NEW DELHI, 11 September 2005 — India has sent a planeload of supplies to help relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, an official said, after Indians expressed horror at televised scenes of devastation and looting in storm-hit areas of the United States.
The Indian Air Force flight, carrying 25 tons of relief supplies, including blankets, sheets, personal hygiene kits and tarpaulins, will arrive at Little Rock Air Force Base in the southern United States tomorrow.
“The plane left today (Saturday) morning. It will reach New Orleans the day after via Boston,” air force spokesman Maheshg Upasni said.
New Delhi will also dispatch a team of 20 naval divers next week to help with relief operations after the hurricane slammed Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana and left most of New Orleans under water.
India has given $5 million to the American Red Cross and offered to send teams of doctors with expertise in dealing with water-borne diseases.
Officials of the American Red Cross said India was one the first countries to follow up its commitment of assistance to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. India has also offered community water-purification systems, essential medicines and other survival kits, officials said. Indian officials said there was a possibility New Delhi might send more relief later in the week.
The aid comes after people in disaster-prone India said they were horrified at the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and the looting which followed. The different responses between the United States and India to domestic disasters were a topic of comment in the Indian media.
In India’s financial capital Bombay, where over 400 people died a month ago in rains that turned streets into rivers, street vendors passed out food to people hit by the flooding. In New Orleans there was shooting and looting which prompted authorities to send in thousands of US troops.
Some commentators said India’s familiarity with numerous natural disasters may have made them more able to cope with disaster than Americans.
India also declined disaster relief in the weeks following December’s devastating tsunamis that killed more than 5,000 people in its southern coastal states.
India sent naval ships and aircraft with supplies to neighboring Sri Lanka where nearly 31,000 people were killed in the tsunami in its first major relief operation for another country. New Delhi also offered financial aid of one billion rupees ($22 million) to Sri Lanka.
