Dr. Bill's Solution Could Provide Food and Water to the Desperate Haitians

Why are Relief Agencies allowing thousands to die needlessly in Haiti?

The officials in charge of relief efforts in Haiti must use cargo planes to scatter food packages and water bottles all

over the areas where people are suffering so that thousands will not die waiting for the standard relief trucks that come too late. The author showed the U.S. military how to drop food packages without parachutes in Bosnia and Afghanistan to save thousands of starving refuges. The US military must do the same in Haiti now? If we don’t, thousands will die needlessly. Professor Richard Muller of UC Berkeley suggests that it is more productive to contact anyone you know who may know officials or political leaders in Washington than flood the comment lines at the White House

Dr. Bill Wattenburg

DrBill.us

KGO Radio 810AM

San Francisco

January 15, 2010

Note: All of the refugee-rescue procedures described below were tested and used by the U.S. in previous international crises to save thousands of lives. But the lessons have been forgotten, or were never learned, by the current government officials and relief agencies. As a result, tens of thousands will die needlessly.

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 forced to walk and sleep in filth that rapidly spreads disease.

Dropping Food Packages Without Parachutes – Scattering Over Large Areas

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.

Note: This subject was discussed on KGO Radio 810AM, ABC San Francisco, with Professor Richard Muller from the University of California Berkeley on Saturday night, 10pm to 11pm, 16 January 2010. Many listeners called to report that there are companies that make small water pouches for survival packs that are ideal for dropping from aircraft. The pouches are made of tough plastic. They are small enough (4 to 6 ounces of water). They have enough surface area that they will fall no faster than the MRE food packages when dropped from high altitude. Here are some sources:

S.O.S. Food Lab, Inc. 9399 NW 13th Street; Miami, FL. 33172 (305) 594-9933.

http://www.amazon.com/Datrex-Emergency-Survival-Disaster-Supplies/dp/B0014EOW96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=sporting-goods&qid=1263711890&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Mainstay-Emergency-Drinking-Water-Pack/dp/B000GFJV7M/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=sporting-goods&qid=1263711890&sr=8-3

Plastic Buckets for Sanitation

The horrible situation that develops immediately in refugee camps is that people are forced to relieve themselves on the ground near where they are living. Soon people are walking in their own filth. Disease spreads rapidly. Children are the main victims when they play on the bare ground.

During the Kosovo crisis in the late nineties, Livermore Lab scientists were asked what could be done to solve the sanitation problem in the sprawling refugee camps that were erected with tents on bare ground. Livermore staff recommended that each tent family be provided with a standard 5-gallon plastic bucket with lid to be used as a toilet. These buckets are available all over the world for less than $2.00 each. These buckets stack within each other for easy delivery. One person can easily carry ten or more of them.

The procedure was to tell each family that they had to bring their waste bucket to a disposal area (a pit in the ground). They had to empty and clean the bucket before they could receive more food for the day.

This procedure was also published in the respected journal Science, "Plastic Buckets for Refugee Sanitation," Science, v 284, p409, 16 April 1999.

85 elderly quake survivors await death in Haiti - The Story below describes a horrible example of what is happening because we did not drop food and water to the people in Haiti. The standard relief agencies will not be able to reach tens of thousands before it is too late. If we were dropping food packages and water bottles from cargo planes all over the city, the suffering like these old people would be able to survive. We did it in Bosnia. We did it in Afghanistan. Why not Haiti??

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9585710

Click on the YouTube video link below to see on your computer how we dropped food packages to Afghanistan refugees -- and see how proud our military guys were in doing it. It will make you sick to see what we are not doing while thousands of Haitian children and injured are dying in Haiti because they can not get the food delivered by trucks . How can the Pentagon chiefs forget this and say it is dangerous for starving people in Haiti?? The previous Pentagon chiefs even gave it a name. they called it the TRIADS SYSTEM.

http://bit.ly/TRIADSvideo

Use the Tri-wall Aerial Delivery System (TRIADS) to Feed Haitians Now!

For more than a dozen years, our military has had a sure-fire method to quickly and safely distribute food to refugees, without creating dangerous mob-scenes.

Please watch the YouTube video of the TRIADS food drop system being used to feed refugees in Afghanistan way back in 2001, then read the rest of this article:
http://bit.ly/TRIADSvideo

You can even download the official Field Manual from the military at this link - http://bit.ly/TRIADSmanual

The method is simple--simply drop foil-wrapped packets of food, such as granola bars, candy bars, and MREs (military Meals Ready to Eat) from the cargo ramp of a plane (a C-130 or C-17 is typically used).

Terminal resistance assures that these lightweight food packets will not harm anyone on the ground, and that they will remain sealed and edible, even if dropped from thousands of feet.

Additionally, since they are not dropped in a large package, they will fall over a wide area, ensuring that thugs can't intercept all of the food and hoard it for themselves or to sell on the black market.

This procedure was first developed in the Bosnian war, and tested in Afghanistan. It works, and fears that it will create mob-panic have never happened in real-life.

One of the largest benefits of this system is that it is far more cost-effective than the air-drop method used and widely seen in the media on January 18th. The 1997 figures from the military say that method costs $800 per bundle, while the TRIADS system cost just $72 per bundle, and takes significantly less time to prepare for loading into the planes.

You can read more information about this procedure at the following links. Please forward this information to as many policymakers as you can. These food deliveries need to start Monday the 18th, if we are to have any hope of saving the earthquake victims that are starving to death as we speak.

Dr. Bill's idea for dropping food from planes:
http://www.kgoradio.com/Article.asp?id=1662660&nId=0&spid=33179

YouTube video of Afghanistan airdrops of individual meal packets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCxwprZekpM

Dropping food from airplanes -- without parachutes?
http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/old%20physics%2010/chapters%20(old)/7-DroppingFood.html

High-Tech Cardboard Boxes Used In Afghan Food Airdrops--Describes the Tri-Wall Aerial Delivery System used in Bosnia and Afghanistan to deliver tens of thousands of MREs
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44648

U.S. Air Force Airdop News Page ((from the Internet Archive, because the military deleted this site)--has a ton of news items about the 2001 TRIAD air-drops that delivered 2 million packets of food in Afghanistan.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060222040836/www.usafe.af.mil/airdrop/news.htm