Tsunami assistance needed

The email below is from Joe Edhlund, owner of both Marianas Vetcare and Sky Blue Air on the island of Guam. He is in the tsunami-affected area in South Asia flying his King Air to remote areas delivering medical personnel and supplies and in the process saving lives. This is very real and effective. As you read his update you will see what his costs are and that he will only be able to continue this for a short period without some financial help. Maybe you might have some ideas on how to generate some assistance through media, churches or email forwarding.

If you have some ideas please let me know or go ahead and act on it.

You can email me at banda@bandacorp.com or info@historicalexpeditions.org
Or you can contact Joe’s veterinary hospital, Marianas Vetcare in Guam at 1 (671) 734-6341

There is a system in place there for donations to be made for his mission in Asia. If you are able to get anything done to support him by getting the message out or have someone that wants to help fund his daily operations, please let me know. I can pass on the information to Joe or follow up on any donations to make sure they made it to where Joe needs it.

Thank you for the help,

Bob Silvers

Hello Vince,

We saved many lives today! Our team of myself, Mike, Victor, Brahm and Iti hit the ground in Medan last night at 7pm after an overflight at Meulaboh airport. The airport looked okay and our hopes were up. There was a small Cessna on the ground there. We immediately went to the authorities in charge and were given extremely good cooperation, meeting with the governor and the two-star general in charge of everything until 1am. The head of flight operations showed us photos of the cracks in the runway and our hopes went down as he told us they had given up on fixed wing operations for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, I didn’t give up and pushed for an inspection in the morning. After the governor told him to arrange it, we were told to be at the airport at 5:30 for the flight.

We are a very unique entity here. There are many militaries and NGOs here and the airport would rival O’Hare in frequency of flights. But there are NO private parties operating here that we have seen. As a result, we are being given tremendous cooperation by the authorities.

While organizing with the Singaporean air force for the flight to Meulaboh on a Chinook helicopter for a close review of the airport we met a doctor who just came back from Meulaboh. He said the hospital in Meulaboh was operating but was losing about four patients a day to tetanus since they have no tetanus toxoid. Almost all the personnel at the hospital had been killed but there are numerous foreign doctors volunteering. They do have a shortage of nurses. We can get them to Meulaboh if they get to Medan (via Kuala Lumpur or Singapore is easiest). Find some and get them here and we will get them to Meulaboh. Find tough nurses, this will be the toughest duty they will ever see.

While Victor was going over the plane after the long flight, I saw three people with the Red Cross emblem on their supplies. I asked them where they wanted to go. The doctor and two nurses wanted to go to Meulaboh where they had come from the previous day on a helicopter to get some food for themselves since they had not eaten in days. They had some tetanus vaccine but not enough. We scoured the supply hangar and found some more at the Indonesian medical NGO coordinating center. But they could only spare 100 doses. I then spotted Malaysian Mercy with a lot of medical supplies and they gave us 200 more doses of tetanus vaccine. We then cut through the red tape and got our first flight off at 16:30. We dropped the doctor, nurses, and several hundred pounds of medical supplies in Meulaboh and just came back to Medan.

The doctor who told us about the shortage of tetanus vaccine also reported a drastic shortage of intravenous cephalosporin antibiotics to treat gangrene. Please try to get this together and get it to us ASAP. I will try to get a FEDEX address as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, unless you have worked some wonders with funding, please find a bankruptcy attorney for me. I managed to call my office on Thursday, a day we spent 16 hours in flight, at a cost of about $10,000, and donations that day were $570. We would like to operate four flights a day at a cost of about $6,000 per day. I cannot afford this for very long. We are seriously doing a lot of good already and will be able to continue this only if we have funding. For those doubters, let me say [we] have saved many lives in the 24 hours we have been on the ground. For those who think this is a vacation, I would invite them to visit our luxury hotel or use the toilet we use. I would like to get my first real meal in 36 hours. This is not a holiday by ANY stretch of the imagination.

Nonetheless we are very happy to be here. As a doctor, you know the special feeling you get when you save someone’s life. And today our team saved many lives. We will hopefully lend our “can do” abilities to an operation that, despite huge effort and energy by a lot of people, often gets bogged down by details. In addition to providing that “can do” ability to get things done in delivering medicine and personnel, we also were able to report to the authorities that Meulaboh airport is useable to small fixed wing aircraft. Hopefully this will open the floodgates for aid getting into the city of (now) 30,000 of whom most have NOTHING, including for many, numerous relatives and friends.

Stay in touch, I will be checking in daily to see if we can continue operations.

Best regards,

Joseph Edhlund