Mexican Navy sends rescuers, supplies for Katrina victims

[Judi Lynn]

Mexican Navy sends rescuers, supplies for Katrina victims

ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:06 p.m. September 5, 2005

MEXICO CITY – A Mexican Navy ship loaded with personnel and equipment was scheduled to depart Monday for New Orleans carrying aid for areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The ship Papaloapan will carry food, amphibious vehicles and helicopters for search-and-rescue efforts, as well as a medical team, said Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez.

"What the Papaloapan will do is transport (eight) all-terrain vehicles, and we are also sending seven amphibious vehicles for transporting and rescuing people, an ambulance and two helicopters," Derbez told local media.

The ship was expected to arrive in New Orleans sometime late Wednesday.
(snip/...)

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20050905-1506-mexico-us-katrina.html

[rzemanfl]

1. They'll all jump ship! Where's the border patrol? Where's

Lou Dobbs?

Actually, thanks Mexico.

[CountAllVotes]

2. thank you Mexico!

:hi: Mexico! I thank you for your generosity as an American citizen! Thank you! We need ALL the help we can get! :) :D :) :D

:kick:

[Drum]

3. I've never really known anything about Mexico's military...

There's a navy? Who knew??

A big BRAVO for everyone helping out!!!

[henslee]

7. In WWII, the Mexican Navy played an important role, patroling seas.

[unrepuke]

4. Shhhhhh! Don't tell the Minutemen... more illegal aliens coming...

[radar]

5. Geez...

All this beautiful & appreciated help from countries across the globe - kinda kills that whole meme about America being the only superpower left in the world.

*Can't even save ourselves without foreign help.

[CottonBear]

6. There's a Mexican Navy?! Viva Mexico y muchos gracias mi amigos!

Bravo!

[mshasta]

10. yes we have it....

but unlike BUSH the Mexican government uses the navy for an extreme emergencies only...you know.. to help others...

[Renew Deal]

8. Beware Santa Ana's revenge.

:silly:

[amber dog democrat]

9. Gracias, Mexico.

This is most welcome and appreciated.

[ucmike]

11. i'm saddened by the help from abroad.

i like to think that despite the current state of our govt, that america is still the best and brightest and that we shouldn't even have to consider foreign aid. we should always be the country sending help, never the country needing help.

its all backwards right now.

that said, it's a tribute to all the countries that offered help, despite the fact that we've done little to make friends in the past 6 years or so.

[iverglas]

14. nonsense

"we should always be the country sending help, never the country needing help."

That is pure arrogance -- for which of course I don't blame you personally. It's the mindset fostered by every centre of influence in your country. It's also the mindset that leads to the notion that the country always doing the giving to everyone else always gets to call the shots about everything.

The xenophobia and ethnocentricity of the great USAmerican public is created and maintained in a host of complex ways. But the notion that no one else has anything to offer us is one of them.

There will ALWAYS be disasters that tax the resources and capacities of the most wealthy and developed nation.

We in Canada should be the ones who are best prepared in the world for coping with cold-weather emergencies -- and we probably are. But when the 1998 ice storm wiped out the power grid in a huge swath of the eastern part of the country, including the city of Montreal, we requested and received assistance from the US -- camp cots for emergency shelters, generators for emergency power supply, power crews to help restore the power lines felled when huge towers crumpled under the ice, forestry workers to help clear away the shattered trees that littered the landscape, telephone poles from the southern US.

And right now, there are an elite team of search & rescue workers from Vancouver running those operations in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, medicines and medical supplies from our emergency stockpile on their way south (see other posts in this forum), and Canadian divers finally arriving on site will be working on the (presumably quite dangerous) work of clearing shipping channels.

http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2005/09/06/f242.raw.html

Prime Minister Paul Martin will be in Halifax today to see off three navy ships and a coast guard vessel heading for the Gulf Coast to join teams of navy divers who flew out of Halifax on Monday to take part in Operation Unison.

... Divers from both coasts, along with an army unit from CFB Gagetown, could be charged with tasks ranging from recovery of bodies to clearing underwater debris. They also packed up mobile sonar gear that can help authorities identify structural damage to the levee system that collapsed last Monday, leaving much of New Orleans beneath metres of water.

... But the flight was delayed to Monday, after officials at the Florida airbase set to receive the Canadians said they were not able to accept them. The divers left Monday and were set to arrive in the late afternoon, according to navy spokesman Mike Bonin.

It makes no more sense, in any way, for every country to try to be self-sufficient in this respect than it makes for us all to raise our own chickens in the backyard.

This is one world, and the people and nations in it ARE interdependent. For one nation to regard itself as always the donor and never the donee is to relegate everyone else to perennial victim status -- and simply not to recognize the many ways that that country already is dependent on others.

Accepting what's offered voluntarily by others, in good grace, instead of just taking what one wants, would actually be a nice change.

[Walt Starr]

12. Oh this is jsut great. America has the most powerful Navy in the world

and the Mexican Navy has to come to our rescue because we are too weak to help our own.

[Racenut20]

13. Was Pat Buchanan there to welcome them ashore.????

But anyway, thanks Mexico. Nice to see one of the NA Countries has a heart.