September 01, 2005

Canadian relief assistance to New Orleans

Worth noting:

"British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, sent a search and rescue team to Louisiana to assist recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast area earlier this week.

"Vancouver's heavy urban search and rescue team flew to Lafayette, Louisiana, following a request from state officials, British Columbia's Public Safety Minister John Les said late yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Other Canadian provincial governments are ready to assist, the Canadian Television Network reported on its Web site."

Posted by BruceR at 07:08 PM

Iraq officer fatality update

Just a quick update on my June post on officer fatalities in Iraq. From June 10 to today, there have been an additional 196 U.S. fatalities in Iraq, of which 10, or 5.1%, were officers. This brings the percentage of officer fatalities in the U.S. military, already at something of a historic low, down even farther to 8.6%.

Interestingly, the same website I'm relying on here has corrected its British officer fatalities up, to 22 out of 93 total deaths, or 23.7%, three times the American percentage.

Another interesting and possibly indicative factoid is that there hasn't been a single fatality among the non-U.S. coalition forces in Iraq, including the British, in the last six weeks. Of the U.S. fatalities since 10 June, 87, or 44%, were reservists (largely due to the large number of Marine reservist deaths in Anbar, but still remarkably high).

Posted by BruceR at 03:01 PM