Chile Forum

We are suspending accepting general donations at this time!!! Thank you for all the support.


We have reached our goals, and the sort of aid required now in Chile is more administrative than cash. If you would like to donate to the reconstruction efforts please donate to one of the major aid organizations in Chile that we have worked with during our small project. We are still working on various projects, but they are essentially manpower type projects that do not require funds.

Links to aid agencies we endorse, and we have seen and worked with on the ground around Chile can be found here and would recommend that you donate to:
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=3971



This is the official update of news, photos, and information regarding the ALLCHILE.NET Earthquake Relief Flights and other work to assist the victims of Chile's Earthquake and reconstruction efforts. This is a read only thread. Please Visit the following thread for Public Discussion of the Chile Earthquake Aid Project: topic4006.html

First what it is all about:
The allchile.net forum members, Spencer Global, and friends of Chile have cobbled together a band of volunteers to provide direct aid to earthquake victims in Chile. We do not believe that aid agencies are deploying sufficiently fast or have the resources on the ground. We have pulled out all the stops in using our collective resources to fill that gap anyway we can, until other organizations are able to assist. We are looking to fill any gap we can find in the aid and reconstruction efforts, that is being overlooked or neglected by others.

So simply on the donations from members of the forum and our friends, we have organized a relief project. Currently we have a plane and pilot, two doctors, and over 32 flights.

We are running this all on a shoestring budget of donations collected on the internet, but we are running while everyone else is still crawling.

We are NOT a NON-PROFIT organization!!! We are a group of private individuals simply trying to do the right thing, and throwing whatever support we can scrape together from our friends and contacts to help people that need help as fast as we can. We are able to do this in part because we are not crippled by the slow bureaucracy of larger NGO's and government organizations. Essentially, we are small but light.

Spencer Global, the owners and operators of allchile.net and allsouthernchile.com have devoted all their resources and contacts to this project. We are organizing and running this from Temuco, Chile. The only thing we can promise is that we intend to help people with any donations or sponsorship we receive, and all we have to offer is our business reputation for getting things done and our personal love of all things Chile. This project has already shown incredible amount of results, on just a few thousand dollars and resources donated to us. This is also not the first time we have run disaster relief projects of this sort in Chile: post25736.html

Right now we have a plane of our own (info below), doctors, organized several flying clubs in Chile, assistance of many companies inside and outside Chile, media (santiagoradio.cl thepulse.cl ) in close coordination with such none-profit organizations as Techos para Chile and Hogar de Cristo, Mayor University Medical school, the Chilean military, and anyone else that is willing to assist us on the ground.

Two ways to assist this project:
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1. In the U.S.A. and from outside Chile:

Wire or electronic transfer to the following account in dollars:


Donations are currently suspended

About our Plane and Pilot:

Our friend Vince Beasley in Puerto Varas is donating his time, airplane, and also some fuel directly for tentatively up to a week and possibly more. Below is his letter describing his plane, abilities, and photos. We have at least one American doctor in Futaleufu (vince is going to pick him up), and possibly two.

My plane is a Cessna 206 equipped as a "Bush Plane" in Alaska, where the plane worked for many years. It has 6 seats and can carry 5 passengers. Five of the seats can be removed to allow cargo inside. There is also an external cargo compartment that can carry up to 300 pounds (136 kg.).

The maximum gross weight of the aircraft is 3600 lbs (1633 kg).
Empty weight is 1700 pounds (771 kg).
The payload is 1900 pounds (862 kg).

In other words, depending on how much fuel there is in the plane (up to 80 gallons or 303 liters), the plane can carry a payload of 1,265 pounds to 1,645 pounds (574 kg to 746 kg), plus the pilot. This depends on the configuration of the aircraft, such as full fuel and all seats installed, or if the extra seats are removed and the plane has a minimum of 26 gallons or 2 hours of fuel.

My aircraft is STOL equipped and I have "Bush Flying" experience. I am able to take off and land on short unimproved air strips. This includes, hard sand beaches, grass fields, dirt roads, asphalt roads and anywhere conditions permit. I am a commercial pilot with a very capable aircraft designed and specially equipped for extraordinary conditions and I would be pleased to offer my services to help those in need.
Sincerely,

Vince Beasley

Here it is:

After the fiasco with Pay Pal and doing our best to work around the problems that caused, here is the current breakdown of what money we have received and what we have done with it including funding through tomorrow based on the receipts we have in so far. I think everyone will agree it is an impressively small amount of money, for an impressively large impact. A shockingly large impact. Just imagine we had a fraction of an aid budget most people have.

We have cash available cleared in donations right now: 2,245,500 Chilean Pesos (about $4,379 estimate 512 pesos to the dollar)
We have spent including tomorrows airlift operation: 1,619,104 Chile Pesos (about $3,162 estimate)

We still are up in the air about the exact amounts, because for instance the doctors have been buying insulin and other medicines for people on Isla Mocha that could not get it. We are still waiting for receipts to figure that out, so we know we have spent more than that. We still need to get the doctors home.

For that money, just a brief summary of what has been done:
6 days of flying.
Over 27 flights (not including flights coordinated with the air clubs which is likly in the 100s).
We have provided aid to the towns of:
Tirua
Arauco (airclub landed 12 plane loads yesterday also)
Isla Mocha
-- landed Psychologist, doctors, searched for bodies, working on evaluating fishing industry boats
Cauquenes (first plane load tonight, 6 planes not including ours are are set for morning ).

The photos explain more than I can what we have done so far: topic4006-180.html
There are way more photos on the way, just need time to upload them.

Where we stand. We have sufficient money to continue flying tomorrow. After tomorrow we have to stop, if we do not get in more funds.

Many people I know are just getting their pay pal back, and have committed to forwarding funds. So there is perhaps one more day of operations at least.

We are also considering down shifting in to more effective projects. This was lighting surgical aid strikes with the air planes, but the big need we are seeing right now is the last few km / miles of aid not arriving because of lack of trucks. Stuff is sitting in hangers at airports or in warehouses, roads are back up and running, but coordination of delivery is still slow.

The other crisis that is coming up fast is that we have about 1 month before the weather turns really cold in Chile. People have no homes.

We will have more info in the morning.

We have cloud cover in Temuco, but that often lifts by noon.

Vince is in LA, and reporting that it looks like he will be able to fly.

We are really worried about this aid redirection problem. We are calling everyone with the tail numbers, license plates of cars that are going to pick it up, to make sure it gets out.

We are hearing about this problem over and over again in various locations. The aid is on the ground, but the governors and the mayors are fighting over who should have authority over the distribution. In the meantime, the aid is just sitting on runways and in warehouses around the 7th and 8th region.

We lost the airclub in Temuco.

One, they can not fly because of the weather. Also, they are worried about crossing the military and having their planes seized. I kind of got to give them that. They are collectively risking over 1 million dollars in hardware by flying in to military controlled zone with unpredictable security situation.

Vince is still flying, and we believe we still have the LA air club flying. We are also organizing a truck to send.

The doctors checked in. They are personally donating the cost of all the medical supplies they have bought so far (I think it is like 500,000 pesos).

That frees just sufficient cash for us to buy most of the insulin needed for the people on Isla Mocha. We have someone picking it up at the pharmacy in Temuco right now.

Crossing our fingers and double checking the piggy-bank to see what we have left to keep this operation rolling. We should have a better idea today.

We are requesting a list from Charles Beasley about the tools the people on isla Mocha might need to repair their boats. We are going to try and get donations from Easy and Sodimac construction stores.

Spencer, I'm sorry but I didn't understand what happened with PayPal? Sending a wire transfer is not cheap and I'd rather you have that money. PayPal's 3-4-5% is waaay less than the $25 Chase will charge me. Can we use PayPal?

Pay Pal simply can not be trusted. They are too unpredictable with applying their policies. We are never using pay pal again for anything.

The best method we have is to use is the U.S. Bank account I posted on the front of the web site. Money can be transfered electronically or by wire.

Can I take cash to a physical Bank of America and make a deposit into your account?

THE BANK OF AMERICA ACCOUNT IS CONFIRMED TO BE WORKING.

That said, everyone hold your horses.

The situation on the ground here has changed a lot (seems to do that by the hour). The new president just took office, and we are waiting to see what happens with that in order to know how we can best be of assistance. It also looks like once they get settled in office, we might have more options for direct government support.

We are going to regroup this weekend. This is a good point to take a breath. We have accomplished our goal of a week of flights providing aid to the remote areas effected by the earthquake. We still have aid being distributed or on route through Sunday, doctors are still in the field, and so on. This is just a good place to let the aid flight project to come in for a soft landing.

We need to determine what the next best move is in terms of efficient use of resources and most effective assistance. To do that we need need a couple days off. I am actually sick now and running a temperature. Which is not surprising considering we have not really slept a full night since the big earthquake. A human body will only put up with so many 20 hour days in a row.

Not to mention our ability to concentrate is slipping, and in this situation that is not good. So, we are going to take a few days off, get our own business back in order, and then hopefully come up with some ideas that will top the plane idea.

The Bank of America account is up and running, and we are seeing deposits going through without a problem.

We still have lots going on. We have aid trucks being organized and we are working on getting warehouses for Hogar de Cristo that is not under military control, to insure aid can get distributed once it arrives at the destination. We have no idea what that story is, but the military seems to be sitting on the aid once they get it. I think they have orders to secure it. Even our military liaison officer was pissed about the situation.

The doctors, vince and the airplane, his brother the boat builder, are all out at isla mocha still. We tried to get them to evacuate the island yesterday after the tsunami alert. We sent vince out there to get them, and he stayed over night. No one wants to stop, so I guess we wont either. We are still regrouping and planning however for the next assault on the problem.

Just like dessert storm. We started with the air war, and now we are starting a ground assault. I even have my favorite management bible sitting on my desk, Sun Tzu the art of war. Only I think our enemy is not so much people in need or resources now, but politics and bureaucracy blocking aid from getting to where it needs to go.

We are launching an all out assault today to see how much of that bureaucracy we can get out of the way so aid organizations like Hogar de Cristo and Techos para Chile can get aid where it needs to go.