Trucks can't deliver food or water to the majority of Haitians at this time because roads are virtually impassable. The few trucks that get through are quickly dangerously mobbed by those that are strong and healthy; those that are weak are unable to fight to the front and thus get no food. Parachuting pallets of food requires waiting until secure drop zones can be established. For more than a dozen years, our military has had a sure-fire method called the Tri-wall Aerial Delivery System (TRIADS) to immediately and safely distribute food to refugees, without creating dangerous mob-scenes and without the necessity of waiting to establish secure drop zones for parachuted pallets of food. The method is simple— from the cargo ramp of a C-130 or C-17 plane, simply drop huge thin-walled cardboard boxes that are full of small foil-wrapped foods such as granola bars, candy bars, and MREs (military Meals Ready to Eat). When the thin-walled boxes hit the slipstream from the plane, they disintegrate. The individual food packets survive and they then “flutter” down at low speeds that won’t harm people on the ground (due to their low “terminal velocity”). The food packets remain sealed and edible, even if dropped from thousands of feet and not immediately found. Since the food does not fall to the ground in large bundles, it falls over a wide area. This prevents thugs from intercepting all the food for themselves (or to sell on the black market). Children get as much if not more than anyone. Some food will land where it is unsafe to recover it but this risk is offset by the huge quantities quickly dropped and easily found. This procedure was first developed in the Bosnian war, and tested in Afghanistan. It works, and since the food falls over a wide area, the feared risk of mob-panic has never happened in real-life. In fact, dropping large quantities of food in this manner tends to disperse a crowd rather than to gather one as those that head towards open space find more food. Some of the large benefits of this system are: 1) It requires no infrastructure on the ground such as the “safe landing zones” required for parachuted food. 2) It is far more cost-effective parachuting pallets of food as was widely seen in the media on January 18th, 2010. The 1997 figures from the military say that method costs $800 per bundle, while the TRIADS system cost just $72 per bundle. 3) It takes significantly less time to prepare food for being dropped in this manner since no parachute is necessary and this allows more food to be dropped faster. Water is too heavy to be delivered in this exact manner but it can be delivered by helicopter from lower altitudes to empty fields and lots. Individual bottles will not normally break when they land; they bounce, especially if the bottles are slightly under-filled (as this leaves an air cushion to absorb the shock). In addition, under-filled bottles float so the bottles can be dropped over bodies of (contaminated) water and they will then naturally float to the land. You can read more information about this procedure at the following links. Please forward this information to as many policymakers as you can. These food deliveries need to start immediately if we are to save the tens of thousands of Haitian earthquake victims in remote areas from thirst, contaminated water, and starvation who are dieing as you read this. · Dr. Bill's idea for dropping food from planes: http://www.kgoradio.com/Article.asp?id=1662660&nId=0&spid=33179 · YouTube video of Afghanistan airdrops of individual meal packets: YouTube video of Afghanistan airdrops of individual meal packets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCxwprZekpM · Dropping food from airplanes -- without parachutes? http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/old%20physics%2010/chapters%20(old)/7-DroppingFood.html · High-Tech Cardboard Boxes Used In Afghan Food Airdrops--Describes the Tri-Wall Aerial Delivery System used in Bosnia and Afghanistan to deliver tens of thousands of MREs http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44648 · U.S. Air Force Airdrop News Page ((from the Internet Archive, because the military deleted this site)--has a ton of news items about the 2001 TRIAD air-drops that delivered 2 million packets of food in Afghanistan. http://web.archive.org/web/20060222040836/www.usafe.af.mil/airdrop/news.htm