What's going on with this "relief" effort in Haiti?
Help me out here, folks......I live in Italy, but am an American citizen.......Italian TV news is a bit beyond my comprehension...and I don't think CNN is giving the us "straight skinny" OK.....I hear a lot about $10 million here....."rapid response" there.....outpourings of relief from the U.S....China.....etc. etc... THEN.....CNN pops up and it's the "Dr. Sanjay Gupta Show" complete with clips of him performing battlefield neurological evaluations on babies and so on......people needing surgery and being turned away.....while a hippy upper middle class American tourist gets private jet evacuation to the 'States... For all the rhetoric and back-slapping, there seems to be very little hard relief..... Where are the U.S. Hospital ships? Where are the heavy duty helicopters? Where is the emergency infusion of battlefield hospitals and doctors and nurses and antisepetics and surgical rooms that the U.S. is capable of providing? It's going on 2 weeks!! Haiti is not on the other side of the world! What gives? Sorry Ratz, I got my times screwed up...it "seems" like 2 weeks........however, is the main airport in Haiti operational? Have they airlifted in a few hundred Marines for security?......I can appreciate the " bottleneck" phenomenon, but that's what battlefield commanders are responsible for........or are they all preroccupied with the Middle East?
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1 :
The earthquake happened Jan 12th, so no it hasn't been going on 2 weeks. All of those supplies are there, or have been sent, but there is a bottleneck. There are no roads, no infrastructure, no government, no command on the ground organizing everything. It's been hard to get stuff to the actual people. They dropped food from helicopters but they caused riots.
2 :
All the Haitians are being evacuated to America and other parts of the world as its no longer habitable but of course if they die while they are waiting then thats just too bad. I heard there was room in this place in Louisiana - name escapes me for the minute - something about Katrina - no it escapes me. I hope that updates you.
3 :
air port is full no control tower, no radar roads blocked ports destroyed ships Travel very slowly in short no land water or air Access to bring every thing in quickly
4 :
The news reports that I am hearing is that there is an immense stockpile of emergency relief supplies at the airport and a steady flow of it still arriving but delivery of the emergency relief supplies to the quake survivors is just flowing at a trickle. It's my understanding that they are waiting for ground troops to arrive and set up and secure distribution sites.
5 :
Because there is no magic wand that can be waved and everything made better. Before you can distrubute the relief supplies you have to clear the roads. Before you can start clearing the roads you have to repair the airfield. Before you can repair the airfield you have to get your equipment and repair personnel there. Anything too heavy to be moved by air (bulk supplies and fuel, heavy construction equipment, heavy trucks etc) has to wait for the port facilities to be repaired. The ironic thing here is that I was one of the initial responders to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I was working in the operations section of a joint task force whose mission was to help coordinate relief efforts. When we hit the ground we did the math and immedeatly realized that there was very little we could do to help people in the first few days. The only usable highway was choked with refugee traffic and our only 'usable' airfield had no working air traffic control equipment, no electricity and no usable fuel. We had aircraft blowing tires on landing because of debris on the runway. The first thing we had to do was clear the runways. Then we had to fly in the equipment to unload the aircraft. Then we had to fly in the people and equipment to process the supplies after they were unloades. Then we had to fly in fuel. Then we had to fly in trucks. And only then could we even think of moving relief supplies to people. And the worst thing about all of this was - we did the math and discovered that there was no way we could move the necessary tonnage of relief supplies to the people who neede them in time. .
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