U.S. Sending Money, Food to Aid Victims

M. Peter McPherson, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, announced Tuesday that the agency will immediately make available $500,000 and “thousands of tons” of U.S. surplus wheat reserves already in Bangladesh to aid survivors of the weekend cyclone there.

Of the half million dollars from AID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, McPherson said, $300,000 is “in the hands” of the U.S. ambassador in Bangladesh to provide food, water, medical supplies and other essential supplies. The remaining $200,000 is to be funneled through the International Red Cross for similar uses, he said, and more money is available if the agency decides that it is needed.

U.S. Ambassador Howard B. Schaffer, over the weekend, had already donated $25,000 from embassy funds to begin the U.S. aid effort.

“It’s a little frustrating because it’s hardly our front door,” McPherson said in a press briefing at the State Department. “Distribution will be one of the problems.”

He said that in an effort to get food to affected areas more quickly, the agency is considering selling food on the open market and then transferring the proceeds to buy food in locations adjacent to the stricken country.

In the last 20 years, McPherson noted, 28 severe storms in the Bangladesh area have killed hundreds of thousands of people and that the country’s small size, huge population and severe weather conditions make it difficult to protect the inhabitants during violent storms.

He said a U.S. early warning satellite system spotted the cyclone on Thursday and that warnings that may have saved a number of lives were being broadcast in the country by Friday. But McPherson said the warnings would not have helped the large number of people living on “chars” or low-lying sand bar islands. “There’s no place for people to go,” he said.