First of all we want to say that our thoughts and prayers go out to the people who have lost loved ones and homes due to Katrina and her aftermath. The lives of each and every one of us that calls this country home has been forever touched and will never be the same.
I read this article yesterday and it made me misty eyed to see the offers of help pouring in from other countries. I sincerely hope that Bush can swallow some pride and accept.
World pledges hurricane aid to US
(AFP)
2 September 2005
PARIS - The world held out a hand to a superpower in crisis on Friday, offering hurricane disaster aid to the United States from a French offer of ships and aircraft to a 25,000-dollar donation by tsunami-pounded Sri Lanka.
Offers streamed in after the United States, the world’s biggest single aid donor, said it would be open to assistance though it was not making an appeal for foreign aid.
Scenes of chaos -- explosions and fires erupting in New Orleans, looters on the rampage, bodies in the streets, and refugees crammed into a stinking squalor in the city’s Superdome -- prompted an outpouring of shock and sympathy.
“Whatever they ask for, it will be given, from reserves of oil... to any other thing that they may need,” European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in Newport, Wales, during a meeting of the 25-nation bloc.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization chief, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said NATO stood ready to contribute.
“Whenever and wherever our NATO partner and important friend -- the United States of America -- asks (for) assistance, NATO stands ready to answer those calls,” Scheffer told a press conference during a visit to Sofia.
Among the major allies:
-- The French foreign ministry offered eight aircraft and two ships, with 600 tents and 1,000 camp beds also available at the United States’ request.
-- Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had spoken to President George W. Bush, and Britain was ready to help “in any way that we can.”
“The whole of this country feels for the people of the Gulf Coast of America who have been afflicted by what is a terrible, terrible natural tragedy,” he said in a speech in Watford, southeast England.
“We want to express our sympathy and our solidarity and give our prayers and thoughts to the people who were affected by what has happened out there on the Gulf Coast,” he said.
-- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was personally working out the details of a relief package, a government spokesman said. Berlin could provide assistance on water treatment or shelter for people left homeless, a government spokesman said.
-- Japan offered 200,000 dollars for the American Red Cross and up to 300,000 dollars worth of tents, blankets, power generators and water tanks. Toyota offered five million dollars, Nissan 500,000 dollars.
-- Australia promised 10 million Australian dollars (7.5 million US) through the American Red Cross.
“Given the extraordinary generosity of the United States when other countries are in need, and given the very close relationship between Australia and the United States, and given also the scale of the disaster, we believe it is a very valuable gesture and a mark of our concern for the scale of the human misery that has come from this disaster,” said Prime Minister John Howard.
-- Canadian Defence Minister Bill Graham said his country was preparing a package, including an offer of military assets.
-- Among others, the Netherlands, a low-lying country that depends on its system of levees, or dams, has offered to send a team of experts to help plan the reconstruction of New Orleans. Italy said it was ready to help but had not been contacted. Sweden offered medical and technical aid. Lithuania’s Red Cross started taking donations.
More poignant were offers from the needy.
Sri Lanka -- still recovering from the December 26 tsunami which devastated the island’s coastlines and killed 31,000 people -- said it had donated 25,000 dollars and asked doctors to help the relief effort.
Somalis offered sympathy.
“New Orleans looks like Mogadishu when the war started,” said bus driver Aden Mohamud in Somalia’s war-shattered capital.
He said he was troubled by television images that showed most of the some 300,000 desperate people still trapped in New Orleans were black.
“Maybe some whites are also starving but the African Americans are who I have seen,” Mohamud said. “I am sorry they are poor like us.”
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