Clinton and Bush Snr to Lead Aid Appeal

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Snr are to lead the fund-raising campaign for Hurricane Katrina's huge humanitarian effort, reprising a role they played with some success after the Asian tsunami.

Americans responded generously to the disaster appeals made by the pair, whose political rivalries dissolved into an unlikely but genuine friendship. By asking the two to team up once more, the White House hopes for a similar reaction and donations of hundreds of millions of dollars.

More than $82m (about £44.8m) has been raised so far, according to the Washington-based Chronicle of Philanthropy, which monitors charitable giving. The funds are destined for organisations such as the Red Cross and he Salvation Army, who are embarking on a relief operation of unprecedented scale.

"As the size of the catastrophe comes into focus, people will dig deeper," said a spokesman, Evan Goldstein, who estimated that the early donations were at least in line with the tsunami appeal.

As donations poured in, aid agencies were beginning to get to grips with the huge challenges they face to get food and water to hundreds of thousands of people without power or supplies in the Gulf coast states.

Phil Zepeda, a spokesman for America's Second Harvest, which operates one of the nation's biggest food bank networks, said the first task was to identify storage and distribution sites for millions of tonnes of food and water.

"We've got our first 28 truck loads already heading towards the area and although it's early in the operation, we're already working on how we're going to get it to those who need it most," he said. "For these people, food means survival."

The Chicago-based group has several hundred staff setting up a supply chain throughout storm-hit Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, and also in Houston, Texas, and Little Rock, Arkansas, where some refugees from New Orleans will be taken.

Mr Zepeda said the group intended to deliver most of the food and water by road. But he did not rule out airdrops to more remote areas.

"Most of New Orleans is a quagmire but the expectation is that everyone will be evacuated from there so we'll be concentrating on the other areas," he said. "I'm not even sure that Fema [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] knows exactly what it will be doing yet but it's still a search and rescue operation at the moment."

Fema said it has already sent more than 1,700 of its own trucks into the disaster area, carrying 4.2m gallons of water and 4.5m meals.