I think that the person who used the Woody Allen quote might have been the person who might have gotten it the most - had they read what I wrote.

If you can operate from at home - on your own station, without doing anything or making any effort - this is the point I was trying to make when I said all they want to do is talk on the radio... TALK - not travel, not spend their own money, no do anything to help.

People likes nets - they like to be a part of something.
Its called the Herding instinct - they want to be a part of a group or herd.

In an emergency - SIMPLEX is the prefered mode of communications.
YOU MUST EXPECT THAT WHEN YOU GET THERE, THERE WILL NOT BE ANYTHING THERE FOR YOU TO USE.

Just ask anyone that responded to Hurricaine Katrina in Louisiana or Mississippi...

When you show up for an emergency, you need to have more then just a walkie talkie and a pocket full of batteries.
You can't expect the disaster people to provide everything for you.

You need to have your own place to stay - the back of a van or pick up truck is mininum. Your own radio equipment, your own food - enough for about 10 days. Your own clothes and toiletries - including water, because you never know what you are going to find once you get there.

I just came from New York City on Monday, and all I can say is if you saw the filth and the destruction - its unimagineable.
I was telling the natural gas crew that was going in behind me - not to expect much and to post one person just to watch the truck while you work.
We had a real problem with looting..
Here we were trying to fix things to make things better and the people were stealing things to sell out of the back of my truck.
I went so far as to ask if they all had their tetnus shots and if they brought a gun. Once it gets dark out - there is no law - unless you have the national guardsmen in the area. There is no gasoline!

The world runs on gasoline.

If they get the opportunity - they will poke a hole in your gas tank and drain the gasoline out of your tank and steal it.
It was more like an apocalypse then anything else..

Just imagine 1 million people going out on your main street and taking a dump twice a day for a week.
That is what it was like, after the sewage treatment plant was overcome by the water and was overloaded and just spewed raw sewage into the sea water.

Even after going through the Holland Tunnel - Manhanttan was unlike anything that I had ever saw before. Yuck!

Long Island NY I can't even describe... It was that bad.

The tower crews were paid state rate which amounted to about $221 a hour to work on Sunday and about $180 to work Saturday to get the radio system back up and running in New Jersey.. They still couldn't get many volunteers... I saw more crews running out of New York then what was going in.

One fourth of all the cell towers were down - basically the people believed that they would not fail. When the storm hit - even the towers that had generators and batteries - worked until the batteries went dead and the generators ran out of fuel. The people in a panic - overloaded the system by all trying to talk on the remaining cell towers. Some 911 communications was offline - but they did not publish which towers no longer worked - to keep the looters away from those area's.

The other thing is with 8 million people without power - when their cell phone went dead, they had to way to recharge the batteries.
The stores were empty - because the shelves were bare.

The only thing left in the one store was some boxes of Dcon - rat poison.

There wasn't any electric to run the gas pumps for the stations that did still have gasoline.
Nobody ever expected that something like this could ever happen to them.
And because it wasn't in Louisiana or Mississippi - help came immediately...
Just because these people are more important then the people from Mississippi and Louisiana.

The only difference was these people were not as desperate as the people from the south during Hurricaine Katrina.

As for the coffee - coffee is made to disguise the taste of the treated water.
If you look historically - the worlds coffee supply was bought up by the USA during WW II and the worlds TEA supply was bought up by the British...

You get your water out of a untreated water pipe - spigot - and see how long it is before you get disentary..
There was no electric to run the water filtering plant, and the water intake for the plant was in the raw sewage.

The water buffalo with the portable water was the prefered source for Red Cross and Salvation Army.

The people who still had working automobiles - were able to leave - if they had enough gasoline. While the people who lost everything were stuck where they were.

They do not need your donations..
These fools that are loading up the trucks and sending supplies are only wasting their time.
As others has said - there is more then enough doughnuts and coffee to go around.
Once the people gets tired of drinking bottled water - they will start complaining - just like they did in Hurricaine Katrina.

The insurance companies have been contacted and they will all be getting their checks.
Some of those homes that were destroyed, were built as summer cottages, which were later converted into homes.
They were built in the wrong place and to the wrong standards.
Hopefully the insurance companies will realize this and will give these people the money to move somewhere else or not to build in the same location.
Or to build to a better standard then before.

I could go on and on....