There is a safe and inexpensive way to get both food packages and clean bottled water to refugees immediately, not weeks too late. And, without the basic sanitation tools and guidance we used in Bosnia years ago, many thousands will die of disease.
The weak and injured will not get food or water from the standard relief trucks for weeks as the strong and the crooks hoard the food that is delivered. We have seen it so many times in the past. The relief delivery personnel do not want to leave the safety of their trucks when the mobs arrive. People at some distance from a distribution point get nothing.
There is also an easy way to provide basic sanitation to those living in camps and on the ground in crowed areas. Without this, the refugees are soon ****** to walk and ***** in filth that rapidly spreads disease.
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Thousands of starving people in Haiti can be saved if we move quickly to do the obvious. It is not too late to begin dropping food packages without parachutes all over Haiti. Our military has millions of MRE food packages in east coast warehouses. They have cargo planes in Florida to deliver the packages - the same planes we used in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Haiti is only an hour away for these planes. We showed in Bosnia (1993) and Afghanistan (2001) that most food packages in plastic wrapping and military MRE packages will not break up on hitting the ground because terminal air velocity limits the speed at which the packages hit the ground no matter what height from which the packages are dropped. No one was ever hurt by a falling package, but tens of thousands picked up food from heaven.
How in the world the so-called relief agencies and the government officials can forget what was done is beyond belief.
Major food companies will contribute millions of energy bars, Granola bars, dried fruit in plastic packages, etc., to go along with the Military MRE’s that should be used immediately. It took only two cold calls to Quake Oats Co. in 1993 to get them to contribute the 100,000 Granola Bars we dropped over Bosnia. They want the good publicity of a dramatic air drop. They don’t get that by simply contributing to a food stockpile that will not be utilized until the next crisis.
If you want to know the simple physics of why food packages do not break up when they hit the ground, even when dropped from several thousand feet or more, read the neat layman’s explanation given by U.C. Berkeley professor Richard Muller, author of the famous book Physics for Future Presidents (that everyone should read).
How to Drop Water Bottles Safely
The press and officials are wringing their hands over the other major danger festering right now. The people in Haiti have no clean water at the worst possible time. And the relief administrators do not want to use helicopters to deliver water or food to outlying areas that the trucks can not reach. If helicopters land, they are mobbed before they can unload their supplies. And they fear that plastic water bottles will break if dropped from height -- or hurt people. But, again, they are horribly ignorant of what has been done successfully in past crises. Helicopters and planes can drop plastic water bottles from several hundred feet height and most of the bottles will not break. There is no big danger that someone will be hurt by a falling bottle compared to thousands dying without clean water.
In the last few days, many listeners to KGO Radio, San Francisco, and scientists such as Professor Muller and Dr. Richard Garwin at IBM have pointed out that small plastic pouches of water can be safely dropped from any altitude, like the MRE food packages that were dropped over Bosnia.
A group of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists showed FEMA how to deliver bottled water safely to refugees on the ground at the end of the New Orleans crisis. Simply drop the plastic bottles from a height of no more than a few hundred feet – and away from people – or drop the bottles into water anywhere that refugees on the ground can swim, such as pools, lakes, etc. We did the experiment to show FEMA that the bottles do not break when they hit the ground and that they float in water with their tops clearly visible. Thirsty and desperate people will get them. The canals around New Orleans were ideal drop zones.
But again, the “relief experts” have forgotten or ignore the lessons of the past.
Our tests showed that the best way is to fill the plastic bottles only about 70% full of water. They float with more of the tops showing and they do not break up even when dropped on the ground from a height of several hundred feet. Partially filled bottles can be safely dropped with the food packages. The bottle water suppliers can begin delivering 70% full bottles on 24 hour notice.
