As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.
Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.
"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."
Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.
wkyc.com (Northeast Ohio): Few answers for thirsty, hungry in New Orleans
The American Red Cross, Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that typically are the first to respond to disaster sites with food and water have been kept out of the city.
“Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities,” said Gregg Tubbs, a spokesman for the American Red Cross. “The Red Cross can’t get in there. We can’t enter New Orleans against their orders.”
By LARRY WHEELER, Gannett News Service
(Contributing: GNS reporter Raju Chebium, in Metarie, La., and Dan Turner, The (Shreveport, La.) Times, in Baton Rouge, La.)
KCBI-TV (Idaho): Doctor says Red Cross should have been there
September 3, 2005 12:56 PM
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS "Where is the Red Cross?"
A doctor at the airport in New Orleans posed that question today to an Associated Press reporter. The doctor, one of the first to set up a triage center at the airport, says he wishes the Red Cross had been there, since the organization has the expertise to set up that kind of facility. He said he hasn't seen any Red Cross presence there.
And the picture that emerges is a bleak one. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a surgeon who visted the airport today, says the hallways and floors are "filled," and that people are dying because the resources aren't there to treat them.
Donations pour in to aid groups for Katrina relief
By ADAM GELLER, The Associated Press
Published: Saturday, Sep. 3, 2005
But aid groups said their efforts were limited in important ways.
“We are not in New Orleans,” the Red Cross’ Dodge said. The federal Department of “Homeland Security has basically told us they don’t want us, our Red Cross folks, in New Orleans because our presence would keep people from evacuating.”
A spokesman for the federal agency said Friday that there is not an absolute policy barring relief groups from the entire city, but that its own efforts were taking precedence there.
“There may well be situations where it merits the Red Cross holding back while our personnel go in first,” said the spokesman, Russ Knocke. “But our priority is meeting the immediate life-saving and life-sustaining needs of those who’ve gone through a nightmare.”
Other groups also reported that they were not being allowed into the city. MAP International said it was working to send medical supplies to a New Orleans hospital, but that the shipment was being held up by a difficulty in getting the credentials needed for drivers to get through roadblocks set up by the National Guard.
Second Harvest said it had secured a warehouse between New Orleans and Baton Rogue, because its workers can’t get to their facility in New Orleans. But setting up operations was being complicated by shifting demands. “At this point we don’t know how many people are in need and where they are. Evacuees arrive at different places everyday,” Daly said.
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