I was involved in a relief operation with the 82d a while back. We deployed and were mainly patrolling areas to stop looting and to protect the relief supplies. We also had attached engineers to clear rubble, and a lot of guys who did unloading of relief supplies.
What got me was this - When the natives figured that the weapons had no ammo, they got their weapons and stole some of ours... we were quickly issued ammo.
Second thing - I heard more "Where have you been, what took you so long to get here?" than I heard "Thank you for coming to help". About the 100th time I heard this, I answered "I was at home, in my house, drinking a beer, sitting in my air conditioning, looking at the storm track on TV and was so freaking happy I was not stupid enough to live here." Sorta shut that clown right up.
Oh, did I mention this was Hurricane Andrew, and I was in Florida? And the infrastructure there is one hell of a lot better than the almost non-existant infrastructure in Haiti. You can only do the best you can with what you have. People scream and cry about how long things take. One reason I reckon most of the people on this board could easily wait out 72/96 hours without outside help.
WARNING & DISCLAIMER:
SELECT AND USE OUTDOORS AND SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT, SUPPLIES AND TECHNIQUES AT YOUR OWN RISK. Information posted
on this forum is not reviewed for accuracy and may not be reliable, use at your own risk. Please
review the full WARNING & DISCLAIMER about information on this
site.