Anger Grows at Response by Red Cross

By David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times

04 November 12

he American Red Cross struggled on Friday to reassure beleaguered New York City residents that its disaster-relief efforts were at last getting up to speed, after the agency's delayed arrival in devastated areas of Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens drew intense criticism.

As of Friday, the Red Cross said, 25 of its emergency response vehicles - retrofitted ambulances each carrying 2,000 pounds of water, meals and snacks - had begun making their way through the hardest hit parts of the five boroughs. More were on the way, the agency promised.

The Red Cross had not yet opened the three temporary mobile kitchens that it announced on Thursday would be set up on Staten Island, in Riis Park in the Rockaways, and at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, the agency confirmed. The kitchens, which can produce 10,000 meals a day, would begin operating by Saturday, it said.

The organization's response to Hurricane Sandy came under fire from public officials and volunteers, beginning with a televised tirade on Thursday by James P. Molinaro, the Staten Island borough president; he called the agency's apparent absence from the relief effort an "absolute disgrace" and called on residents to stop donating money to the Red Cross.

Mr. Molinaro described visiting a shelter and seeing people arriving barefoot.

"They were in desperate need," he said. "Their housing was destroyed. They were crying. Where was the Red Cross? Isn't that their function?"

Josh Lockwood, the chief executive officer for the Red Cross in the New York region, said that the first eight Red Cross trucks had arrived on Staten Island shortly before Mr. Molinaro's broadside.

"We moved as fast as we humanly could, we really did," Mr. Lockwood said in a telephone interview. Reached late Friday, Mr. Molinaro said he was satisfied with the organization's response. "They're here now," he said. "People are being fed, they're being clothed. Let's not talk about yesterday."

What the Red Cross lacked in speed it seemed to make up for in explanations: Spokesmen said the agency had pre-positioned its disaster-aid trucks out of the storm's path, as near as Middletown, N.Y., in Orange County, and Tinton Falls, N.J., and as far away as Harrisburg, Pa., and Baltimore. Mr. Lockwood said the trucks had been delayed by the same traffic backups and detours that all New Yorkers were facing.

One Red Cross spokesman also sought to shift blame for the organization's slow response to the Bloomberg administration. In an interview on NY1 on Thursday, the spokesman, Sam Kille, responded to questions by repeatedly saying that the Red Cross was merely following emergency-response plans "drawn up by the New York City Office of Emergency Management."

Mr. Kille did not mention that the Red Cross played a role in formulating those plans.

Mr. Lockwood did not disavow Mr. Kille's statements, but did not repeat them. "I'm not interested in pointing fingers at all," he said. "What's important to me is the people of Staten Island needed help, and need help. We've got to provide it. We're going to be there for the long haul."

Mr. Lockwood added that four tractor-trailers carrying 120,000 pounds of food had begun unloading on Staten Island on Friday. He said 16 converted ambulances, along with 15 locally based box trucks, would be handing out water and food there by Sunday.

Yet worrisome glimpses of the overall Red Cross effort continued to emerge. Some Red Cross volunteers told of wild-goose chases to remote locations with hours out in the cold and few if any people to serve. In parts of the Rockaways, residents said that Red Cross trucks were nowhere to be seen on Friday.

James O'Connell, the logistics coordinator for a 40-person search-and-rescue nonprofit group that was volunteering in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, called the Red Cross response to the storm "a figment of everyone's imagination."

"I've come across one Red Cross canteen truck on Staten Island last night," Mr. O'Connell said. "Two people inside. They said, ‘Hey, how you doing?' And then they asked us for drinking water."

He added: "I have tremendous respect for what they've done in the past. They have simply dropped the damn ball here."