Tag: flood

Now that the United States has increased its aid for victims of the recent floods in Pakistan to $150 million, that grand total is just about exactly as much as the Pentagon spends every two hours, 24 hours every day, 365 days per year.

For the 2010 fiscal year, the president’s base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $533.8 billion. Adding spending on “overseas contingency operations” brings the sum to $663.8 billion.

Divided by 365, that’s about $1.8 billion per day, or $75 million per hour.

And 120 minutes of that enormous and never-ending flood of money is all we can afford for the millions of victims of one of the greatest natural disasters in modern history.

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The Urubamba River In Flood

This year’s rains have come to Peru.  And the rains have been extremely heavy.  The result has been a washout of crops in the Sacred Valley, which runs from Cusco to Machu Picchu, mudslides that have destroyed houses and other buildings, and flooding.  Peru Rail’s tracks from Cusco to Aguascalientes have been washed out or buried under boulders.  And the bridges across the Urubamba River at Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Urubamba have all been washed out.

There have been several diaries on the devastating floods in Mexico in Jalisco and Tabasco.  The flood is frontpaged here and I thought I could crosspost a diary I sent over to Daily Kos where is is sadly falling flat.  Probably bad timing on my part, but here goes! link, link.  mariachi mama and mango on Ask a Kossak, community members in Mexico, have written asking for us to help but warned us to be cautious where to send money.  mango personally collected funds to redistribute in a regional flood in her area recently and many of her diaries were recommended.  This was great, but we can’t be sure that this will be as effective in a flood of this magnitude, with a million people displaced.  At that level, you need volunteers AND organizations that know what they are doing.  Over a million people are displaced, 40% children.  Many will have lost everything they own as well as their crops for this year.