[Brent Swain]

Burma Airdrops
I heard that the yanks are saying they can't do airdrops to huricane victims in Burma because they don't have enough parachutes. What kind of parachutes? Military spec ones , which specify very expensive materials , and how many stitches per inch , etc etc.
Give soldiers a big roll of polyweave tarp material and some cordage and instruct them to tie equal lengths of cordage to each of the four corners of a piece of tarp , and you will have thousands of workable parachutes, at the end of a day.
It is not as if they are landing people or sensitive electronic equipment. A 10% faiure rate would be totally acceptable . Besides tarps and cordage they need to enable them to catch rainwater and gain some basic shelter, don't need parachutes. Simply roll them up and drop them. Plastic buckets to catch water in probably don't need parachute either, or we could put the food supplies in the buckets and airdrop them with plastic parachutes. You'd only have to slow them down enough to prevent the buckets from breaking.
Might hit someone? For everyone you hit you will save hundreds of lives. Without the airdrop, the guy you hit would have probably never survived anyway.
It's astouinding to think that they are talking about air freighting water to people who are being deluged by rain, while starving. How much useful food could you ship for the same effort. They don't need water shipments , just the means of catching rain water. How abysmaly dense can these so called decision makers get?
Brent Swain

[Dr Caleb]

Brent Swain Brent Swain:

Give soldiers a big roll of polyweave tarp material and some cordage and instruct them to tie equal lengths of cordage to each of the four corners of a piece of tarp , and you will have thousands of workable parachutes, at the end of a day.

That is the script from a Wile. E. Coyote skit.

"Canadian Relief agencies Kill Thousands of Refugees" Would be the headline.

Parachutes are made of light materials, and heavily tested for a reason. I know your heart is in the right place, but palettes of food and water that drop too fast are just kinetic force bombs. They'll ether drop where you don't want them to (meeep meeep *splat*), or rip and shred the chutes and hit the ground so hard all the food and water will be destroyed.

[Brent Swain]

Go back and read my post, before you respond to it. Why would you bother dropping water, when the sky is dropping far more than anyone could possibly use? Duuuhhh!!!
The buckets and tarps are for CATCHING rain water!! Duhhh!!!
Ditto Haiti, where they are suffering from lack of clean water, while trying to avoid the cleanest water on the planet, rainwater! Duuhhh!!
Bureaucrats logic!
Would you be a bureaucrat?