That is simply not true AFLM, please review the CNN.com video that you post a URL to: the Haitians have identified medical supplies and medical staff as having the highest priority; air traffic controllers are giving medical supplies and staff the highest priority on arrival, e.g. if 3 planes are waiting to land, if controllers know that the cargo on one plan is medical supplies and staff, they will give that plane landing priority. The General in charge (Keen) of the airport says exactly this several minutes into the interview. He also cites an example from yesterday where a medical flight was turned away, Gen. Keen says it was because they didn't know that it carried medical supplies.

The airfield is a bottleneck, but medical flights are a high priority, not a low priority.

What else would you expect the General to say. He's not likely to admit that the highest priority goes to the evacuation of US nationals, orphans waiting to go to adoptive families, and politicians who want to do photo opportunities. To say that the ATCs don't know what is on a flight is a poor excuse, especially when his initial reaction was to start to blame the non existent Haitian government. The US military has had the airfield under their control for 7 days now and the obvious requirement would be to prioritize these flights based on the aid/equipment so as to generate a landing slot time via electronic communications from their operations room, prior to the ATC, without having to ask such questions to the pilot circling above. Do you really think that 5 flights from the NGO 'Doctors without Borders' which have been turned away from landing haven't communicated what aid they are carrying to the US military authorities running the airfield. Its either incompetence or something else has a higher priority. Perhaps the AT controller should have turned around the Secretary of State and the ex President (low aid priority) as the ATC would have known what these aircraft were carrying in favour of absolutely anything else especially when the ATC turned around one of the MSF flights about 2-3 days ago.

As the NGOs on the ground had indicated many days ago, they were concerned/uneasy that the Haiti mission has been Militarized. Civilian NGO operations in military chains of command get short shrift, so I'm not really surprised at what the military regards a high priority. They regard their own operations as having the highest priority.

It quite hard to carry boxes of medicine/rations/water with M4s swigging around soldiers and Marines necks.

"What else would you expect the General to say." You could have ended your response there, AFLM, because it shows the level of integrity you think is on the ground at the airport. The rest is just supposition and I have to say a bit of bile. I don't know what General Keen's response to the 5 flights by Doctors without Borders would be because he didnt' address that - but unless all 5 flights were turned away yesterday, I don't see your point. The airport has a capacity, up from an initial 30 to approximately 115 flights a day. That's a fact. And it hasn't always been 115 flights, more like 60-80 flights / day for the first week - depending on conditions on the ground, yes, 5 Drs without Borders inbounds might be turned away, one per day or all on a day, as they simply could have no where to land. That's a hard fact too. I suppose the situation could be split down the middle - the medical priority may not have been established until just recently, before which lots of medical aid could be turned away without justification. Lessons learned, quickly we hope. Adapt, and overcome - its someone's motto anyway.

And I assume by ex President you are referring to UN Special Envoy for Haiti President William Clinton: if you want to suggest that the government of Haiti shouldn't give any landing privilege to the UN envoy then I guess I have to give up on convincing you otherwise. No, he didn't deliver a stand up medical clinic, but he came in with a shipment of medical and other relief supplies. Honestly I have no idea on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or what weight she has in established priorities, but between them that's at most 2 flights in 7 days.

Personally if I were to have any bile it would be for the surfeit of reporters on the ground - whose space did they take up on an inbound flight, from what relief supplies are they fed and watered while on the ground in Port au Prince: how many life-saving meals are they eating while they are there. A local Seattle TV affiliate has no less than 2 reporters in Port au Prince right now, a condition probably duplicated across the other 37 major US media markets. Apparently they can't rely on a network pool reporter to report the news, they need to be in Haiti during this early phase, reporting on who knows what.

The majority of armed forces throughout the world do not have integrity (no matter what Military Personnel involved would like to think), they just follow orders from the top down. Thats how they get things done. They are tools to do someone else's political bidding. The General in charge has his orders and his priorities and he will be carrying them out to the best of his abilities within the framework he has been given.



This is the main problem I have with the current setup in response to the military operations in Haiti in response to the Earthquake. Its the NGOs operating in Haiti that currently in the country have been there, done that, and not the General in charge of USSOUTHCOM. There isn't time to go through the learning curve required for the delivery of humanitarian assistance to such a large disaster.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/international/2010/01/20/bs.penhaul.haiti.us.troops.cnn&hpt=P1



There is no Haitian Government, they have no say in what is going on, despite the propaganda. Even during the first day after the Earthquake the President of Haiti was caught attempting to get out of dodge by a news reporter. The rest of the Haitians who survived the earthquake who attempted to previously run the country weren't far behind trying to get out of dodge. The Haitian government was a corrupt puppet regime at the best of times.



The US military was in charge of the Airfield in Port-au-Prince apparently just a few hours after the Earthquake. Perhaps that question of priorities for the authorities in charge of the airfield about getting the news media into the country should be directed at them rather than me.

BTW its not 'bile' (it may seem that way) its just that the situation is now getting to the point where I can begin to see beginnings of 'the worst case scenario'. There appears to be little being done right now to mitigate what may well happen in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile back in the land armchair quarterbacking...oh wait, that's where we all are. Hmmm, I guess I just keep my mouth shut then since I don't know the whole story and will never except by going there myself. Anyone else who wants to complain about how things are being done down in Haiti is free to do so, but only if they are actually down there.

Have I made myself clear?

-Blast

I suspect a large part of this "very bad" scenario is simple logistics. Currently everything is coming into a very small airport or "over the beach". That is a significant limitation when managing supplies for a large group of people.

Using some grossly rounded numbers here is a quick and dirty analysis of the logistics challenge.

The news said they are up to about 115 landings per day. To simplify assume 150 landings, all C-17s - that is about 9,750 tons of cargo per day. If all of that was MRE's (really optimistic, my guess is the plane would be volume limited, not weight) you would have about 10,400 pallets of MREs or 3 meals per day (all pork and beans) for nearly 12 million people. Of course you would have no water, no medical gear, no generators, no transportation/fuel and no people.

Throw all of that other stuff on the airplanes and the amount of food drops very quickly, especially since you need to fly in all the fuel for the generators, the trucks and planes (though they may be carrying enough to fly out without refueling, which also impacts cargo capacity). With all the above I would be shocked if they were able to fly in more than 10-20% of the raw number above. If we assume a mix of aircraft the number goes even lower since most commercial airplanes are seriously volume limited compared to the C-17.

Similar quick and dirty look at using helicopters. A single SH-60 Navy Seahawk can carry about 1000lbs which would be just about 1,800 servings of MRE pork and beans. If you are carrying water, you are only going to deliver about 100 gallons per trip. Both of these assume that weight not volume is the limiting factor which is probably a poor assumption.

Airplanes and helicopters are quick but bulk cargo needs a port. One of the military folks on the news yesterday pointed out that it takes over 150 airplanes to carry what a single freighter handles. That is why the loss of the port facilities is so critical.

- Eric

This reply is to both the previous posts: Arney & James (pg. 11)

First, Haiti is indeed close enough to easily fly a helicopter from Florida. The jump off point most likely being West Palm Beach and then just follow the Bahamas to Haiti. Depending on the range and speed it should be an easy day of flying.

Where to get fuel would be a concern but Cap Haitien would be a good landing point. With the Navy in PAP there is plenty of Jet-A but a coordination would definitely be necessary to get some. Fuel supplies at other support airfields will certainly be beefed up soon to accommodate the influx.

Second, maintenance is not as bad as you might think. Due to the ocean air you are more concerned about corrosion but if you can rinse your engines and a quick hose down each day (you don't need drinkable water for that) it would go a long way towards keeping things in good shape. The birds can be outside a hangar for months with proper care and most field maintenance is exactly that, in the field. Even if a major component comes due while you are there you have either planned ahead and taken a spare with you or something can be shipped to you. It may be more difficult right now but certainly doable.

We routinely spend months on the road during fire season with a crew of 3, 4, or 5 if we really need to (2 pilots included). We also can fly 8 hour days for long periods without any major maintenance. We operate primarily out of helibases placed in fields, clearings, etc. Rarely do we sit on pavement.

You must know that civilian operations as compared to military are much different. Maintenance is kept to the same standard but the military often sends many more people than is really necessary for each aircraft. Some birds are absolute pigs when it comes to wrenching but others are remarkably easy to keep up with. If you fly a pig then you have to crew it. I don't fly a pig.

I do see that at least one civilian S-58T (OLD aircraft) is there in the area now. That is just the beginning. This event will last for many months and will surely eventually transition away from U.S. Military to U.N. or other control. Other operators and contractors will be there for the long haul.

The company I work with spent 13 months in New Orleans after Katrina. We were there long after the press moved on to other excitement. Haiti is way worse off than N.O. ever was.

Maybe some of y'all don't get the same news I do, but living right outside FT Bragg, the local stations have all sent reporters and the coverage has been extensive.

First off, for anyone doubting the idea they are trying to get food and supplies on the ground - troops were held back as all the planes leaving were being loaded with food and water and med supplies. The troops got to sit around for as long as two days waiting on flights. The "main airport" there in Port Au Prince isn't all that big, and the bottleneck is getting planes in, unloaded and back out for another load.

Second - the remark about M4s is way off base. Most of the troops have grounded weapons and helmets. Unless they are on an active patrol, no weapons. However, the mere presence of the troops has done a lot to quell the looting and incipient rioting.

Third - The medics/doctors attached to the deployed units have been working overtime to provide what support they can. A station here showed regular troops helping to set up a civilian hospital that had just arrived right next to the aid station/triage area the 82d had already set up.

Finally - you have troops working 20+ hours a day handing out food and water. Granted, they are not trained to be peacekeepers in the sense that the UN troops are - meaning our guys don't take bribes, black market supplies and rape women. Instead they do what they can with what they have. They attempt to keep some semblance of order and help those that need it, in this case, the entire freaking country. These are guys who were finally home from a year's deployment to Afghanistan and now they get to spend at least 30 days if not more in Haiti. Instead of ragging on them, give them some credit.

I say Kudos to everyone on the ground lending a hand in Haiti. Be they security, medical, supply, or reporting on what's going on to the rest of the world. We can criticize all we want, but if no one went, I believe the outcome would be far worse. Better to have a bit of disorganization and perhaps some ego issues and still have rescued over 100 people from being buried alive. Haiti was in an emergency condition before the earthquake. For many people there, they are getting treated better than they have been in a long time. It is unfortunate so many have died, and many more are still suffering. Doing something, even if it is not enough to help everyone, is still better than doing nothing. No doubt things could be going better than they are now. There's certainly room for improvement. Bear in mind, we all could've just done nothing. Nobody was required to respond.

I prefer to focus on the positive. Today, a little boy's life was saved and he gets to keep both his legs because a handful of people were willing to use their skills without compensation and in primitive conditions, and they could just as easily have said no. I call that a good thing, and that is enough for me to know for today. The rest is just trivia.

I wonder how much more medical supplies or medical personnel could have been flown in, in place of the reporters or the Clinton's and their staffs?