40,000 Americans – including hundreds of frum Yidden – were stranded yesterday in Britain because of the huge number of flight cancellations due to the cloud of volcanic ash. Many more US citizens also appeared to be having trouble returning home from vacation or business trips in other parts of Europe, amid an aviation crisis brought on by the eruption of a volcano in Iceland which led to airspace closures across much of the continent.President Barack Obama’s spokesman said the US ambassador to Britain Louis Susman had called the White House earlier Monday with an update on the situation.
“I think there are approximately, according to him, about 40,000 Americans in England that are trying, because of the disruption in air travel, to get back to this country,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Some of the stranded Americans were running out of medicine or didn’t have places to stay, said Gibbs, adding that the US State Department was looking into the situation.
Asked whether the US Navy could follow the example of Britain’s Royal Navy and seek to rescue some stranded citizens, Gibbs said he was unaware of any such plans.
“We’ve got some big ships, but that would be a pretty big ship,” he said.
Obama cancelled plans to fly to Poland at the weekend for the funeral of president Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash, owing to safety concerns brought on by the ash cloud.
{AFP/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
England are up for elections in a few weeks that’s why they are dispatching war ships.
Obama has three more years to go
England has shipped people with their ships from countries which are in close proximity to their borders, whereas sailing from the U.K. to the U.S is a distance of 3000 miles, which will probably take well over a week and by that time this crisis will hopefully be over, anyway. And regarding this entire situation its worth bearing in mind that the English are totally over reacting here whereas most european countries after doing plenty of test flights are not concerned at all.
Those “hundreds of frum Yidden” mentioned in the first line of the article should and must realize that what is currently happening is beshert.
HaShem will decide when they, and the rest of the Americans “stranded yesterday in Britain because of the huge number of flight cancellations due to the cloud of volcanic ash” will return to America.
As things are, they are more than halfway to Eretz Yisroel. As Obama seems dead set against the State of Israel, we could do with as many yungermen as possible to mechazek the medina.