians in one collapsed building in order to go to the Hotel Montana to get the white people.
And from what I have read, there were Americans extracted alive from the Montana and they were not rescued by Americans. Would you have preferred the non-American rescuers at the Montana to have passed over the US citizens and instead looked for other nationalities?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.