During the panic hours all day Wednesday, the Obama Administration emergency plans for Haitian rescue operations were assigned to coordinated under the direction of the head of AID and the Military Commander of Southern Command. General Russel Honore (Retired) publicly disagreed with this command structure for the Haitian emergency relief project. General Honore advised President Obama that the control over coordinating the relief effort should be exclusively under the American regional military Commander. I agreed then with General Honore completely yesterday and as today’s events unfold it is becoming rapidly clearer that we are about to witness a relief disaster in the making. I will tell you just how below the fold.
The only hope for any successful relief operation was to assign coordination completely under the military and here is why. Only the military has the capacity to schedule demanding high speed tightly controlled operations and expect results. Further, only the military has been trained to move into an area WITHOUT and expectation of utilities and facilities to be operational. Only the military has heavy equipment and construction vehicles available on standby for immediate deployment to any theater of operation.
Haitian infrastructure was none existent before the earthquake, this was a well known fact. The harbor itself was literally falling apart and would be incapable of providing support for the required relief ship traffic even if it hadn’t been destroyed by the earthquake. So virtually no roads, no sea port, the only access left is the airport. The Airport certainly did not have enough runways and aircraft parking space to support an air relief mission of this magnitude.
The coordinator would estimate the amount of cargo plane traffic would be required to support the relief effort and use these calculations to determine how many additional runways and parking spaces would be required. The project at this point would be to first fly in the number of bulldozers required to start building the first additional runway. Flight traffic initially would be limited to getting the runway construction equipment and fuel on site. Once on the ground the Army engineers would immediately start the construction work on the second runway. Meanwhile the shuttle airplane traffic would start delivery of the metal reinforcements for the runway under construction.
When the new runway opens for use construction would already be started on another runway if needed.
This bootstrap procedure would result the quick implementation of an Haitian Airport capable of facilitating a reasonable shot at a viable relief operation for the country. Further, it would provide the first vanguard of heavy equipment critical to removing the huge slabs of concrete still imprisoning victims around the city. The U.S. Military would be the only agency capable of performing such an operation. As a matter of fact the Army Corps of Engineers has a record dating back to World War II in building landing/takeoff strips for aircraft in record time.
Now it is Thursday and the news out of Haiti is already reporting that the current big roadblock threatening to turn the relief effort into a recovery operation is the airport. Currently, no further planes will be allowed to land at the airport due to the congestion. Hence, most of the relief principles are now placing their hopes on the arrival of the U.S. Aircraft Carrier with a fleet of heavy lift Coast Guard Choppers, but this will add another 48 hour delay to the relief effort. At this point it does not appear that in consideration of the 48 hour delay that the relief operation most likely will have minimum success.
