John Travolta landed a plane in Haiti on Monday to personally deliver supplies to survivors in the earthquake-ravaged nation.
The “Pulp Fiction” star touched down in the Boeing commercial jet with his actress wife, Kelly Preston, a number of relief volunteers and 80 medics.
The plane was also stocked with food and medical supplies.
And Travolta has heaped praise on Qantas Airlines bosses for lending him the passenger plane to make the mercy mission possible.
He says, “I want to thank Qantas Airlines and (its chief executive) Alan Joyce. Alan is allowing me to fly the Boeing 707 that’s sitting in the backyard, fill it with supplies, fill it with doctors, fill it with volunteer ministers, and take it down to Haiti on Monday – so thank you, thank you, thank you!”
It’s the second relief trip Travolta has organized for Haiti. The actor dug deep to arrange for a plane to carry volunteers to the country just days after the devastating tremor.
I arrived at JFK last week, ready to go.
I knew we were traveling with doctors and EMTs, but I didn’t expect to see 50 scientologists, in their yellow shirts with Volunteer Minister on them. They were completely unprepared for going to a third world country, let alone a disaster zone. One girl was in designer cowboy boots. I asked her if she’d brought any sturdier footwear.
“Oh no, these’ll be fine.”
I asked another guy what he’d packed and he said he hadn’t bothered to bring soap or toilet paper or food, but that he’d just “buy whatever I need at Port-au-Prince airport.” I couldn’t break it to him.
They had no place to stay, and no supplies — their idea was to use the ton of money they had to buy food to distribute when they got there. But there was no food and no water. That was the point.
By the time we arrived in Haiti, after a stopover in Miami, we had missed three landing slots at the airport. Aid agencies — genuine aid agencies — from other countries were being turned away, refused permission to land. But we still got a slot straight away. The guy who ran our charter seemed to think that the Scientologists had some real influence with the US Government, who were assigning the slots.
The doctors and EMTs in our party headed straight downtown to start working. The Scientologists had nowhere to go, and nowhere to put up the big yellow tent they’d brought for touch healing people in. They went to the UN, and managed to get on to their list of approved NGOs somehow. That meant they could set up in the UN grounds.
But they had no-one who spoke Creole, and they brought the weirdness of touch healing into a very superstitious society. They’d leave the tent and come into the general hospital downtown, and try healing people. One of the doctors and one of the nurses told me that the wounded started coming to them to tell them they didn’t want to be treated by the people in the yellow shirts.
One nurse told me that the Scientologists actually caused harm — they gave food to people who were scheduled to go into surgery. That then led to complications in the operating theater.
On the way back, the plane stopped in Miami and did not go on to New York, stranding all the doctors and EMTs and journalists who expected to get back. After much fighting, the Scientologist representative agreed to fly any of the EMTs that “absolutely couldn’t afford the ticket” on Jet Blue from Fort Lauderdale. I heard there were complications but had bought my own ticket because I was fed up with their weirdness.
This is EXACTLY what they did in indonesia after the tsunami!!! I have a friend who witnessed their bumbling presence first hand. They just showed up, unprepared, and were in the way. But I had no idea this is there M.O.
what idiots!!!!
I don’t know what to make of this person’s account, but I do know that Scientologists were allowed to enter Haiti, when much needed supplies have repeatedly been diverted from landing at the airport. This verges on criminal – I can’t find a single reason to dismiss this as merely an error in judgment. Someone was able to pull strings in a disaster that can’t afford a second of guessing who will be the best to help these people.
To a lesser extent, they did the same creepy stuff in Blacksburg after the Virginia Tech Shooting. Trying to touch people and hand out copies of their spiritual guide. They stood in front of buildings to get people going in and out. It was creepy and offensive. We were not a war zone or a “disaster” zone. The support from all over the world was amazing, but we didn’t need people to come to town and set up tents.
My students told me they incredibly insulted by the idea that if they would only read this handout, the very real and visceral pain of such a traumatic event would disappear. They felt it was clear that the scientologists were only there to profit off their personal tragedy. As their teacher, I was really proud of them
Well at least they weren’t down there kidnapping children.